I spent hours at the Brandenburg Gate. It was my first stop in Berlin (after the TV Tower for a bird's eye view of the city I had wanted to see for decades). I wasn't sure how I would feel about visiting and being in Berlin—so much history and association with World War II. But the city surprised me in every way.
The compassion the sites around Berlin felt towards those who suffered there and throughout Europe was palpable. Memorials, statues, and museums were seen around seemingly every corner...vowing never to forget and never to repeat.
As I stood before (and on both sides of) the famous Brandenburg Gate, I was overcome with the amount of history that took place here. Not only memories of Ronald Reagan's "Tear Down This Wall" speech in the 1980s, but the history before that and since then, and what the Gate meant for Berliners and those from all around Germany. It had positive and negative associations with history, but now was fully a positive beacon for freedom, resistance, and longevity.
It's that history and symbolism that Europe offers. Few places in the "newer" world can offer the feeling and wonderful of humankind's past influence on one another compared to Europe. It is full of endless locations that must be seen in one's lifetime.
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