Day 7 - Berlin

Berlin exceeded my expectations, and honestly those expectations were on the low side. In fact when planning this trip, scanning a map I had said to Bill, "Berlin looks far away...why don't we just go to closer-by Prague - I hear great things about Prague and all I know about Berlin is someone had told me it's just another big city." Well big thanks go to dollie face-painter and travel agent Laura Schy who urged us not to change our plans and finish up in Berlin, which lucky for us we did.

What a way to end our trip through Germany, with the chance to visit a vibrant, complicated, challenging, striking and history laden city like Berlin. In my opinion, Berlin is a "must see" for anyone who has opened a history textbook in high school, and studied WWII...in Berlin all that you have read and all that you thought you learned will come alive in ways you could never imagine. I hope Lulu enjoyed Berlin as much as Bill and I did, but I can assure you that those of us in our 50's and 60's will never forget a visit to Berlin, Germany.

COLD COLD COLD outside today. It snowed a bit during the night, but it didn't really stick. I made a comment to Bill, "This is the darkest city ever!" It doesn't seem to get light until after 8am, and then gets dark at 4pm! Berlin lies halfway between Paris and Moscow, and is Germany's largest city at nearly 3.5 million residents.  Our hotel The Regency, is located on the East Berlin side near shopping and museums.

There is construction EVERYWHERE. When I asked our tour guide what all those colorful above ground pipes were all about, he explained that since Berlin's topography is such that the groundwater level is very close to the surface, so when there are large building projects going on, they need do the plumbing and heating above ground and when the construction is over, the pipes are converted underground. I think they look like a great display of "public art"!

There is graffiti and tagging EVERYWHERE even in residential areas.

           Our guide started out our tour by driving us around the city to give us a general overview. My photos are not great, as it really was a pretty awful dank and dreary day, but this proved to be no big deal, as what was most interesting in Berlin was what we saw and then learned (or were reminded of), rather than visiting castles or gardens.  The history that took place in Berlin is what makes this city so  memorable. 

Our tour guide Mattheis is a 42 year old man who grew up in East Berlin.  His mother was an accountant and his father an engineer.  We questioned him about his upbringing in the communist section of Berlin, and expected to hear terrible tales.   But he said, “Well, it wasn’t all bad.  Because we lived in the capital city of Berlin, access to a better standard of living was higher than the other communist countries.  We were never hungry, but we had food rations.  My parents had jobs, and they didn’t have to work that hard… unlike in a capitalist society where people elbow each other out of the way on their way up.  We could travel, but only to communist countries such as Poland and Czechoslovakia.  In school we learned that the Berlin Wall existed to protect us from the evils of such countries as the capitalistic United States, not to prevent us from leaving.  But we knew that story didn’t feel right.  And when the huge concrete wall came down, I was among those who rushed to the other side and experienced freedom, and how special that feeling was.  I appreciate that now that if I work hard, I can advance… but my parents at their age long for the easier, slower and more predictable life-style of communism”.

As we drove through East Berlin, Mattheis pointed out to us the huge apartment buildings that were built by the communists in the 1970’s which flank either side of Karl-Marx Allee.  He pointed out that these apartments were built in “typical communist fashion” where each pre-fabricated floor is exactly the same as the one above and below it, and is built by stacking one floor on top of the other, and then the windows are popped in.  Big and strong and fortress-like. 

We passed by a huge new sports arena called O2 World, only to find it was built by Phil Anschutz (owner of AEG and developer of LA Live, Staples Center, etc.) in 2008.  Look who is scheduled to perform in May!

We had come to this area of the city to visit the outdoor East Side Gallery which is a mile-long stretch of the Berlin Wall.  This strip was saved and used by selected artists as an international memorial of freedom.  Along this east side of the wall are over 105 paintings by artists the world over in 1990, and their scenes depict their interpretation on what freedom and hope for are better future mean.  It is said to be “the largest and longest lasting open air gallery in the world.”

Of interest is a 40 meter section of the wall which was cut into and opened up so that one could see through to the nearby Spree River… this opening is directly across from the O2World Arena, and “coincidentally” is where the gigantic advertising sign (above – Beiber) is placed!  Our guide said that was part of the agreement Anschutz struck when his company built the arena, to have this prime location for their advertising!

While the East Side Gallery was quiet interesting, I must also say that the tagging and maybe wear and tear of the outdoor elements have marred its appearance.  A few years ago a group mobilized to restore some of the work, but the artists complained that it should be left “as is”.  

Among the many paintings, this one below is most famous. Painted by Russian artist Dmitri Vrubel it depicts former Soviet leader Brezhnev and former East German leader Honnecker kissing, with the caption, “My God. Help me survive this deadly love”. Our guide said it was commonplace for communist leaders at that time to greet one another by kissing full on the lips!  Ewww… Mikhail Gorbechev ended that practice. 

This painting below shows “thumbs up” like “everything is good”, but note the chain around the thumb...  

The long wall...

The opening in the wall, as explained above.

Next stop was Checkpoint Charlie, the name given by the Western Allies to the best known Berlin Wall crossing point between East Berlin and West Berlin during the Cold War.  I am by no means an expert in history, but I will try and give a brief overview of what the Berlin Wall was all about.

After WWII, Germany was split between two global blocs in the East and in the West.  The Cold War polarized Germany between the Allies in the West, and the Soviets in the East.  The two states merged in 1949.

Within Germany, the city of Berlin was partitioned into 4 sections – American, British, French zones in the West, and a Soviet zone in the East.  Below is a map. 

Today there is a guard where Checkpoint Charlie used to be...except this guard is an "actor" in case
you want to take a photo with him and tip him a few Euros ...not unlike the characters on Hollywood Walk of Fame.  

The 3 Western zones merged becoming West Berlin, and the Soviet-controlled zone remained defiantly separate as East Berlin.  It is a much longer story and fascinating one about the differences between the lifestyle, opportunities, and standard of living between the East and the West. 

 After WWII, the Western side (capitalist) recovered economically at a much faster pace than the East (communist) and jobs were more plentiful.  Millions of people emigrated to the West, depleting the East of many of their young and well educated people.  In reaction to this and to prevent additional people from leaving, in the middle of the night on Sunday August, 13, 1961, more than 10,000 East German soldiers tore up the streets and roads and installed barbed wire barriers and wire fences. The message to the residents on the East side was "you must stay on the East side, for your own good." The People’s Police enforced this message with machine guns.  If an apartment building was on the borderline, the windows and doors facing the West were covered with bricks and walled up to prevent people from trying to “drop themselves” into the West.  Despite all this, over 5,000 persons did successfully escape from East to West through tunnels, hot air balloons, or though the sewers.

Here is Lulu standing on the line where the Berlin Wall once stood.  The outline of the Wall is marked today with bricks that track it all over the city.

On June 26, 1963 President Kennedy visited Checkpoint Charlie on the West Berlin side.  You will remember our President saying, “All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin, and, therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words: Ich bin ein Berliner”.  (photo from museum)

At Brandenburg Gate on June 12, 1987, in front of 2 panes of bullet proof glass protecting him from potential East Berlin snipers, President Ronald Reagan issued an ultimatum to Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev, “Tear down this wall”. (photo from museum)

In November 1989, a rumor began from the Western media that the powers that be in East Berlin were preparing to finally dismantle the Berlin Wall and an “open border” would be realized.  The fall of the wall was the first event in world history to attain reality because the media had announced it.  On the evening of November 9, 1989 East German border guards who had not been told of any policy change grew nervous at the crowds of people that were gathering.  At around 11:30pm due to the pressure of the crowds, the border soldiers, fearing for their lives, announced “We’re opening the floodgates now” and the barriers were opened. 

By the end of 1990 the wall framing the inner city of Berlin was removed with the help of “wallpeckers” (people hammering and chiseling away to get a chip of the wall as a souvenir) and 65 cranes, 175 trucks, and 13 bulldozers.

Across from Checkpoint Charlie today, are sections of the wall where artists have painted totalitarian rulers still alive and ruling today.  Here is me on the left with the depiction of North Korea dictator, Kim Jong-II:

So much to process! We went for a drive to see some newer buildings including concert halls, government offices, the brand new train station, and more.  One stirring memorial was The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, designed by Peter Elsenman and completed in December 2004.  It consists of 2711 concrete slabs – each one different as each person is different – arranged in a grid on a sloping 4.7 acre site.  According to Elsenman, the memorial is “designed to produce an uneasy, confusing atmosphere, and the whole sculpture aims to represent a supposedly ordered system that has lost touch with human reason”.

           Across the street is a concrete cube which serves as The Memorial to Homosexuals persecuted under Nazism, built in May, 2008.

Worn out with all there is to see, we returned to our hotel.  Lulu went out with her friend Sean Lamb, Toni Simon’s granddaughter, who lives in Berlin having just graduated from college.  Bill and I decided we needed some nourishment, and ended up down the street at a well-known German landmark, the Fassbenger & Rausch chocolate store.  We then visited the huge, 5 storied bookstore Dussman, not unlike Barnes & Noble except that it was packed and profitable!  It had an excellent English language section.

zzzzz....more tomorrow.