As I stood there in silence peering through the bars, I felt moved. The bare, cold room housed just the sculpture in the middle of the room with a light shining through the oculus in the ceiling, highlighting the sculpture, as well as exposing it to the harsh Berlin climate. I could feel the loneliness and despair of a mother holding her dead son.

It was a strange feeling. Just a few minutes before, we had been across the street taking a break from all the walking and enjoying coffee and pastries from Opernpalais!  But I guess with a history as dark as Berlin’s, it’s only inevitable that we would come across a somber site that would remind of us the events that unfolded in the city less than half a century ago.

Berlin was the first city that we visited on our 16-day trip in Europe.  We stayed at the Circus Hostel– definitely one of the nicest hostels we stayed in on our entire trip!  As it was our first time in Berlin, we did a self-guided walking tour and visited the major attractions, such as Brandenburger Tor, Checkpoint Charlie, Holocaust Memorial, and Siegessäule (Victory Column); but armed with a Rick Steve’s guide, we also made it a point to stop inside the DZ Bank to check out the interior:

DZ Bank interior (Frank O. Gehry)

Cool, right??  From the outside, the building looks like any other office building, so it’s easy to miss if you’re not looking for it. We couldn’t go past the entrance/lobby area but it was a cool stop regardless, located conveniently just next to Brandenburger Tor.

More posts on Berlin attractions to follow!

Anne had an interesting story about how she ended up as a tour guide in Panama.  She started off as an animal trainer for tv/films– her repertoire includes Legends of the Falls and Practical Magic!  One of her movies, End of the Spear, brought her to Panama to film the Embera people portraying Ecuadorian natives.  In a nutshell, she ended up getting married to one of the tribesmen (who’s waaay younger than she is, by the way) and they now run the tours together!

After a breezy yet relaxing dugout canoe ride, we visited Embera Puru where the village people greeted us with some music and dancing.  The villages are located in the Chagres National Park and interestingly enough, the villagers’ primary income is from tourism.

Anne encouraged us to support the village by purchasing one of their many homemade goods, as pictured below:

The crafts were pretty cool.  I ended up buying one of the woven baskets for $25.

Some of the visitors brought gifts for the children.  It was fun watching them divvy out the toy/games/coloring books as all the kids gathered around eagerly.

The villagers wore traditional clothing (very little clothing, but I guess with such tropical weather, it’s expected), the women’s chest just covered by festive beaded necklaces, which they normally only wear for special occasions.  Talk about culture shock, haha.

More images to follow…

Through the remains of an old building, you can see the blur that is my sister walking down the sidewalk.  The area outside of the ruins is supposedly a bit sketchy so we didn’t wander outside of the area.

Some of the ruins have had some additions for some structural support.  I also snapped a shot of some local kids playing across the street (that’s not creepy, right?).

Here’s an idea of how far we were (and I’m pretty sure I used some zoom on this too).  The sloth-sighting was a little bonus for the tour!

Also, I could recrop the photo so the waterline is horizontal but I’m feeling lazy now.  Anyway, at one point, some of the dolphins were following behind our boat and jumping in the wake!  The tour was $92 total for the 4 of us– very affordable!  I actually was very impressed with the tour but I’ll write more about that in following posts.

I like the composition of this shot better though. Shoulda brought my tripod!

Bocas Towne is on Isla Colon, the largest island in the Bocas del Toro archipelago, located in the Caribbean.   When we arrived, it was immediately apparent that the climate was much warmer and typical of the Caribbean.  I got pretty sweaty in the 10-15 minute walk to our hotel, Gran Hotel Bahia.

The hotel looks pretty cool from the outside but my parents were less impressed with the inside. It’s an older place and feels like it.  I didn’t mind so much but *shrugs* ya know, parents.   We paid $116 per night for 2 nights for the 4 of us.  At least we had AC.  Bocas del Toro was very touristy and good for surfers.

It was really nice having our own driver actually.  He stopped or slowed down whenever we asked him to, which was nice for me– I could stop and take pictures!

We had a nice big breakfast to prepare ourselves for the travels of the day!  My dad arranged for our taxi driver from yesterday, Esteban, to take us to Almirante for $120– not bad for a 4-5 hour drive!  Esteban even threw in a stop in David so my dad could find some sugar cane juice (yum!).