Peaceful Berlin August 1 to 5 2010

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In some cities a drizzling rain contributes to the atmosphere of the town. Berlin is one of those cities. Paris, Barcelona and Prague are others. Not that it is raining. O no, it is beautiful weather.

Berlin has something no other city can claim. It has the wall. The wall is everywhere. You can feel it, you can smell it and on some places you can even see it. Like on East Side Gallery, where artists painted there feelings on the wall. Or at Checkpoint Charlie near Potsdammer Platz, where you still can "leave the American sector". Or at the Brandenburger Tor where tourists crowd together as if the wall just has fallen. And on "Unter den Linden", the street leading to the Brandenburger Tor where the Ossies walked in 1989 to the West. Indeed the trees are "Linden" with their leaves shaped like an heart, as if they reflect the hopefull hearts of all those people who walked once to a new future. You can even buy pieces of the wall as if they were precious gems. Surprisingly we did not see a Mahjong game with stones of the Berlinian wall. You could break down the wall again and again.

Linda and I sit on a terrace near East Side Gallery looking out over the river Spree and drinking a glass of wine. At the other side of the river are old factories with broken windows. Graphiti is everywhere, even on the top of the 20 meter high chimneys. Everywhere else it would have been desolate, but here it gets a new meaning between the boats with tourists and the renovated factories. The terrace where we sit is one of those factories. It is called "Radial System 5". Once it was a pumpsystem, housed in a beautiful brickstone Gothic building. Now it is a theater with a peacefull terrace. We discuss the wall, freedom, the past. For me it is all just history. I grew up in the sixties in Amsterdam with a lot of freedom. For Linda it is different. She grew up in Slovakia in the eighties at the other side of the iron curtain. She has emotional ties with this part of history.

We compare Berlin with Rotterdam, the city we come from. Both were bombed in the second worldwar and both built a new city upon the ruins of the past. In Berlin present and past beautifully merge together in the Reichstag. The old building is crowned by a transparant round dome designed by Norman Foster, symbolising the transparancy of the present democracy of Germany. It is the same Norman Foster who designed the parkingbuilding with its round forms near Hotel New York in the center of Rotterdam.
Like Rotterdam Berlin has become a cultural city. The Pergamum museum is one of the most outstanding museums. It houses the complete hellenistic temple of Pergamum in Turkey. The Turcs have ambivalent feelings about this, as I was told when I was in Pergamum some years ago. The Germans protect their antiquities, but the price was the temple. The same applies for the Assyrian Porch of Isthar from Iraq, I guess. You can find it in the same museum.
Rotterdam has "De Stijl" and Berlin has "Bauhaus" The Bauhaus Archiv shows the ideas of Walter Gropius architects, craftsmen and artists, like Paul Klee and Vasili Kandinsky worked together to make payable but beautiful products.

Maybe it is because of all these similarities that we feel so at home in Berlin. Maybe because we biked the city like they do in Holland. Anyway Berlin was a wonderfull start of our worldtrip.

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