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Berlin. 50 years ago this month JFK made his famous speech.

Berlin and 50th anniversary of JFK speech.

I went to Berlin last weekend with Jolanda. We spend 2 nights there after a 3 and a half bus ride from Hamburg. While we were there we saw many famous places. This month (and specifically on the 26th) is the 50th anniversary of JFK's famous speech "Ich bin ein Berliner"  where he showed his support for  West Germany 22 months after the soviet influenced East Germany erected a wall separating west Berlin from East berlin. In his speech he said the famous words "Ich bin ein Berliner" although people from berlin do not really refer to themselves as "Berliners" because a berliner is basically a jelly filled doughnut.. hah. Any way his words had an impact and it remains in our minds today as in a week, the current President of the United States, Obama has a trip planned and will have talks with the current Chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel. Although with recent revelations of the secret PRISM surveillance program might thwart some of these talks because the EU does not really approve of the U.S. "spying" on it's citizens.

Anyway the wall remained standing for many years later and the Brandenburg Gate (I took a picture of it as shown below) symbolized the separation of the City and the whole country. Again on June 12 (yesterday 26 years to the date) in 1987 the then President Ronald Reagan again called upon the leader of the then Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev (in front of the Brandenburg Gate, again pictured below when i went last weekend) to "Tear down this wall!".

Two years after Reagan's speech in 1989 East Berliners were allowed to cross into West Berlin and both Celebrated on top of the wall. The wall was then destroyed and this gave way to German reunification which completed in October 3 1990.

To this day the Brandenburg gate (built in the late 1800s) still stands and became a symbol of German division and reunification. And now the German people are fully united and could be seen as carrying the rest of Europe on it's shoulders as it bails out many EU states but that is up for debate. But the German people hav succeeded in successfully restoring a good economy and acceptance. Hopefully from here on out everything will only get better. But the division will always remain in our minds. Below is also a picture of graffiti from 1992 indicating the continued feeling of divisions then but when I was there everything seemed fluent.

To Germany and the German People!.

First here is a picture of my favorite building in Berlin "The Berliner Dom"

    Berliner Dom

Brandenburg Gate

Now it is all water under the bridge ;)

Going to berlin and a subreddit for us.

Headed to Berlin!

We are currently on our way via bus to Berlin! Have not even chosen which hotel we are staying in tonight though.

The two of us are here to see the city and visit the Embassies of our countries regarding my visa for other countries here to continue my travels here in Europe! But mostly for Jolanda's passport so that means we will be traveling outside of the EU soon, can any of you guess where? :P

We are excited and will share our experience with you here in a blog post and will obviously be returning in a few weeks back to Berlin. 

On that note I have Started a new Blog which I will update on my broader experiences in Europe. Enjoy!
ConorInEurope.Blogspot.de

Also I founded a new fast growing SubReddit on Reddit Regarding everything American in Europe!
/r/AmericansInEurope

Off topic post about reddit and /r/adviceanimals

Off topic post about Reddit.

I know many of my viewers and followers here are from reddit, one of the subreddits that I view the most is obviously /r/adviceanimals. Yesterday they made a satirical joke about the friction going on in /r/atheism by changing all of their posts to text based posts only which pretty much eliminates mobile users and the casual user who had no idea that it was a joke about a subreddit they might not even know about. Even some people who knew about /r/atheism still were not sure if it was a joke because of other stunts the mods had pulled in the past.

This was not their first shenanigan though, some of you may remember the deal with the flairs and the mods every once and awhile trying to be funny while ruining the plain experience and constant flow of quality content memes.

So. I decided to make my own subreddit www.reddit.com/r/adviceanimalsreborn which grew fast and still is with quality content where no shenanigans will be pulled.

I made this decision even though there is already a subreddit called /r/memes it is vastly different because (as being subscribed to both /r/memes and /r/adviceanimals) I have noticed a difference especially on the mobile. Some of the stuff hitting top page in /r/memes is pictures of memes on paper or other things like hung up at school, and for a mobile user on a tiny screen sometimes its inconvient to try and zoom to see the not so clear cut words. /r/Adviceanimals was clear cut mobile user friendly content of just straight digital images of memes.

Keep memeing on at /r/AdviceAnimalsReborn

Thanks.

Ps. I was also able to create my own new meme using a photo I took of a Coot.