Travel: Letters to the editor

Regarding “Items Missing From Luggage” [Letters, March 13]: Never pack anything you cannot afford to be without or lose. On the ground, one of us is always watching our bags. Any purchases of value or that are breakable should be sent home by insured shipping.

When it comes to personal theft or loss and security: We divide our money, and each of us carries a different credit card.

I carry my wallet in the side pocket of cargo pants and carry part of our money in a front pocket wallet. My wife carries a purse with the strap over her chest and maneuvers the purse to her front in public.

Ernest Salomon

Santa Barbara

Holocaust’s legacy in Berlin

Regarding “Reverence in Bustling Berlin,” by Karen Leland, March 13: We walked 100 yards out of our Berlin hotel toward the Brandenburg Gate and directly faced the impressive and moving Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe.

There, in plain sight, were four young men urinating on several of the memorial’s unmarked concrete slabs. We mentioned this to supervisors inside the exhibit beneath the memorial. They simply said that this happens all the time.

Neal and Harriet Pepper

Northridge

I enjoyed reading the two pieces on Berlin in Sunday’s Travel section. My mother was born Nov. 8, 1924, and grew up in the Kreutzberg Park area of Berlin. She is a living eye witness to history and the horrific nightmare unleashed by Hitler, not only on millions of innocent victims memorialized by the stones in Berlin but also upon the German public.

After 65 years, there is still a misconception that the civilian population condoned the actions of the Nazis, when, in fact, he was placed into power by 51% of the population and the wealthy industrialists who backed the Nazi Party as a way to stabilize the country.

Craig Carr

West Hills

Prank calls at a motel

While we were on a recent trip in California, the phone rang at 5 a.m. The caller told me he was the motel manager and informed me he knew we had an extra person in the room, and there would be an additional charge of $45. I told him that there were only two of us and that I would be glad to discuss it with him on our checkout. He immediately became belligerent so I hung up on him. He called back twice, ranting and raving, telling me never to hang up on him.

When we checked out that morning, we discovered that other guests had received similar calls. Pranksters were to blame, and the front desk said it had shut off direct phone access to the guest rooms. In retrospect, I should have called the front desk immediately after the first call.

Travelers should be aware that they could get calls in their rooms from people who simply know the room number.

Dennis Arntz

Laguna Niguel