Sunday October 4 to Wednesday October 7 - Berlin

So the first impressions I have of Germans is they are not very helpful people. The central train station in Berlin is big and has multiple floors and it was not easy to get anybody to help give me directions. Except for one guy, who was not German, they all wanted to run off as if I had some disease they did not want to catch. I had to ask four people where to go for the metro stop.

Checkpoint Charlie

Some of this can probably be chalked up to the ignorant American but I went to the ticket office to ask and the guy’s attitude was like I disgusted him. I had to pry to get more than a simple yes or no. On top of that he gave me bad directions on where to go to get to the local metro. To top it off, the guy actually was selling tickets to the train but never bothered to ask if I needed one. When I finally figured it out I had to go back and buy a ticket. He just glared at me like I needed to get my shit together to visit his country. It was like going and getting my driver’s license renewed.

Berlin is apparently swampy with a high water table so they have to pump the water out of constructions sites all the time, you see these blue pipes all over town.

My hotel was fairly close to the old Checkpoint Charlie post between East and West Berlins and after eating I walked around a bit and was quickly struck by how touristy Checkpoint Charlie is. It may have been a pretty serious place back in in the day but now it is more like Orlando. Tourist shops and photo opportunities for busloads of foreigners with cameras abound. You can even pose with guys dressed up as the American military in old cold war uniforms. If in 1984 Michael J. Fox pulled up on a DeLoran and transported somebody from Berlin “Back to the Future” would not believe it.

The next day I stayed in this area and the crowds and tourist things are even bigger in the daylight. Big tourist buses and crowds choke the street around Checkpoint Charlie, which is actually open to traffic if they can get through. I decided to go to the Checkpoint Charlie Museum, Trabi Museum, and Topography of Terror exhibit, all of which were a few blocks from one another.

The Checkpoint Charlie Museum is interesting but a bit scattered and disorganized. There is not logical layout to anything so you walk past the same exhibit multiple times. They also have a room dedicated to Ronald Regan and you would think his “tear down this wall” speech were the sole reasons the wall came down. Twenty-eight years of struggles by the East and West Germans against the DDR and Soviet Union had nothing to do with it. It was a bit over the top and made me wonder if somebody gave a big donation.

Old Trabi East German police car

For a time Audi and Trabi were actually part of the same car company

Filling our Trabi's up at the gas station during my tour, they are two stroke motors and require motor oil be added to the gas.

The Trabi Museum is dedicated to the little rattle trap they used to make called the Trabi and oddly enough, Audi has roots in the Trabi and they were originally the same company for some time. The museum also has an association with the Trabi Safari across the road and I figured I should take some type of tour if I wanted to see more of Berlin. What better way than behind the wheel of one of these little cars! It was a bit over priced but I did get to drive around and see several parts of the city that I suspect I just would not have gotten to on my own. But at the same time I had to concentrate on not running over the bicyclists, running red lights, or hitting another car so it was also a bit hard to concentrate on sights. Trabi’s are stick shift cars so if you can’t drive a stick you can’t really do this.

Topography of Terror is an exhibit by Berlin that has a large section of the Berlin wall and covers the rise of the Nazi’s before and during WWII and is on the former location of the party headquarters. It is very well done and sobering display of what the Nazi’s were like and how they came to power. There is also a section of the Berlin Wall here.

Berlin is a big bicycle town with bike lanes down every major street so instead of taking a cab or the train on the second day I rented a bike from my hotel. It was a good way to see the city but was a terrible little bicycle that was frankly a little embarrassing to ride around on. It was a girls bike with a basket on the back and three gear speeds and a huge sign for the hotel on back. It screamed tourist and had such a short wheelbase that it was difficult to steer. I’d rent a bike again but next time I would be a bit more choosey on where I got it from.

The last of the observation towers from the Berlin Wall

I had a grand plan of all sorts of places I would go but spent so much time at the Berlin Wall Memorial that I did not do but half of the things I planned. The memorial is on the opposite side of town and has a large section of the wall and the only remaining guard tower. The memorial covers several blocks along Bernaur Straβe, which was perhaps the most infamous sections of the wall because it cut through buildings that had their fronts in West Berlin but the back in East Berlin. Residents here used the buildings to escape until they were ultimately bricked up and torn down. Many of the buildings were torn down in the late 1960’s but some sat isolated and abandoned in no man’s land for decades. This included the Reunification Church of Christ which sat abandoned in the middle of the two walls until the DDR took it down in 1986.

Until the early 80's the East Germans laid this at the base of the wall to impale anybody who jumped over. They also had robotic machine guns that would fire if you triggered a sensor.

Part of the outer wall at the memorial

I really found this place interesting and spent hours here, and again it is free to the public. The exhibits cover all of the known escapes and failed attempts that occurred here, discuss what life was like for people in a divided Berlin, and have a memorial to all of the people who died as a result of the wall with their photographs. The vast majority are men between 16 and 30 who were killed. It is a bit surreal to think that 26+ years ago I would not even have been allowed to go here and it feels like such a different time that it is hard to believe that it is only since 1989 that the wall came down.

One of the hundreds who were killed between 1961 and 1989 as a result of the wall

All over Berlin you can see the results of WWII, while the city is much older than Chicago, the buildings typically are much newer and many are 40 to 60 years old at most. In the area where my hotel is located I saw perhaps two buildings that pre-dated the war, the remainder were of newer constructions from the 1950’s to 80’s. There is also a large number of open lots. But as for the division of Berlin to East and West, that has largely been erased except for tourist or memorial areas. If you did not know better you wouldn’t know the city was cut in two only 25 years ago.

Brandenburg Gate

It is a very modern city, even in the former East Berlin areas I visited. I’ve heard how terrible the Soviet architecture was but to be honest, it really is not all that bad and no worse than what you see today. In fact a lot of it reminds me of the 50’s and 60’s modernist architecture in the U.S. that is very simple but though of well today. So perhaps Soviet architecture is coming into its own too.

Two days is nowhere near enough to see Berlin and form many opinions but in the few days I have been here these are some of my observations.

• There are lots of foreigners here, especially Americans. Everywhere I went it was not uncommon to hear English being spoken with an American accent.
• Berlin seems to be a rather diverse city, with people from a lot of backgrounds and this is the first place I have noticed minorities.
• Tourism in Berlin seems to be a big driver of the economy, like Prague. Some of the areas are so overwhelmed with it, it is like Navy Pier in Chicago and I would think it has to be annoying to Berliners.
• Berlin and Germans are very businesslike and no nonsense. They go about their day and don’t seem to pay much mind to anything else, so I figure the tourists have to be even more annoying for them. Even at my hotel they were very no nonsense with me and quick. Not rude, just they would answer your question and move on. Restaurants brought you your food and that was it. Only the Italian restaurant, run by Italians, were they likely to ask if I needed anything else or how was everything.
• The city seems to have moved past the divisions of the past well except for intended markers, there is not a lot left of that era only 25 years ago.