On the train from Prague to Berlin with my friend Kurt

When I travel I always like to bring a few books to read. I had to make some difficult choices this time around because I only had limited space in my travel backpack. The first I chose was Carl Sagan’s The Demon-Haunted World, a book about skepticism and science as a way of seeing the world.

The second was Kurt Vonnegut’s A Man Without A Country. That’s a pretty good title to describe how I feel sometimes too. It’s a short book, about 145 pages, and I read most of it on the four hour train ride from Prague to Berlin. I got into Vonnegut only a few weeks ago after a friend of mine said I would enjoy him. The first of his books I read was Slaughterhouse-Five, which deals partly with the fire bombing of Dresden Germany by the Allis in the last days of World War II when the British RAF wanted to test a new bomb to see if they could destroy a whole city. Good for them! In one night of bombings they killed more then 160,000 people, more then either Hiroshima or Nagasaki on their own. Why don’t we learn about this in history class?

I didn’t know about Dresden until I read Vonnegut’s book, written in 1968 I think, three weeks ago. He came out with A Man Without A Country in 2005 when he was 82 and just a year before he died. He says he used to be a funny man, because laughter is what we use as a self defense mechanism against the pain of life. But by the time he made it to 82 he didn’t think he could be funny anymore because the pain was just too much. He felt that people have just stopped caring anymore, and that we are all doomed. I’m starting to see his point.

On the train to Berlin we crossed the border of The Czech Republic and Germany. About twenty minutes from the border crossing we stopped at the Dresden Central Station. I got out for a few minutes to breathe the air and think about what Kurt had told me about the place. There were lots of tourists in Prague and there are lots of tourists here in Berlin as I write this from my hostel room. Who goes on vacation to Dresden?