Day 2 - Singing in the Rain (11-30-08)

Sunday on Thanksgiving weekend proved to be probably the calmest day of the year in the District. We spent the day driving around in a classic: the Old Town Trolley. The narrated tour led us to the National Cathedral (we had a clear, beautiful view through the fogged windows…), through Embassy Row down to Georgetown and the Mall. We got off to actually see where we were and found ourselves amazed by the 20^th century neo-Gothic architecture of the National Cathedral – consequently following the American urge to rediscover already dead architectural styles! Strange, eh? We didn’t spent too much time, as it was Sunday morning service and hopped back onto the next bus and continued our tour.

...In spite of the difficulties of the moment, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal."

Of course, we are not the first ones to quote those words of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s most famous speech. But what we felt standing where he stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963 is hard to put in a sentence.

But let’s go back. The Mall impressed us step by step: the Washington Monument, the Vietnam Memorials, the Lincoln Memorial, and finally the Korean Memorial. Commemorating the dead of the Vietnam War at Maya Lin’s famous wall in the cold and the rain turned into an inspiring discussion about the controversies at the time it was built, subtle interpretation of its meaning, and honest second thoughts.

The Lincoln Memorial, positioned like a temple at one end of the Mall, caused us – although we were shivering from the cold – to calm down and appreciate his famous Gettysburg Address anew.

In contrast to the Vietnam Memorial, the Korean War Memorial felt like a patchwork that tries to combine what should remain separated: abstraction, reality, and … what do you think?