Day 22, March 21.

First day of Spring. What a treat! Katja, Andrea and I left the beautiful venue with the best training room I’ve had on the tour, and took the 5 or so hour train ride to Berlin, with nice talks along the way.

The thrill for me today was to walk from what was West Berlin through where the wall was into what was East Berlin. It’s of course nothing like what it was when the wall came down but the feeling was palpable of walking into what used to be the dreariest, gray, poor depressing life of the East Berliners and imagining what it must have been like to walk for the first time through the wall and encounter what must have seemed like paradise. It’s just inconceivable to me.And a young Katja was there and experienced walking from west into the east.

Then we met Thomas Bruce, better known as Bruce, who lived for a while next to Syd Banks on Salt Spring Island a couple of years after Syd had his enlightenment experience. We talked about what it was like back then and he gave me a copy of the very first article ever written about Syd.

Now and for the next four nights I’m staying in a shoebox of a “hotel” room. I am literally sitting on the bed able to easily touch both walls at the same time with my arms.  Oh well…

Fortunately my daughter had a very successful operation to fix a torn ACL, which she got while skiing. It’s been really nice to talk with her over the seas for a few days.