On my last day as a resident of Berlin, I took a final walk through the city. It was a beautiful, bright blue, cloudless day reaching 8 or 9 degrees Celsius. For the first time in months, people settled in the parks and on the river with a beer or a coffee. By the Friedrichstrasse U- and S-Bahn Station, a nun in drag sang pop tunes and across the street, a rock band played. With the tourists, I turned onto Unter der Linden toward the Brandenburg Gate. In the middle section for pedestrians, Syrian flags flew high as a group protested Russian terrorism in Syria.
