I have a tale to tell

I wish old houses would be able to actually tell, then what would we know, what could we ashive and what rumours would delight our days! 

Again I will write about my hometown and places you can discover when you are here. 

As it is, this town is not that little and has a quite interesting history and while the years gone buy the town is changing. 

As a tourist you'll be for sure most time trying to figure out what is the centre and what to see is most inside the ring of our overground. Of course the buildings, the museums and clubs are mostly there but we have also other places to discover and if you have more then three days or have been already in town once or twice, then here is another area whish shows you how different Berlin can look and feel. 

Remember this town is founded in the way that two villages became one little town. Then all the other villages around became part of this town and so this place became bigger and still all those churches and gardens, all those parcs who have been once the centre of the life are now part of a big puzzle called Berlin and then as history went on or better the time, we took away houses, changed places and build street after street and the wars have punched in too and so some places are special as war has not done damage or humans themself. 

After the well known Kurfürstendamm which was once the longes shopping mile, you'll find the Schlossstrasse in Steglitz. Just 10- 15 min away from the Zoo and the old centre of the west part (you remember that there was a wall once splitting the town in two).

But shopping itself can be dull, can't it? So why should you be there, coming out of the underground? To see the "Bierpinsel" a building colourful and closed now due to unsurence fight? No, it's because the parallel streets are a wonderful area to do a walk before or after shopping and having a coffee. Why? Because you can find an italy villa or some house with a south german balcony or a miracle house or a little castle. The reason? The war did not destroy much in this area and it is a quite walk you'll take and your orientation point or better street is the Grunewaldstrasse as you walk the streets left and right, up and down. 
For me it is a pleasure to take the dog walks there. 

Look those picutres down below will give you a short impression. Don't they?

Thought for me, it feels like beeing in a whole other town not being in Berlin. And that is another reason why I recommend this little part to discover and if you come buy bus, then take the M48 and a lot of time, as this bus line can be taken from the centre in the east part and will take about an hour which is actually worth as you get a sightseeing tour too. Does this sound good? Well then... have fun!

Love & Light

The new hate?

One of the question many still have for people who lived around 1930 and after is- how could this happen? Mostly this question is ask to germans, but let's be true it is a question to all of the western world. How could they do nothing?

They did nothing? Well, some tried to avoid, some did flee and some fought for the right to be and stay and told people how wrong it is to say that only the white, non jewish man is the right and true human.  And yes, it all started much earlier and we discover now these days how long some thoughts already sat in people minds. How much it was a normal thing to believe that people are not worth the same and it does matter where you from, even thought already that time people could and should have known better as they realized and found out with science how wrong some of these thoughts have been.

But now we are in a new time and it seems a new hate is growing and growing and using the same lies as they used it before but many of those who spread the hate and hurt people and burn people are young people. How could this be? Where did they learn to think so wrong and to hate and believe that a problem will fade with hate and killing people. 

Is it to feel power by giving fear? Is it to feel stronger by beating up a so called weak human?

Is it that it seems more easy to shout how bad the world is instead of doing good by yourself and those people understood only- do something by yourself because the politics will not and you have to do it right and that means fight and hate and trying to make sure that no one will get in the way?

It sure is that many of those young people have a very simple view on the world and things and therefore have more easy to believe those lies about the jobs taking away and the money wasting stories, even thought everywhere they can find the truth that it isn't that way and even cruelty is mostly made by their own people and not a foreign one and the marriage is not getting down by some gays. But how can we make them listen? 

How can they understand if they don't even listen to people like the president? Thought they have reacted very, very late and just in small and light words instead of taking action and stand up and be clear and loud and believable but power seems to distract them. 

How can we also change the view of people if the press is mostly showing the negative sides, letting the hate pass without a comment as they say it is press freedom and freedom of speech? How can a man  who believes that all people from saudi arabia, syria and so on are bad people  and so they believe they are in fact different and difficult, when the press is telling only stories about those who make problems and it also looks like all of them or  most of these humans are the same, even thought this is in no way the truth? How can we change their minds if young people believe that all in the internet is true, because they haven't learn to differ? Just take those mobile thing. The story that a refugee with a mobile can't have it that bad. Or if they paid such amount of money, they should not be here. 

Yes, some people try to make the internet the place also for making a way for the truth or part of it and telling people about those lies. But how can we make them listen and believe, when they have such a simple view on life and those things in the world and then those simple thinking makes them feel stronger and being part of a group which seems more worth? How can you open a closed mind? 

But then to go back in time, even clever people have been nazis and fascists. 

Yes, propaganda once started, is hard to avoid and to change people later into a new system is not easy to do if able as they have to make believe and to understand and not just say the words they read without feeling. No wonder that so many stayed the same in silence when it is about their believes and the shock of being wrong suddenly is also a reason and oh not to forget that far to many had not only the same job, they went on like they never did anything wrong. 

Rasism has become normal again in many countries, thought it has never for real left the building. 

We have the very same condition as 1900 and also far to many people are acting the same, even in politic they react the same.  The silence is again very strong and the warning words come from some people but not those who should know better. A president, a minister or one of all the others so called important people- they all should have open up much earlier.  How many mistakes we made, it is none of the matter as we must do right now and change what has to be change and do what has to be done and also give the possibility to do it, because a law can only come in effect, if the government gives the money to pay people to do so. And of course to make the law clear and to use it wise and to use our minds. It's a shame that we put foreign people far away from our towns and forbid them to do a step outside that place. It is a shame that we need far to much time to prove and give a chance of a new life. It is a shame that we act blind as a government when people are in need of food, cloths or a warm place. It is a shame that most help these days come from private people and organisation because the government failed again and again and again. It is a shame that we still discuss to open or close the borders, when we know it does not matter for those in need, in pain, in fear or without any hope on their place if they will try to come or not. They will come, no matter what just it matters in the way that a closed border brings more dead people. 

The question is, if the government, the politics are in the way interested to help or not. It is about money, power and international connection. But those who make war, those who sell weapons have to take the refugees who flee from our guns and bombs and the hate we build up with that. 

Yes, we have less wars as ever but more refugees and harder situation in the countries in war and also those who had war. But the western world made it worse in the last 50 years in many countries by our way of acting like an ignorant asshole who believed to know always better. 

And now lets look on us today. What can we do? Shout out? Stand up! Fight the hate but with words, with peace, with love, with songs, with helping people and with writing and talking about that and also with being on the streets and tell our government and president to act in the name of equality! of respect! out of the knowledge that we have to do it with humans and we all did wrong far to long and that it is time to tell the truth and act like that. It's enough! It's enough!

We don't need to change the law, we just have to act. We have to name hate and terror from our own people and give them law and order and show them the right way, the way of non hate and respect. 

We have to discover civil courage again!

Many countries these days have right wings politics and those have become in many places much stronger then 1930! How will this lead to a better and brighter future, if we act the same as our grandparents did? Remember we still ask how could they?! It is the way we do today, if we do not change and these days the possibilities, the ways of finding a way out are much better, much more and open to all of us. No one can say we did not know the results! And after all why not telling and naming the right wing what they are?! It is time and also we have to tell it like it is with the hard left side- they are to name the same and so we can make clear that extremist sides are not humans sides. 

It is time! The new hate has to stop! We are humans and are all equal! We need to look closer and change for real. As fast as we can and as good as we can, otherwise we will land in war and hate and repeat history one more time. This would be a sad thing. And yes this is real now.

Love and Light

A.I.D.S.

Another monday and the sun is shining outside while I am sitting in the kitchen, having my late morning coffee and finished the trilogy Jonas Gardell (-Never dry tears without gloves-) has written about AIDS in Sweden from the beginning till 2000. A chronicle which tells us about how people got to know about that thing called AIDS and HIV. A story about what had happen in the beginning and what came after. Döden/ Dead is the title of the last book and still dead is part of the way. But as it is it is part of each and everyones way. Thought the danger has become more easy to deal with. As we now have high standard of medicine but what is the price? 

A.I.D.S- that was the first after a long time people got to know about a new disease in the 1980tis. And yes that was the way we wrote it then as it was a complex of symptoms which in the end lead to the breakdown of your immune system and so you could die of every disease. As it was that time, most had cancer, pneumonia and/ or dementia. But many had other symptoms and got ill from everything you can get ill. So nobody really knew in the beginning but people as often were fast in making fear go round. And as it was the focus was on homosexual people, thought the first who became sick of that were also heterosexual and women. But people see what they want to see, so this thing called A.I.D.S. was a treat to homosexual man and was often called the price they had to pay for living in sin. Still many people think it is that way and still we make a difference how you come to the point. Still like you can read in the book (and see in the films withe the same name) they are the ones who are more worth to be pity and those who are just ones to have to shame themself.  Although most of them don't want to be pity. 
Since 1983 it has been a long time and people are no longer that much unknown about what this thing called A.I.D.S. is but then came those letters--> HIV. Yes having a virus inside you is not the same as having AIDS. One is the last walk you take and HIV is to be a bearer of a virus. You no longer can see it on people as medicine has become better but the dream of a vaccine still lives on as it is a fact, there is no one. You can try to fight with taking your pills every day and try to survive but no one knows when you have won, if you ever can win. So dead is still nearer at the end of the street as for the common people. But after all you survive more then the two years you had back then. Isn't that good? If people just would finally learn the facts and overcome their fear. The fear they have learned and passed. The lies which were spread back then are still working. 
So no wonder the rate of new infection not only goes up because of a better therapy as it no longer seem to be a danger of sudden dead, but also the rate of young people who should know better but never had to see the dead. The use of condoms have risen but not enough and as it was mostly the homosexual who had to deal with it most, now finally the heterosexual have beaten the number of new infection with the HI-Virus. Especially young people are in danger now. But to be true this is just happening in the western world. 
How now? Well, in Africa and Asia the numbers have from the beginning included all. It's the western world who tries to deny year after year that this virus never chooses only the gay. This lie of never being a victim when you are heterosexual, they try since years to put in the head of people in Africa and Asian- the result is that they do not have the save sex if they could. But we here in the West can and should. 
Start with talking about it! When young people become adults they become sexual available if you like it or not. So we should teach them to ask before having sex. But the challenge is that we have those  conservatives who claim to protect their children because inside their have failed with their own way of dealing with being a sexual human. So their try to put their regressed sexual living into their children. And they should know better as lies and prohibitions lead to exact what they don't want--> putting young people in danger. 
Of course this theme is much more complicated as many will claim. Just read for more here: http://one-thing-to-remember.blogspot.se/2013/11/world-aids-day.html 
or: http://one-thing-to-remember.blogspot.se/2012/12/do-you-remember-world-aids-day.html  
or even:  http://one-thing-to-remember.blogspot.se/2012/04/living-with-hiv-fex-travel.html 
and : http://one-thing-to-remember.blogspot.se/2011/12/lets-risk-critical-look-at-hiv-aids.html 
http://one-thing-to-remember.blogspot.se/2011/12/einen-kritischen-blick-auf-hiv-aids.html
(or go down this blog and take the #HIV tag)
But back to today. How many people, above from the stars, do you know who are HIV positive or have Aids or have died of AIDS? How many people are talking openly about having an HIV Test to know where they stand? Have you ever tested yourself? 
We have those posters where HIV positive stand, smile and say they live an open life and friends and family and maybe also colleagues stand behind them but how many do you know actually does?
I know some. Happy and very nice people. You would never guess they have it. Being strong and smile and go to work as everyone else. Just, they have to take everyday the pills and check themself three, four times a year. Just they never know how long time they have till the end as still they know they won't live out till the -I am to old to live another day- phase. But no one knows and so it could be possible to be old, very old at the end. But what price do they have to pay? It's a chemical mix of pills they take. No one knows how long this will be good and when it starts to destroy the body. Not to mention most of the HIV positive can't come out because they would lose they job, many friends, many times also members of family or will be pushed away from all of the family. Even nurses fear colleagues while they should know better, they still have more fear then most of all the others. Funny because there are nurses who are positive- and I know some of them, but as we just now see the beginning of coming out to have diabetes, it will take a couple of years maybe, I guess, until no one in this area will fear no longer, even known those nurses should not, as they are the professionals.
So taking the step out of the shadow means to take the risk of being alone, fighting once more and above all, it means to take the harder way when it is about having a living for money/ a job. You will be free too, as hiding is taking energy you need for surviving. 
Once you knew you would die soon. Now you know you can do it sometimes in the future, but when- no fucking idea. It changes your live completely and in the same time not that much. Tricky. Once they hated you, now they still do but in another way in many parts of the world. Saying it, is also saying you are sexual and that leads people to the most learned fear of our century- the fear of being a sexual human as this is a sin. Thanks to the damn church no matter what religion. 
To make SEX a thing of the devil was the biggest lie they successful sent into the world. 
The seed of hate.
Sight.
That's what I think about when I sit in the kitchen, writing you a letter while the sun goes down. 
But there is hope as people can and do learn. 
But there will be a time we all die.
But there is always a shadow behind.
And the sun will always shine again as long human kind will be on earth. 
Stupidity is no longer an excuse.
The time for hiding is over.
The time for not choosing a side is over.
The time for cowards is over.
It's time to take the next step and get over the past as we are still living far to much in the past and so fear will blind us. 
Have trust. Shake a hand from a positive man and women, child and well human. They may be HIV positive and also positive in their attitude as we know better now.
You'r friend, your lover, your girlfriend, your mother, your brother will be the same- with or without a virus inside. Hug them, kiss them and eat with them, sleep and cuddle. And remember it is much safer to live in truth then to live in lie. 

LOVE & LIGHT

once there was a wall, 25 years ago...

..and people lived in two countries, even thought the language was the same and the history their shared was quite common but different too. How the past made them living a live with borders and under the law and orders of others by many own mistakes. People had an idea of how the other side could be but surely most did never really knew. Not to mention all the countries next to them in east and west. Families where parted and places got a wall in the middle of a garden. Things were suddenly forbidden and stayed it for a very long time. Two systems did grow out of one big country after a war, who was called the world war 2. 

And there was this big town, called Berlin who got a wall around its western side and so there was a wall right through the middle of this town. 

People lived with it. Oh they did question this, died because of this crazy thing standing in the way. 

Propaganda leaded a long way the thoughts of mankind in those two very different countries who represent two different system of politic. The capitalism and the socialism. At the end, none of them survived. None of them had really the common people in mind. But both were capable of war, even it was just a cold war but it did contain the rise of dangerous weapons and lies who are still in this world.

I was a child growing up in the eastern part of Berlin. I had my aunt in the western part and she came once every year to visit us but that never gave me an impression how her life was. 

I just knew our way of living in the east with all the socialism and propaganda, even though I had parents who happened to be critical and so I had a hunch of that not everything was alright. I mean I was a teenager when the time came up that the wall should be fallen. Too young to understand what this could mean and to understand what the politics did, but I realized a bit this and that. I knew the punks in our street and I knew some areas has been forbidden. I grew up with soldiers walking in front of our garden as we had our garden near the wall. I was quite open minded as we had family living in the western world and so I knew that it could not be all just bad. They may tried to give a bad expression t.ex.  about USA but I never really thought bad about them then. But most of us never knew how bad the situation in the eastern countries were, as this came up after the wall has been destroyed. 

But back to the time it all began. The demonstration came into my mind through TV as in Berlin we were able to watch the west channels and as people later waited in Prag I had a feeling of something important was happening. I saw all those people fleeing into the west through Austria and even my bio- teacher went away that time. In school suddenly most of my friends started speaking up openly and we discussed what we knew and this was more or lesson different to the background we knew.

When it was clear the people could visit the west part, my family stayed home as in the beginning it was not clear if we could come back, but after two weeks, no one believed that the wall is going to be closed again. In the same time all the demonstration became bigger and so my family followed that. In the middle of Berlin I was there too. But mostly with the help of TV. 

Nearly next to three weeks after the gates were open we went to the west part, taking the underground to visit my aunt. Strange feeling as so many people from the east went on to see how was it down there in the west sector. 

Many things happened then good and bad and many people went blind by money and lies but mostly my family was clever enough to take it slow and to take the chances they could catch. We knew the industry was in no good health even know we did not expect it to be so much better then in Poland and Russia or the other eastern countries who broke down so  deep that it was a big surprise for all. 

I am by myself very grateful that this happened, because what would I do today? I don't know as people who were disabled were people of second class even in socialism. My choice of a job was poor, really poor and bad. I had to ask for a chance to move to another country, but what had happened to my family? 

So... it was for me the best that could happen. 

25 years ago and it's not a long time, even though for mankind it is. 

25 years and so many things have changed and so many more mistakes have been done and so many chances have been gone for a country who should have known better, but so it is and the hard way is to take now. Well, could be worse.

25 years and I am no longer a child a teen but a man who looks back and wonders.

Send you all out there from the past and the future and the now

Love & Light 

picture taken short time after the wall was broken