Semester end

We are about to start the last week of the semester. I have read and graded 9 masters theses, given various special lectures, worked on proposals, taught classes, taken part in two library conferences (one in Mannheim, one in Anaheim, which are amazingly distant from each other despite the similarity in their names).

Joan and I took a walk some weeks ago through Pankow, the district where the elite of the East German Party and government lived for much of the history of the Deutsche Demokratische Republik.

Part of Pankow was a gated community where the Soviet army first set up their headquarters, since it was comparatively undamaged.

Scenes like the one above look almost like the US in the 1950s.

Some architecture also looks surprisingly modern.

We also went to the opening of the new US Embassy, which is essentially another gated community given all the anti-terrorist measures. The celebration was held outside on the one day that week when it poured rain. This photo (taken with my mobile phone camera) is poor, but gives some sense of the scene and the sea of umbrellas while George Bush Sr., Angela Merkel, and others spoke.

The Brandenburger Tor is in the background.