Decorating the Divisive: Berlin's East Side Gallery
“It’s so cool to be here. I remember watching the wall fall on TV. It’s so amazing being able to see parts of it in person.”
The girls sitting across from me were clearly confused.
“Oh, you watched it on TV. Robyn, we learned about the wall in history class.”
Wow. I had seriously dated myself while sitting in one of Berlin’s more traditional restaurants, the Zur letzten Instanz. Heads of state such as Mikhail Gorbachev had dined here and yet I almost choked on the delicious and not ridiculously priced food (i.e. €20 for dinner). The beauty of Berlin.
It was an apt setting, at least, for my history placement by my two travel buddies as I continued on my attempt to find ten trips from London for under $100 for my weekly travel column, Rock Fever, in The Royal Gazette. So far? Stockholm and Sigtuna in Sweden, Berlin’s Sachsenhaussen and now? Berlin extended. Check out my updated photo page for more pics from these travels.
After not choking on the rest of my dinner, I took my historic self back to the eco-lodge I was staying in, negotiated with the wild pigs and fell asleep. Good thing. The next day was a long one. The beauty of Berlin is it is a city that is in constant renovation.
Demolished by both World Wars and then a communist take-over, the architecture is sporadic at best. Nothing quite fits. Which is why I felt the need to start with a tour to try and piece it together.
Luckily New Berlin Tours, a syndicate of New Europe Tours, offers free tours of the city. Even better? It meets outside of Starbucks in front of the iconic Brandenburg Gate.
Before I got there, however, I had to negotiate Berlin’s alphabet soup transportation. Take the U to the S to the B…us. Like Berlin’s history, its transportation is overwhelming at first. A quick breakdown? The S-Bahn is the metropolitan train line and appeared, to me, to be the trains above ground.
The U-Bahn is also there just for fun. It’s the rapid transit railway and 80 percent of it lies below ground. Then there are trams and even more fun buses. Luckily once you grab a free map from the array of places that offer them and look for the stop you need, deciding which letter you need is easy. And luckily one ticket (day, short trip, single trip, week ticket, whatever) will cover all of the alphabet soup.
I took a B…us to an S to a U and arrived in front of Starbucks and, more importantly, in front of the
The Brandenburg Gate
Brandenburg Gate which offers a stately entrance to the neo-classically lined, Unter den Linden street and Pariser Platz Square. This is the “centre” of Berlin if there is one. Buildings here include the French Embassy, the American Embassy and the Adlon hotel which is famous for its prices and a baby being held over its balcony. (Remember Michael Jackson?)
The structures are organised and sorted by the state of the architecture. None in Pariser Platz were, and are, allowed to be flashier than the gate, which Napoleon walked through in 1806 and promptly took the horse-drawn carriage from on top. It was returned, obviously.
Around the corner from this modern square is another square with a more sobering message. The Holocaust Memorial, or officially The National Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, was created by a New York architect and was unveiled in 2006. It incorporates 2,711 grey gravestones of varying sizes above a multi-faceted museum. Relating the individual stories of those who were lost, the most poignant moment was in the darkened quotation room where sniffles and sobs of visitors orchestrated thoughts from varying aged prisoners including one 12-year-old who wrote in a letter:
“To father I am saying goodbye to you before I die. We would love to live, but they won’t let us and we will die. I am so scared of this death because the small children are thrown alive into the heat. Goodbye forever. I love you tremendously.”
A block away? The bunker of the leader who sentenced these innocents to death Hitler. When the Soviets entered Berlin to drive him out, Hitler married his secretary Eva Braun, wrote his final testament and committed suicide here. Aptly the bunker remains below ground under a parking lot no less where no one enters. Only a miniature sign reminds visitors of what was here.
From the haunting images of the Nazis we moved to the Communist Era. Buildings that were the haunts of the snooping communists are now a tax office. Fitting? I don’t know.
Then we made it to the Disney-style representation of Checkpoint Charlie. This allied military post marked the border between East and West Berlin. It was removed in 1990. Now there are posters of miserable looking guards who would have greeted those trying to break through.
Next to it is also one of the most disturbing museums, The Topography of Terror, which I would suggest to anyone trying to understand the disturbed psyches of the Nazis. There is also one of the longest stretches of the Berlin Wall, which I surprisingly discovered was a circle! Who knew?! Well those trapped on the other side I suppose.
The National Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe
After completing my free tour (which of course demands a tip at the end) which also included the Bebelplatz, where Nazis burned some books, and the Museum Island, I felt the need to find the iconic length of the wall. The East Side Gallery is 1.3 km and has been decorated by political and satirical images which had been done just after the wall fell.
From here it was an easy wander into the bohemian Kreuzberg neighbourhoods. East and West, this area is filled with cafes, bars and nightlife that could keep anyone entertained something to come back to. After all the walking it was time to relax in my eco-lodge before my departure the next day.
Luckily my flight did not leave until the evening so I still had time to fit in perhaps the most famous building in Berlin the Reichstag. With a line of potential visitors stretching an hour from the entrance, this neoclassical building was a fitting final destination of this hodge-podge city.
The building has a second place in history, which includes being the site of a fire in 1993 that allowed the Nazis to suspend rights (they claimed a communist set the fire) and introduce a death penalty for political offenses Hitler finally found his way to the top.
Now, to get to the top requires a lengthy line, an elevator and a walk around the glass cupola designed by Britain’s Sir Norman Foster. The idea was that people could look down on their government (the Reichstag is the parliament building) and the politicians could look up and realise who they were supposed to be representing.
Unfortunately it was all I had time for this day before my return to London. So to Berlin: you are a weird and wiry place that will be on my Return List.
