Day 63 - Parliament ... Where it all Began

Today I managed to convince a couple of the others in the hostel to get up really early so we could be at the Parliament building by 08:30am. Basically the parliament has a dome on the top that you can climb for free and has great views of the city. However, if you don't go early in the morning or late in the evening, the queue is really long, out the door and in the cold.

We pretty much walked straight in and by the time we left, the line was out the door. The parliament building was burnt down in 1933 by supposedly by a lone anarchist starting fires simultanouesly in 7 different locations *cough Nazis*. It was this incident that Hilter then went and freaked out the President - "The communists are coming. Give me emergency powers to deal with the threat".... and we know the outcome of this.

The view was pretty amazing and it is a really cool mixture of old and new architecture. The dome is glass and the idea is that you can look down into the parliament and see the laws being made. Thus the politicans look up and see the people that they are making the laws for. It is the people on top, up high, and not the politicans.

At least that was intended - total transparency. Unintentionally, you can only vaguelly see into the parliament, a thought a cool metaphor about the whole thing - 'we try to make it transparent but the reality is something different'.