Most of these castles are now in ruins, because it is too hard to get to them and to keep them in repair, and no longer can any one treat the poor people the way the barons did.

Cologne is a kind of strong perfume. It is named for a city on the Rhine called Cologne. Cologne means colony, for it was once a colony of Rome. The house in which I live took seven months to build, but there is a Cathedral in Cologne that took seven hundred years to build!—the longest time of any building in the World.

Cologne is a city famous for its Cathedral but the most famous German city is Berlin Before World War II Berlin was one of the finest and cleanest cities in the world. It had broad tree-lined avenues, great handsome stone buildings, parks and statues. It was also the capital of Germany. But by the time World War II was over, much of Berlin was a wreck. Many of its finest buildings were in ruins, destroyed by bombs dropped from airplanes during the war. Berlin is in Eastern Germany, the part of Germany ruled by the Russians after the War, but the United States, Great Britain, and France as well as Russia govern Berlin. The Russians had fought on our side during World War II, but after the War was over they became very unfriendly to the United States and Great Britain. They even said that the countries ruling Western Germany could not use the railroad or auto roads to Berlin. The people of Berlin had to be fed, so the United States and Great Britain flew tons and tons of food and coal into the city by airplanes day after day for a year and a half. Finally the Russians realized they could not keep out the Americans and British and opened the railroad again. This carrying of supplies to Berlin was called the Berlin Airlift because the supplies were lifted through the air from Western Germany to Berlin.

Sticking up off the map of Germany like a thumb is a little country called Denmark. On one side of it is the North Sea; on the other side is another sea called the Baltic. Germany fronts on the North Sea and on the Baltic Sea too, but this little thumb of land does not belong to Germany. The Germans had to go all around this country in order to get from the cities on the North Sea to the cities on the Baltic Sea, so they cut off the thumb by digging a canal across the bottom of it.It is called the Kiel Canal.