BERLIN – Germany (Wed 05 Aug)

Caught the tram into the city again today, and that is in itself an interesting experience. There was a mother with two small children in a pushchair and as a means of keeping them entertained for the journey she had a water gun and squirted them at regular intervals. The youngest child was probably only a year old, and had a permanent startled look on his face. I wonder why. He had a big round cute face, with huge blue eyes and his blonde hair pulled up into a singular curl, very cartoon like. It certainly kept us all amused.

Our first point of interest this morning was the Eastside Gallery. This is one of the few remaining sections of ‘Wall’ that has been turned into an open air art gallery via the brushes of some well known artists. Initially these graffiti style artworks were commissioned and completed in 1990, very soon after the city was opened up. They have been repainted a couple of times since then and were in fact in the process of being cleaned up, and in some cases, repainted while we were there. There are many very cool pieces, but there are the well known ones that are standouts like the ‘Gorby’ kiss, and the image of the Trabant breaking through the wall. Our impression was that these are so well known because they seem to capture the essence of what 1989 was all about. The sense of that time still shines through today. The parts of the wall here are much more how we had imagined them to be, either that or we have just got used to the idea.

From here we made our way through to the Tiergarten. A large garden park area that leads the way down both sides of a grand avenue towards the Victory Column and then beyond to the Brandenburg Gate, both of which are very impressive icons of this city. But as we approached the victory column we were in for a surprise. We found a group of citizens that had discovered victory in a different sense.

There we were quietly minding our own business going for a stroll through the park and we were commenting on how the locals seemed to be treating the grassy areas in the sunshine like a beach. They were scattered around stretched out on towels and wearing togs and bikinis … or so we thought. As we got closer we discovered that the togs and bikinis … well … weren’t there. What we seemed to have stumbled upon was the local naturalist society ‘picnic in the park’. The unusual thing was there seemed to be a lot more men that women, and they were of all ages, and definitely not of the shy variety. Strolling around as bold as brass, less than 50 meters from a main urban thoroughfare. So there we were once again having to run the gauntlet, having stumbled into the middle of what brer rabbit would have called the briar patch. It was definitely a prickly situation. Welcome to Berlin.

We stumbled upon the Soviet War Memorial, on the way through towards the Brandenburg Gate, and we were once again surprised by the attitudes of a lot of tourists. We both get quite annoyed with the lack of respect given to some of the places we have been to. We saw it earlier with people at the Holocaust memorial running around on top of the stone slabs, jumping from one to another like they were in a playground. This is effectively a cemetery of remembrance. We saw the same behaviour with people climbing all over the tanks, and throwing their bikes down on the main steps while they had their photo taken leaning against the memorial. Grrrr!

Aside from all that the Soviet Memorial has an interesting story as it was erected soon after the fall of Berlin in a spot of significance, but once the Berlin Wall went up it was located on the wrong side of the fence, it was on the Western side (a bit of a sticking point throughout the cold war). But the Brits kept a guard on this site throughout the time that the Wall was in existence.

From the Brandenburg gate we headed to the Holocaust Memorial. This was definitely an interesting and slightly harrowing experience. On the surface this is a field of concrete cube like stones, 2711 of them to be exact, in an area of over 19000 square meters (effectively a city block). These stones are set out in rows, and are of varying heights and angles, across an undulating ground. These stones vary in height from less than 1 meter to the largest at 4.7 meters high. There have been all sorts of theories on what they represent from a field of rail cars used to transport the Jews, to a field of coffins. The artist refuses to comment leaving it open to interpretation, although he has said that he was inspired by the Jewish Cemetery in Prague. And having been there, we can understand what he means. It is very cool to hear something like that to be able to say, ‘yeah … I can see that’.

Underneath all this is an information center relating to the holocaust, and this was the part that was quite harrowing. Reading through the sequence of events that led to all those deaths, in another room an audio reads out names and the circumstances of their deaths and of their family members, a room that is set up with light boxes on the floor with extracts from diaries and postcards, relating what they knew to be their impending death. They knew that they were on their way to a death camp. It makes you wonder how so much of the world managed to deny all knowledge, or to say that these people thought they were going into showers. From what we saw on those handwritten notes, they knew exactly what their fate was going to be. Very moving stuff.

Our intent was to go from here to the Topography of Terror which is a museum about the Gestapo and SS. But what we found we were a little disappointed with. As they are renovating the building that housed the display, it has now become an outdoor display. A display of written panels, and they had closed for the day by the time we got there. It all looks very temporary and we decided that we have probably read or heard enough about their ‘work’ that we don’t need to read any more. Perhaps in a couple of years time when they have relocated back, it might be worth the visit.