Our alarms went off at 8am but we had a good half-hour lie
in. We went down to the bar and had a pretty good breakfast of toast, ham,
cheese and boiled egg with orange juice and bad herbal tea. Leaving at about
9.30, we walked to Hackescher Markt to join the walking tour that had been
recommended to Rachel by friends, run by Insider Tour. It cost €12. We had some
very good coffee while we waited at a coffee shop for our rendezvous, and Jake
and I had wanders past some very interesting-looking markets on the other side
of the square.
We met Jamie, our guide, who is a British archaeologist and
has been living in Berlin
for 7 years. He was great! He gave us a very good introduction to the history
of the city and the fact that they keep reinventing themselves by tearing down
and rebuilding history.
He started telling us about Hackescher Markt and how
the big shopping complex on the corner was rebuilt in the original style of:
shops, courtyard, shops, courtyard, shops, courtyard etc. Most of what we could
see had only been built in the last 10 years. We then walked on a little way to
a big square (Lustgarten) surrounded by many buildings of interest.
The first we were introduced to was the Royal cathedral,
which was built as a private chapel, but is in fact huge and hasn’t been
cleaned since it was built. Turning to our right slightly, we learnt about the
Palast der Republik. It is a horrid-looking steel frame being demolished at
present, but has an amazing history. There used to be a massive, grand palace
on the site built by the Prussians, but it was pulled down years ago – after
the First World War I think. In its place, a boxy glass building was put up as
the centre of communist operations in the cold war. The people marched on it in
protest and broke in, forcing the powers that be to make a speech from the
balcony. When the wall came down, the building was to be preserved, and housed
a bowling alley and shops for a time, but it was discovered that it was full of
asbestos. So they had to rip it all out and rebuild it, but they found out the
whole building was in trouble, so after a big fight, it was decided to demolish
it. Strangely enough, there are plans to rebuild the original Prussian palace
once it’s gone.
In the meantime, a building very near it is being used as a
centre of business, commerce and free enterprise – a huge joke considering its
proximity to the former communist centre of East Berlin.
There was a museum or gallery (think it was Schinkel’s Altes Museum)
on another side of the square, then across the river, we could see the start of
museum island, a bit of the Pergamon poking out and the pink Prussian Armoury
building. Museum Island is actually an island in the
middle of the river where the museums are all situated. Jamie told us that
islands in the middle of rivers attracted settlements as they were easily
forded and easily defended – Paris and Rome were settled under
similar conditions.
We walked over the bridge and on down Unter den Linden,
seeing the State Opera house (also known as the Staatsoper I think), which I
had seen on a website and looked uninteresting. Jamie told us that it’s an old
building that had been restored at some point, but so badly that it’s rotting
with water damage on one side and needs attention again.
We stopped in
Bebelplatz and looked at two of the Humboldt
University frontages, which are
beautiful, and the far end which was the first library in Berlin. To its left is St Hedwig’s
cathedral, which had been on my list to see. Its design was apparently based on
that of the Pantheon in Rome.
In the centre of the square is a curious glass pane looking down into the
ground. It is actually a memorial to the disgusting book burning that the Nazis
took pleasure in. When you look down inside, you can see empty bookshelves, and
they have allowed space for one copy of every single book that was burned.
While we were stopped here, Jamie told us about the TV
tower. After Berlin
was divided, each side began this ridiculous one-upmanship. The West built a
multi-storey shopping tower, and to retaliate, the East built this huge TV
tower, which was completely unnecessary in a flat city, and was the tallest
tower in Europe at that time. At around this
time, religious crosses were not to be displayed in the East. The big joke was
that as soon as the sun shone on the reflective tiles of the tower ball, a
gigantic cross was inescapably created. Jamie also told us about construction
in Berlin to the present day – going into explosives is still a lucrative
career choice because there are still hundreds of unexploded bombs under the ground
that have to be thoroughly checked (or exploded?) before anything can be built.
From Bebelplatz, we walked on to Gendarmenmarkt where there
are beautiful twin cathedrals of similar denominations on either side of a
square, but one for French people to cater for the Huegenots who were invited
to live there, and a German one for the locals. We walked on to Friedrichstraße
and Jamie called a half hour break. Most people went into the same buffet-style
restaurant that Jamie went into, but Rachel, Jake and I went across the road to
a more formal restaurant that turned out to be quite formal indeed. We ordered
soup – Jake and I had tomato and Rachel had garlic. The waiter didn’t speak
much English, but we managed to get our message across, and were served, ate,
used the toilets and were out in time to meet the tour again on the Checkpoint Charlie
corner down the street.
On the corner were quite a lot of information boards and old
photos of how things were. I tried to look at as many as I could, but it was much
more important to listen to Jamie’s wisdom. He told us about some of the escape
attempts here – it was a little hard to hear him because of the traffic. Checkpoint
Charlie refers to checkpoint ‘C’ which is known in international language as
‘Charlie’. One family built a hot air balloon by buying small amounts of fabric
at a time. Some men found ways of smuggling their girlfriends out, and the West
pulled off some good rescues just by dropping in with helicopters. He told us
about an incident in the 60s of an American general who wanted to go into the
East to see an Opera. Apparently one of the East Berlin
guards decided to insist on identification, when the official agreement had
been free entry. The general got really mad and went off only to come back with
a tank and lots of troops, forcing his way over the border. The East retaliated
by lining up troops on their side with Soviet tanks backing them up. It
escalated from there until large armies faced each other over the border. That
incident is seen as the closest we ever came to World War Three. Luckily no
one’s trigger finger got itchy or it could have been extremely nasty since each
side had amassed enough nuclear weapons to obliterate the world three times.
We walked up Niederkirchnerstraße beside the wall and didn’t
get far before Jamie stopped and hugged an old couple who were selling pieces
of the wall. He told us about how entrepreneurial the man had been to stockpile
his pieces for two years, and I think most people ended up buying some. The man
had done them up nicely on backing paper with a photo and another little piece
of memorabilia. I wasn’t going to get one, but then Rachel and Jake bought one
each and I thought they looked quite good. They were only €5 so I got one too.
We walked on past the big ‘Die Australia’ balloon and stopped in the death
strip. Jamie told us about how the wall came about. The government in East
Berlin got increasingly oppressive and thousands of people poured over the
border into West Berlin. Instead of changing
their policies to attract people, they just tried to force them to stay
instead. The only way to do this, since Berlin
is smack bang in the middle of East Germany,
was to build a wall effectively around West Berlin.
Apparently some official had gone on the TV and announced that there was no
intention of building a wall, while all the planning had already taken place
and construction was about to start. One night, a human chain was formed in a
remarkably short few hours and people just stopped being allowed over the
border. Construction of the wall started, and was added to and fortified over
the years (as cars could still smash through for a while) until there was a
wide no-go zone, then one wall, then the death strip and another wall. Propaganda
was put out that West Berlin was going to invade East
Berlin, and that the wall was intended to keep the West Berliners
out and not the East Berliners in. People were shot on sight in the no-go zone
and the death strip. Jamie also told us about the East Side Gallery here, which
is another 1.3 km section of the wall which has been preserved due to the art
works on it.
Behind this part of the wall was an open air exhibition
called ‘Topography of Terror’ on the site of the old Gestapo and SS
headquarters. The buildings were demolished, but the cellars, dungeons and
cells were excavated and opened to the public. Jamie said that the title was
suitably politically correct considering what went on in that place.
We walked on and came to the Nazi Air Defence Ministry. It
is a colossal building that was defended so vigorously in World War Two that it
was only hit by two bombs. It is now a much more generic government building –
Ministry of Finance?? There’s a portico at the far end of it showing a mural of
jolly life in East Berlin. Jamie told us that in
1953, one Soviet leader told the East German leader to go easier on the people,
and so the people of East Berlin, after years
of ill treatment, were promised an improvement in working conditions that was
cruelly retracted a few days later. It was the last straw. Some construction
workers went on strike and marched to this building, and collected another
hundred thousand people on the way. When the leader saw them approaching and
shouting through megaphones, he ran to hide in the basement. No one came out to
talk to the people, so they organised a protest the following day. Because the
media was state controlled, they couldn’t easily get the message out to
everyone about the protest, but the Americans in West
Berlin helped out by broadcasting news of it far and wide. The East
German leader was convinced that a large-scale revolution was about to happen
and called on Soviet help. So when the people arrived the following day they
met strong resistance and didn’t actually achieve anything. They had still
produced a heartening show of solidarity. Just outside the portico is a huge,
long, horizontal glassed-in photo of the people marching on that day in 1953.
After walking a bit further, we came to the corner of a
building that used to house horrible Nazis planning war (can’t remember exactly
what it was) that is now a Chinese restaurant called Peking Duck. Jamie thought
that was rather incongruous.
Around the back of this block of hideous concrete prefab
flats was the location of Hitler’s underground bunker. It’s a very
ordinary-looking residential car park with only one information board to mark
the spot, but the bunker is definitely 10 metres beneath the ground with slabs
of granite, steel and concrete protecting it. It was a cold, damp, smelly,
miserable place from all reports, and Hitler had access to the nearby military
buildings. Jamie said that by April 1945, Hitler was a shaking wreck of a man,
shrivelled, and prone to emotional outbursts.
He married Eva Braun at about this time. He refused to surrender, but
when he knew that Berlin
would be taken and heard that Mussolini’s body had been dragged through the
streets, he arranged his suicide and left strict instructions on how his body
was to be dealt with. After limply shaking the hands of his staff, he and his
wife went into his office and shut the door. One of his staff found their
bodies later and dragged them up above the bunker and burned them as much as he
could before burying them in a shallow grave near a bunker exit. The bodies
were found and apparently identified from Hitler’s dental records.
We walked a short distance on to the Holocaust memorial, and
Jamie told us that while Germany
had wanted a memorial to the Holocaust, it took a very long time to decide
where to put it and how to represent it. The outcome was a series of concrete
blocks built in a strictly linear grid, but on uneven ground. The effect is of
both symmetry and chaos, which in a way echoes the symmetry of the
extermination of the Jews and the chaos they felt in being forced from their
homes and possessions. The idea is to walk into the blocks and feel disoriented
and lost.
We walked further past the new British embassy into the big
square (called Pariser Platz I now see) containing the Brandenburg Gate. It’s
enormous and the square is full of tourists trying to take the perfect photo. Jamie
told us about the Gate having been built by Napoleon when he conquered the
city. Then it came to represent something else under the Soviets, and the
Soviet flag flew there for many years. Now under reunification it stands for
‘unity’. When it became clear that the wall was coming down (which was just on
the far side of the Gate incidentally), people congregated in the square and
the Soviet flag was torn down and burnt. We ambled down the square. There was a
man with a little wind-up organ and monkey which was very cute. There was also
a strange man standing on a platform wearing Soviet uniform and waving a Soviet
flag. All I can think is that it was a stunt designed only with the tourists in
mind, because it would be in extremely poor taste otherwise.
We went through the Gate, facing down 17 June Street to the
Winged Victory monument, then turned right and came around the back of the Reichstag.
On the way we passed a memorial to the parliamentarians Hitler had had killed in
the early 1930s when they refused to vote for him at gunpoint. After stopping
in front of the Reichstag, Jamie pointed out the Swiss embassy, and a huge area
that had been cleared to build an enormous Nazi building. The war had got in
the way of actually getting around to building it, and in reality it was so big
it would never have supported itself anyway. No one ever wanted to build on
land so defiled, so much of it is still empty. Jamie told us that for the years
under the Prussians, the Reichstag building was not put to much use, because
each time the politicians came up with laws they were just vetoed by the
Kaiser. After the First World War, the worldwide depression was blamed by the
Germans on the forced advent of democracy in Germany, so they voted for any
political party that didn’t stand for democracy, hence putting the Nazi party
in power. Then in the early 30s, Hitler had the Reichstag burned out so
parliament would have to sit elsewhere. The new place was also burned down and
a clause was invoked that gave Hitler power as the Chancellor, and this was
where he tried to force people to vote for him I think.
So the building was effectively a shell during the Second
World War and its lead up, until the Russians conquered Berlin and waved their flag from the roof as
a sign that it was retaken. Then in the divided Germany,
the government were a puppet of Russia,
and no great things happened in the Reichstag. In the 1980s, a parade was
organised to mark the anniversary of the dividing of Germany, and Mikhail Gorbachev
stood with the East German leader while he made a speech, looking noticeably
bored and unhappy. This, along with the recent move to democracy of Hungary and Poland, made the people realise that
communism was on its way out. A speech was made that accidentally announced
that the East German people would be issued with passports, and there was a
sudden rush to the unforewarned border guards. People were let through, but
there’s a possibility that the whole thing was a mistake. The wall came down
soon after. The way Jamie told it was very involving. That was the end of the
tour
Rachel, Jake and I regrouped and worked out what we wanted
to go back to and see from the walking tour. As we were thinking, someone
suggested that we might as well think in the queue for the Reichstag, so we
did. It took a long time for the queue to get inside, but we managed it by
about 3pm. We were checked by security, and went up in a huge lift into the
glass dome. It’s amazing, as is the mirrored structure inside it. The views
from the top were great, and it was fun to walk up the ramp inside the dome. We
saw some big rooms with chairs in them, but didn’t actually see parliament
sitting. It’s unlikely that they would on a Saturday anyway.
I was keen to eat, and the others were keen to have a cuppa,
so we went back out the funny secure doors, walked back under the Brandenburg
Gate, and to the Holocaust memorial, stopping at a small cafe on the way. I got
some bratwurst with a little bit of bread. It was getting dark, but we wanted
to spend some time in the monument, and allocated ourselves 15 or so minutes
until it got totally dark. I wanted very much to walk into a tall section of
the monument and feel lost. I tried to take as many turns as I could, but I
just couldn’t lose track of where I was or which way I was facing. It’s too
hard when you can see the city around you. I was also worried about running
into someone coming at me at right angles, as it was impossible to see.
We went into the museum, as it was open until 7.30. It was
beautifully laid out – there was a good introductory room that dealt with the
gradual loss of liberty across the countries and ended with the extermination
in the camps. I didn’t realise that the gas used (at least at first) was
actually exhaust carbon monoxide. I also didn’t realise that the plan seemed to
escalate as time went on. Originally the idea was to just move all the Jews out
of Germany,
but this could have been propaganda anyway. Some rooms with really interesting
lighting were dedicated to personalising the experience by describing families
destroyed and people killed. I didn’t get emotional until I read a poem written
by one of the survivors expressing the solidarity of the Jews even after such
an abominable thing. After I walked out, I was subdued for quite some time. I
needed to find a supermarket, and did so remarkably quickly, quite near the
Peking Duck. I even understood the man when he asked me in German if I had
twenty cents to make the change easier. I was quite proud.
We now needed somewhere to eat dinner and selected a nearby
traditional-looking German restaurant. There was a lot of meat on the menu, but
Rachel and Jake liked the look of it more than the other ones. I order a ‘souffle’
of pork and mushrooms and cheese and other good things. The pork was
spectacular, but the souffle was more like a casserole (which was fine). I had
a ginger ale with it that went down very well. There was a little roof over the
bar that had lots of foreign currencies stuck to it.
Our next port of call was the Checkpoint Charlie
Museum. We walked back up
Niederkirchnerstraße and I was distracted by a hat hawking couple who didn’t
seem to want me to walk away without buying some East German military hats.
They were interesting, but I couldn’t really picture myself wearing them in
public. We went into the museum and after a bit of confusion over whether they
just wanted a donation to get in, paid €9.50 to go through the turnstile. It
was a huge place, and had grown without much rhyme or reason. As they added to
the collection, they didn’t group like things together or rearrange it to make
it easier to digest. We waded through it all, and there were some great things,
but there were duplications, and some junk. We were booted out when they closed
without having seen everything. We weren’t allowed to take photos. Credit to
them, they marked our tickets so we could go back the next day if we wanted.
We got the U-bahn from Stadtmitte back to the hostel. I
changed my shoes and ditched the hat that I’d carried around for most of the
day because it kept blowing off. We went back out and set off walking, in lieu
of taking the U-bahn, to Rosenthaler Straße, to find the B flat jazz club. From
the outside, it seemed as if the band were about to finish their gig. I thought
it was impossible that they would charge us to go in so late, but they wanted €5.
I didn’t really want to go in, but Jake paid for me and we found a seat and
ordered drinks. I had an expensive vodka, lime and soda. The band consisted of
drums, bass, piano and a strange-looking bald singer with rather unpleasant
vibrato. We only got to hear about five songs, and the band finished. Rachel,
Jake and I found a better table closer to the stage, and just sat and chatted
for a while. The room was smoky and my contacts were giving me hell so it was a
relief to go outside.
We went back to the hostel bar and because they couldn’t
make Mojitos, I had the guy behind the bar make me a chocolaty drink with
Baileys, Kahlua, Butterscotch Schnapps and milk. It was nice. Rachel ended up
wanting the same thing, but they had no more Baileys. She had something
similar. I went up to bed at 1.15am.
