L'AQUILA , Italy – All morning people have been streaming through the gates of the police academy here in the outskirts of L'Aquila. Even once the funeral mass had begun they kept on coming.

An Italian man kisses the coffin of a dead child.

To my right now, as the strains of the psalms fill the air, a family hug each other, tears streaming down their faces. I can't see what's going on inside. Our live shot position is in front of the building. But our Italian producer, Sheri, descibed the scene to me before the service began: 202 funeral caskets, one of them, tiny. Probably that of the youngest of the 287 victims of this tragedy – a little boy, not six months old.

Friends and family walking through the coffins, their last chance to say goodbye to loved ones torn from them by the violence of nature.

It's almost amazing that people hold on to their faith after an event like this. But that's Italy, where Catholicism still holds sway with many.

For these people who've lost everything, their faith is all they have left. Rather than blame God they thank him – that they are still alive.

It lends them an amazing dignity. And as they stream out you can truly believe their faith will give them the strength to continue with their lives.

L'AQUILA, Italy - During the daytime the camps which house those made homeless by the earthquake appear fairly cheerful places. The sun shines, children throw balls and play with toys, clowns roam up and down the rows of tents injecting their little bit of fun, people sit outside the tents reading the papers. But this is the daytime.

Survivors of this week's Italian earthquake are living in tented villages and asking when they can return home.

At night, it is bitterly cold. There are whole families of 12, if not more, crowded into the tents, wearing the same clothes as they were wearing four days ago when the earthquake struck. They are cold and the aftershocks bring panic. When you look at their eyes in the mornings, they are red and bloodshot, all on the verge of tears. All the time.

We were in the camp registration tent earlier when a man came in and began shouting. He wanted to get back into his home, he asked why couldn't he just collect his things? The aid worker replied: "Thirty-thousand people want to get back into their homes, what can I do?"

I asked a lady I'd profiled in a report on Wednesday whether she'd managed to sleep last night. "How can I sleep when the earth won't stop moving?" she said.

People say they are being well looked after. I've seen handouts of all sorts of Italian delicacies - the finest buffalo mozarella, panettone... Only in Italy, I thought.

The toilets and shower facilities are as clean as they can be in a camp which houses more than 1,000 people. There are medical tents and pharmacies on site, psychologists offer walk-in services, an order of Franciscan monks arrived this morning to provide spiritual support. They're having to sleep in one tent too: their monastery was damaged in the quake.

But the misery here is profound and the grief will go on. Tomorrow many of the victims will be buried in a mass funeral. It's Good Friday tomorrow. A terrible Easter for so many thousands of people in this deeply Catholic country.

ST. POELTEN, Austria - We're waiting to be allowed back into the courtroom at the St. Poelten state court. The jury are still deliberating - in a few hours we'll know for sure what their verdict is, how long Josef Fritzl will go down for.I can't imagine there's a single journalist here or indeed a single person in the whole of Austria who doesn't hope it's for the rest of his life.

Josef Fritzl hides his face as he arrives at court for his trial this week.

Josef Fritzl's crimes are monstrous. We journalists and the public have been excluded from much of the trial out of regard for the privacy of his victims - his own daughter Elisabeth and her six surviving children.

But the very existence of those children bears witness to the crimes committed. The state prosecuting attorney said Thursday he had raped his daughter more than 3,000 times in the 24 years she was holed up in a dank, dark, airless dungeon. There are gruesome details we now know about her years of abuse which we cannot write for fear of litigation.

In court on Thursday CNN's correspondent Fred Pleitgen said Fritzl's voice broke when he said how sorry he was. Sorry? Now?

Many journalists here have complained at being shut out of the proceedings: many have suggested this is an example of Austria not wishing to confront its dark secrets. On the dustcover of a book detailing Fritzl's crimes which I found lying in the press tent here, reference is made to the "Nazi Austria" Fritzl grew up in. I find those suggestions that this is somehow an Austrian phenomenon grossly unfair, as I know the Austrians do themselves. We are not allowed into the court because to document the obscene acts Fritzl inflicted on his daughter might curtail any fragile recovery she and her family might ever hope to make.

Does the public have a right to know every horrendous detail that happened in that underground cell? I personally believe not.

The family are in a safehouse somewhere in Austria. Their identities have been changed, authorities are doing their utmost to make sure that the press do not track them down. Amazingly Elisabeth we now know did appear in court on Tuesday to watch her father's reaction to the evidence she gave on tape. A brave woman.

In our evenings here in St. Poelten, Fred Pleitgen, Claudia our amazing camerawoman and I have debated at length what we would do if we for some reason stumbled on Elisabeth Fritzl, discovered the safehouse, found one of the children. Theirs are obviously the unknown voices in this huge media story. But besides the sure knowledge we'd be sued to distraction if we were to publish anything, we all agreed we would prefer to leave them be. Once the verdict comes down, once Fritzl goes down, there should be at least the opportunity for the family he so heinously wronged to find some peace.

ST. POELTEN, Austria - We knew almost a year ago that we'd be here now: part of a media scrum covering the trial of Josef Fritzl – the so-called "Monster of Amstetten" who allegedly imprisoned his own daughter for 24 years in a dungeon under his home, raped her repeatedly and fathered seven children by her.

Josef Fritzl arrives at court Monday, shielding his face with a blue binder.

One of those children died shortly after it was born and alongside a litany of other charges Fritzl is also accused of its murder. He said in court just now he is not guilty on that count. Not guilty on murder, not guilty on enslavement and only "partly guilty" on the charge of rape. We're waiting to find out how his lawyer explains that plea.

Only one journalist per news outlet is allowed into the court and then only for select periods. As soon as any sexual details are revealed the journalists have to leave, so now we're all loitering outside, waiting for the first of a daily series of news conferences that will explain what's been said in court. And now it's raining. Luckily through an elaborate collection of bin liners and umbrellas taped atop lampstands, our laptops, gear etc. are safe. But this is just day one. If we're not allowed into the court again until the verdict, days two, three and four could definitely begin to drag.

There's an extraordinary band of demonstrators who are keeping us journalists company in front of the courthouse. First it was the Austrian far right party, the NVP, who'd decided to turn up to show how keen they are on protecting children's rights. Scattered around the pavement are numerous dolls in various states of undress. Some of them left by a "performance artist" who appeared this morning covered with fake blood with dozens of naked dolls attached to him. "Art should be left up to individual interpretation," he said to me when I asked him what exactly his "performance" was trying to say. In the background boomed his special music mix - loud classical with "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" mixed in. Strange indeed.

Perhaps it is better though to be out here. The eight jurors inside have to listen to 11 hours of taped video testimony by Fritzl's daughter, Elizabeth. Testimony so horrific I for one am glad I don't have to hear it.

BERLIN, Germany - It's pretty rare to see a sight so beautiful it makes you laugh out loud with all the excitement of a child.

The best shot is from the prow of the Oder.

That's how beautiful the Oder-Spree waterway in Berlin looked early this morning as a huge pink sun rose over a glittering expanse of ice.

We were on board an ice-breaker, one in a fleet of five tug-like boats tasked with carving a route through the city's frozen rivers so that water-freight, namely coal, can make its way through.

The coal barge we were guiding was 140 meters long. When they're fully loaded they can cut through the ice but they can't turn without the help of an ice-breaker like the Oder.

And with Russia umming and aahing about whether to keep delivering gas through Ukraine to Europe, those coal deliveries are crucial right now.

Each week, 40,000 tonnes of coal come into Berlin along this waterway.

We were at the port at 5:30 a.m. waiting to board the boat. It was pitch black, seven degrees Celsius below freezing and she wasn't there yet.

All you could hear was the sound of millions of tonnes of ice creaking across the river - incredibly eerie, like a hideous chorus of screams on low volume as though people are trapped below.

It's cold but the view is spectacular.

It's not something you can communicate well in a television report, you need to listen longer than TV gives you time for.

You could hear our boat, the Oder, long before you saw her lights from the din the ice made as she crashed her way through.

You'd have thought those charged with ice-breaking would be pretty cautious about how slippery it is. But the crew of the Oder seemed to take a fairly cavalier approach.

No sooner had they moored than one took a not inconsiderable leap from the boat to shore, only to slip on take off and really barely make it.

Minutes later, our hearts in our mouths (it would have been a very cold and very dark rescue operation), our camera-bag took a nose-dive for the depths as we were clambering on board and was saved just in time by a hook low down on the side of the boat. A lucky escape from a potentially very expensive accident.

We were blessed with a beautiful morning as we led the coal barges along freshly carved routes through the ice. 

The three-man crew of the Oder and ice-breakers like her operate long shifts in freezing temperatures to keep coal coming into Berlin.

Sometimes it can take as little as one hour for the river to freeze over completely again.

One small link in the complex infrastructure which keeps a city warm when it's way below zero and there are dangerous political machinations at work on the international energy front.

Watch Frederik Pleitgen's report of ice-breakers keeping energy supply lanes open.

Every evening here in Tbilisi, convoys of cars drive past our hotel, horns blaring, draped in this country's red and white national flag.And most evenings too you hear the strains of Gregorian chants floating through the night sky. The sounds of solidarity for a country at war.

From our hotel balcony we look out over Tbilisi's graceful sand-coloured parliament building where the car convoys pass and where on Tuesday the people of Tbilisi gathered for two huge demonstrations.

"Stop Russia" over a picture of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin with a Hitler moustache said some banners; on others, "Georgia now, who's next?"

But these demonstrations were infused with the sense that morale must stay strong.

Boxes filled with ice-creams were distributed through the crowds. At the night-time rally, young and old held tiny white candles as they listened.

Just the one child, dirt all over his face and clothes, crying and alone, gripped with panic perhaps from what he'd seen in the days before.

So far Tbilisi is safe. Russian strike aircraft have bombed isolated targets on the outskirts of the city, one of which we were visiting just as an air strike took place.

But no civilians here have been killed.

The Russians say they have no intention of marching on the city, but the worry that they might is never far from people's minds.

At Tuesday's rallies people cheered their President's cries for unity. But there were Georgians who stayed away - who feel that this President has a lot to answer for in the way this conflict has played out.

You can expect to hear that critical voice grow louder as the scale of Georgias losses becomes clear.

At the presidential palace today, a press conference given by the presidents of Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Estonia and Ukraine - and of course, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili.

Five countries who know what it is to feel Russian aggression.

The presidential palace is under construction. It's strangely similar to Germany's Reichstag, just on a smaller scale, and crumbling Georgian homes which saw better days a couple of centuries back look out over its backyard.

We were introduced to Saakashvili's chief of staff by our Georgian producer, Eka.

"You couldn't have picked a better person to help you here," he told us. "I just wish you'd come for a tourism story."