After settling in the room I went out and took a walk along the Kurfurstendam the main shopping street of W. Berlin. Now in compari- son there were more people, more shops, more goods, more cars, etc. etc. In fact except for the language and the signs you could have been walking along Fifth Ave. in NY. But using this as a comparison doesn't seem fair to me. W. Berlin is a symbol almost as much as it is a city. It is completely enclosed by the Wall, it is supported in all necessary ways by the west and is garrisoned by American, British and French troops and with no countryside to expand in it is crowded and concentrated. It actually seems more tinselly and hurley-burley than E. Berlin or any of the other Eastern cities we were in. In a way I was sorry to leave E. Berlin and pass through the so-called "Iron Curtain" because the trip changed subtly there from an adventure to a visit. W. Berlin, Copenhagen and London where I went next were foreign cities true, but were also western in tradition and moreover the latter two I'd been in several times before. But the Eastern Countries had presented a chal- lenge to learn, mysteries to unravel, prejudices and ignorances to coun- teract and a philosophy to understand. Now in W. Berlin I was back in the usual Rat Race in a sense.

SUNDAY Stayed in bed late nursing my laryngitis and then got up and took a taxi back to Check Point Charlie to go to the Wall Museum there. This was fascinating depicting as it did the history of the wall and pictures of all the ingenious schemes used by various pec ›le to escape across it. In the afternoon we took a bus tour of the city of W. Berlin. It was amusing when we went past the Russian memorial that there were two Russian soldiers symbolically on guard duty there but actually the street it is on is closed off by barbed wire and you can't get out of the bus as you pass it. It is in the British zone and the Tommies are guarding the Russians who are guarding the memorial. Apparently there has been some strong anti-Russian feeling expressed there in the past. We saw the Reichstag where Hitler got his start; the famous Brandenburg gate from the West side, we bumped into the wall at several places and stopped for pictures where there were small crosses in memorial to someone who had tried to climb it and had been shot from the east. There are a number of undemolished ruins purposely left standing throughout the city as mute anti-war symbols.

That evening we had our farewell banquet of the tour as the following morning we dispersed in our several directions. We had had a marvelous guide on the trip, a Swiss man who spoke several languages and really knew the Tour Leader Business. Whenever someone had tried to tell him he couldn't do this or that he sent them off to headquarters as

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