In Transition, Again

I probably won't get a chance to post anything substantive for the next couple of days; I'm flying back to Ohio, leaving Berlin behind.

Here's what I'll see when the plane takes off, assuming the fine weather holds. This is the view from the Siegessäule (the reward for climbing up those 285 steps, and then - painfully - back down them). It's also more or less the vista that Barack Obama saw from the ground when he spoke here; he stood at the base of the Siegessäule. The spire is the TV tower that the East German government built to show how high-tech they were. At the end of the street, you can see the Brandenburg Gate.