From The Archives - Germany

Since time is passing by here in Delaware, and I haven't accomplished much of consequence lately (I'm halfway through repainting the kitchen if that counts), I'm taking the easy way out and posting some photos from the archives this week.

In 2002, just before heading to Chicago for my summer associate term, I spent all of the money I didn't have as a poor law student and spent two weeks traveling around Germany. An old roommate from college living in Munich constituted my only real current connection to country of half my ancestors. It was my first trip overseas. I was traveling alone. And I didn't know a word of German.

I never stayed longer than two days in any town, and took train after train across the country. I also brought my camera. This week, I'll post a few pictures from that trip.

Today's installment hails from Berlin. An old church stands or, more accurately, teeters in the heart of the West side of the city, not too many blocks from Zoo Station. Bombed to near smithereens in World War II, what is left of a once holy place now exists only as a testament to the failure of the human conscience.

On the right side of the photo stands the modern church that replaced the ruins next door. My aesthetic preference for the older school of sacred architecture gives me the sense that the erection of the newer building heaped insult upon the ordnance-induced injury to the former house of worship.