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Published: October 29th 2021
Brandenburg Gate
Early morning autumnal view of the gate.As is usual for me, I set off early some pre-dawn and dawn photographs. I walked to the Brandenburg Gate, which is fantastic to see, although the sky was not what I had hoped for. I got some photos nonetheless.
One advantage of going out to anywhere at that time in the morning is that there are so few people around and I can get some uninterrupted views. There were just a few cyclists (if fact there are one hell of a lot of cyclists in Berlin) and they were moving fast enough to not show up in my photographs, except for some light-trails, which sometimes can actual add to the photographs.
I walked up to the vast and imposing German federal parliament building. There were barriers and police outside it, but everyone else was just walking through, so I did as well. It looked just a spectacular inside, with a huge eagle (the German coat of arms) hanging below the modern glass dome.
After breakfast, we thought we had better complete all the pre-flight bureaucracy for the return to the UK. First we had to book some COVID tests (we didn’t need to do that for the
Checkpoint Charlie
You are now entering the American sector - I would have thought carrying guns would be compulsory in the American sector! flights to Germany) and then complete the so called passenger locator forms. This got me in a very, very bad mood. Overly verbose, unnecessarily complicated and counter intuitive - just throw in some pompous double-talk and it could have been created by Boris Johnson himself.
Our hotel was quite close to Checkpoint Charlie we headed there. Apparently "Charlie" is the third letter of the NATO alphabet covering the various checkpoints between West and East Germany:
Alpha - Helmetedt on the border between Federal Republic and the Democratic Republic;Bravo - Drelinden to cross from the Democratic Republic into West Berlin;Charlie - Friedrichstraße to cross from West Berlin into East Berlin.
You could tell which side was the American side, not just because of the "you are now leaving the American sector" sign, but because of the KFC, McDonalds and Planet Hollywood.
We went into the Checkpoint Charlie museum, which had lots of exhibits about all the successful and unsuccessful attempts cross the border and
Checkpoint Charlie
You are now leaving the American sector. all the different techniques such as concealed spaces in cars, hollowed-out surfboards, cars low enough to drive under the barriers, wearing uniforms to pretend to be in the western armies and simply making a run for it.
A point to any of those wannabe communists in the UK - the wall, checkpoints and guard towers were to stop East Germans who wanted to leave the so called Democratic Republic, not to stop the West Germans from trying to get in!
Just a long from the checkpoint was a remaining section of the wall itself, about 100m long. The surface had been stripped off by people who are referred to as "Woodpeckers", presumably to keep as souvenirs or to sell (all the giftshops are fully of pieces of the wall).
In a corridor underneath this wall was a 1933 to 1945 exhibition, effectively covering the period from when the Nazis came to power until they were defeated in World War Two.
Carrying on beyond the wall is a brick line cast into the roads and footpaths tracing the line that the wall used to follow. In fact we could see this line outside the front of our
Split Berlin
A map of the four sectors. hotel. Standing on each side of such an irrelevant line now, it is hard to imagine how life-changing that divide was just over 30 years ago.
Also nearby was Trabbiworld with a bit of nostalgia for the Trabant car, which was an East German icon. We considered going on a Trabant safari, but we had booked some tickets for the more conventional 'hop-on, hop-off' bus tour. We waited a while near Checkpoint Charlie where we had seen a bus pull-out earlier (luckily as there are no indications where the bus stops are).
The bus covers a route of about two and a half hours through most of the main areas of central Berlin, east and west. At the extreme east of the route is the longest remaining section of the wall (about 1km) which has been called the East Side Gallery. It is covered in lots of works of art, including a famous picture of Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev and the East Germany President Erich Honecker in the middle of a passionate kiss. We didn't get off, but decided that we would definitely come back here tomorrow to walk along it.
We noted two particular things about
East Side Gallery
A small section of the wall gallery, sadly viewed from our bus. the commentary on the bus tour. Frist that it was quite political and opinionated (which is unusual on such tours), particularly concerning the opposition to a big luxury development that had been proposed along the river in the east. No capitalists taking over here please. Second that there was a constant theme of "damaged" or "destroyed during the war", including the vast Tiergarten Park in the west.
Apparently, 50% of Berlin is parkland or waterways, although that does seem to be mainly in the west. The government district was very well designed, with lots of very well maintained green space, and had clearly been developed after reunification when Berlin became the capital again.
The bear is the symbol of the city and when you look out for them there are these bears all over the city - each decorated differently, usually a theme related to where they are. A lot of hotels and shops have a branded bear outside. There is also a little character who features on all the traffic lights and we even saw a shop selling lots of "traffic light man" branded merchandise.
We got off the bus at the Kaiser Wilhelm Gedachtnis Kirche,
Traffic Light Man
This little character even has his own shop. which is the remains of a church that was damaged during the way with just the tower remaining. It had been planned to demolish it, but after a lot of opposition to that, it remains as a symbol and has been incorporated into a new modern church, characterised by thousands of semi-transparent, blue, patterned tiles, everyone of which is different.
We went into the new part of the church, which is spectacular with the light shining through the tiles, however the original part of the church was closed as it was being used as a COVID testing centre.
We walked through the Tiergarten Park, which was looking very autumnal, back to the Brandenburg Gate. It was a lot busier there now.
After an evening meal, we found a supermarket so my wife could go on a trip down memory lane, as she had lived in Germany many years ago.
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