Pictures from Berlin

The Berlin Law & Society meeting is over.  A couple of things, killing time waiting to board the flight to Detroit here in Amsterdam. 

First, there WAS a gathering of bloggers at the Deponie No. 3 as advertised.  However, to my knowledge, the only evidence of this is the picture I took on my cell phone sitting at the end of the table.   This artfully taken shot reveals in the left foreground the back of Larry Solum's head, and across from him, foreground right, Randy ("Billy Bob") Barnett.  I believe that is Charles Yablon seated and facing the camera at left, and Ben Barros standing behind him.  You cannot see them in this picture, but the legal academy's cutest couple, Wendy and Dan Markel, are at the far end of the table.

Second, I can say as one of the older (not necessarily more mature) members of this particular group that I came into consciousness of the political world about the time Berlin was at its very center.   My grandparents (and my mother as a child) fled Germany in 1939, so we were very conscious of that part of the world in just the second decade after World War II.   I remember the Wall going up, and tunneling, and escaping.   So it was strange to walk from my hotel 350 meters to the coffee shop in the Potsdamer Platz, and cross the line of cobblestones left to mark the position of the Wall.  And my walk to Humboldt University each day took me through the spot of Checkpoint Charlie, the main crossover point between the American and Soviet Sectors of divided Berlin.

Finally, a bit of Berlin history trivia.  The reason the smaller airport, Tegel, is much closer to the city than Schoenefeld, the big airport, is that Tegel was constructed in less than 90 days as the third airport within old West Berlin to service the Luft Bruecke, the Air Lift, in 1948 and 1949.  Before that, the main airport was Tempelhof, which is now used just for private aircraft.