It is difficult to describe the feeling inside this octagon of blue glass – the soft light permeating, creating a partial darkness. Voices are hushed or stilled. Awe-inspiring would be my word.
Today we took a one hour train to Lubbenau Spreewald to meet up with Joanna and her baby Sienna. Joanna couch-surfed at our place, three different times in her year backpacking around Australia two years ago. And we became good friends.
She took us on a one and a half hour ride around the backwaters – a famous summer leisure activity. It was a beautiful warm summer afternoon.
Arriving back home in the evening, we had a late dinner at an Italian restaurant on Frankfurter Allee, a block away from our AirBnB on Rigaer Strasse. Asparagus and potatoes at peak season, cooked in butter with a schnitzel. Yum!
A last meal with son Nick and Kathy in London before heading off to Berlin in the morning.
We are stopping in East Berlin – wow, they have attitude!
Street art abounds – this is right across the road from our flat.
It is a beautiful summer evening – families are out walking and riding their bicycles along the footpaths past little outdoor eating places dotted right along the side streets. We stop at a Vietnamese place and have a light meal. It’s after nine and the light is only partially dimming – it’s always later than you think!
We like Berlin – at least this gutsy side of the city.
Europe and the Neo-Fascist Threat
Lisa Bjurwald is an investigative journalist who has specialised in the politics of xenophobia for well over a decade. She is alert to the propagation of racist conspiracies – such as “The muslims will take over because they have larger families!”, and the failure of the media in general, to expose such fear-mongering for what it is.
She notes the shift “from boots to suits” as the miliant and the political, and the pan-European and US networks, feed off each other.
She links islamophobia, anti-semitism and antizyganism (“Gypsies”, the Roma) as interlocking ideologies and exposes the reality of demographic warfare.
She notes that the Internet allows extreme ideas to be accessible and widespread – a tool of propaganda, recruitment and cooperation.
Radicals can go undetected.
It underlines the need for media literacy – what is true or false on-line, how selective “truth” works in propaganda, for example.
Some of the urgent challenges she lists are:
An important and engaging lecture.
What goes into a conference bag – the blue thing is donated by the student union. It’s a piece of flexible plastic you use for scraping up the dog pooh! But it’s quite a collection!
More about day 1 when I sort out the internet here. But we had a great welcoming address by the Vice-President of the newly formed Uniting Church in Sweden, Sofia Camnerin. I hope to get a copy of it from her.
Then the first keynote was a wonderful address by Prof Mattias Gardell and again, he is happy for me to email him for a copy. He addressed the question of Islamophobia, with reference to Andres Bering Breivik and the Norway 22/7 attack, which was also anti-feminist. A pretty disturbing but enlightening lecture.
I spent Sunday on the Viking Line ferry, wending its way past the islands between Finland and Sweden – very picturesque. All mod cons – that’s a pic of the kid’s entertainment! I reckon it’s more a cruise ship than a ferry!
I spent the day putting a movie together. Unfortunately i can’t show it due to a copyright issue with the music, but I will fix it when I have time.
Travelling Chaplain 