A piece of history

I was at the Microsoft campus in Redmond, WA all of last week attending a geek's summit. Lining the walls of their conference center was an eclectic art collection. At one point I saw a group of people taking a guided tour of this art. I guess it's pretty cool art.

Not having time for the guided tour, I toured on my own during breaks. Near a corner on a wall there was a plaque stating, and I paraphrase, that "this piece of the Berlin Wall was given to Bill Gates as a gift by ..." I thought, cool, a piece of history. The only problem was I didn't see any "piece" of the wall anywhere near that plaque. There was an LCD monitor showing historical pictures of the wall, etc., but no piece on the wall. I figured someone must have made off with the chunk of concrete that had probably been on display on the wall next to the plaque.

After looking at this plaque and the LCD screen for a minute, and a bit disappointed I had missed the piece of history, I moved on to the next piece of art. It was a tall piece celebrating some graffiti artist or something. That's a picture of it on the left.

When I backed up a bit to get a more complete view of it, I realized what it really was.

I guess a "chunk" means something more like "an entire segment" when you're Bill Gates. Pretty cool to have an entire segment of the Berlin Wall sitting there in a hallway. A piece of history indeed.