Berlin

After returning from Furstenberg, SB and I cleared our minds by walking around the beautiful city of Berlin. Our hostel was located in the East Berlin area of Mitte, which means middle, and was close to everything. Unified with West Berlin at the end of 1989, East Berlin, especially near the borders of the former wall, has changed dramatically. New architecturally stunning buildings have sprung up everywhere, and many of those that remain are the old beautiful ones like the Parliament. Preserved as well are the wide-open parks, boulevards, and squares that do not give you the feeling of closeness and claustrophobia of many large cities.

Returning from the enormous new Hauptbahnhof train station, we walked along the Spree river, past the enormous government buildings which appeared to be constructed purely for the chance to be featured in architecture magazines. Soon after passing a statue of Virchow, we happened to come across a large medical school, and could not resist checking out the german-language textbooks inside. After a brief visit to our hostel on Chausseestr, we headed out for Oranienburger Str, only a 15 minute walk away, which is famous for its restaurants, courtyards and nightlife. Given our 5-week history of European food, we dined on some Sushi, which was not so bad, considering we were in Germany and several hundred kilometers away from the sea. We ended the evening with a walk to Alexanderplatz, to stand before the 207-meter high Fernsehturm TV tower, which has now become a popular symbol of East Berlin (though it was previously a hated symbol erected by the Communists).

The next morning, we set off to see Berlin. We walked the Under den Linden, the historically fashionable avenue of East Berlin filled with stores (now mostly full of Berlin souvenirs) and embassies, to the beautiful Tiergarden. Passing though the famous Brandenburg Gate (built in 1791 along with 18 other gates into the city, and converted into an East-West crossing point after the wall was built), we walked into a lively May 1st festival and political rally. Crowds filled the Plaza des 18 Marz and streamed down the closed off Street des 17 Juni. Police were visible everywhere, but completely not needed. There was a stage where enthusiastic speeches were being made (which I didn’t understand), people with political signs for the socialist party, and many political booths, including those advocating for fair treatment of workers, for immigration and gay rights, for unions, and many others. The rest of the area was filled with booths selling sausages, burgers, pretzels, ice cream and beer. We decided to return to our city tour and come back for the end of the day.

Setting off back towards the city, SB skillfully steered us through all the must-see spots, including Potsdamer Platz, a preserved section of the Berlin Wall with the Topographie des Terrors display, and Checkpoint Charlie. The Topographie display was on the transported ruins of an old SS building, next to the preserved part of the wall, and displayed posters and photographs documenting the rise of the Nazi regime and the subsequent war and Holocaust. It did a great job of showing just how slowly and innocuously the Nazi campaigns started, in the very early 1930s, and how quickly the persecution accelerated. Already in 1933 and 1934 – 6 years before the war began – Jews living in Germany were being slowly denied rights and Germans who opposed these policies were sent to prisons and even concentration camps (the first ones were built in Germany in 1934). Communists and Socialists were imprisoned and tortured. People who disobeyed laws ordering them to discriminate against the Jews were imprisoned. Hundreds of people were executed, often publically, for working against the Nazi party. By 1939, the SS (Nazi secret police) was a well-tuned and enormous organization, with thousands of officers. After six years of terror and the firm establishment of a political juggernaut that severely punished any opposition, it is easier to understand why Germans who did not want the war to happen had no chance in stopping it.

Checkpoint Charlie was a bit overwhelming. There were swarms of tourists and tourist stores, with just the original checkpoint station and sign preserved. The surrounding streets, however, were lined with posters describing the history of the Berlin wall, which we managed to mostly read (though we were pretty tired of reading by this point.) Ready for a rest, we returned to the festival/rally at Tiergarden. There, we bought some beer and good German burgers (a 1-inch thick chunk of seasoned ground meat barbecued over a huge outside charcoal grill) and listened to an outstanding German cover band play every popular European and American rock tune. One of my favorite ones was the pop tune about German reunification, which the entire crowd sang along with enthusiastically, which was cool to see 20 years later (and only 20 feet away from the remnants of the wall.) At the end of the festival, the bandleader said something that SB tried to translate as best as she could, about being peaceful and good to each other, so the rest of the world could see what a happy and peaceful nation Germany has become.

We ended our tour with a walk through the amazing Berlin Holocaust memorial (google it), constructed with 1000s of car-sized cement blocks standing next to each other like a city you could walk through. Despite having visited the Terror Museum in Budapest, Ravensbruck concentration camp, and the Topographie at the wall, we descended numbly into the Holocaust museum below the memorial, for one last painful look at the kind of suffering people are capable of inflicting on each other. The museum was beautifully done, but we really couldn’t stay very long.