[Edward Tinker]

Very cool story

I took lifeguard training at Berlin in 1993 or 1994 - the barracks were old WW2 barracks, and the olympic swimming pool had been the actual training pool for the german team prior to 1936. The statues on the outside of the gates were very, very 'germanic' looking, and most swatica's were destroyed, but high up on buildings you could see some, and also here and there pock marks from bullets and artillery rounds i would guess.

It was interesting to go in the subway (we had very little 'free time') but once we went to Brandenberg gate and the subway took us through assorted stations, the 'western' ones were new and clean, the old eastern (now all of Berlin was the same by this time), the eastern ones could have been from the 1930's, they were clean, but had that old look to them.

Ed