There was a wall in Berlin, but that wasn’t built until 1961. Before that, there was a wall AROUND Berlin. It was built in around 1730 as a defense for the city of Berlin (remember those pirates of earlier times?).  And that wall didn’t have checkpoints. It had gates. 

The Brandenburg Gate (“tor” is the German word for “gate”) was not one of the original gates in the city. It was built to represent peace.  So, the guardhouses that were there were replaced by the impressive 12 Doric columns and five passageways. The design was based on the gateway to the Acropolis in Athens. On top of the gate is a statue of Victory in a chariot drawn by four horses.  I liked the way the horses looked like they were sort of scared they were going to fall off the edge. 

 

If you look through the gate, you can see rows of trees on either side of the street. That’s the famous “Unter de Linden” aka “That big, long street with a lot of linden trees.” It used to lead up to the Prussian Palace, but now it leads to the Victory Column. We were going to walk the street to the column, but it was a half-hour walk in cold, spitting rain and strong winds. So we said, “Yep, there it is.  Okay, back to the underground!”

First, we took pictures at the gate. 

  

 

Some clown was photo bombing people’s pictures. 

 

See how tall it is?

 

 

And after that, we saw a street was closed. And then all these police came down the road. And then a lot of black cars and a black limo. And then more police and more!  We have no idea who it was, but it was exciting! 

Our two days touring Berlin were both supposed to be cold and maybe rainy. Thursday looked better than Friday (online, at least), so we decided to do “Outdoors Berlin” on the first day. Our first stop? Dunkin’ Donuts.

 

Our first REAL stop? Checkpoint Charlie!

Now remember, the Berlin Wall was built to keep people in East Germany from sneaking off into Western Germany where freedom and McDonald’s awaited. But, there were checkpoints to get through the wall. The most famous was Checkpoint C, and C in the phonetic alphabet is “Charlie” (Alpha, Bravo, Charlie…) It was where tanks faced each other in this iconic photo of 1961′s Berlin Crisis.

(There was a crisis in Berlin in 1961? Yes, it was over the communists wanting the city all to themselves. This is an iconic photo? It must be. It was on tons of postcards.)

It turns out that it was a good thing our first stop was at Dunkin’ Donuts. We had an extra one, and James gave it to the guard. He was very grateful and chatted with us for a long while and stamped a “passport” for us with all sorts of stamps. 

 

Now, an astute reader would say, “Guards? What sort of guards? This checkpoint has been abandoned!” Well done. They are actors. For 2 Euro a person, you can pose with them.  You can go over to the actual building for free and peek in the windows, but there wasn’t much to see. Just a picture of some guy and some poster that was impossible to read. I wondered if on warm days, they brought it out or something? 

They left the signs up that warned people of which side of the wall they were on. Not that you’d probably need to be told which side was which. If guns were pointed at you to keep you from crossing, you were on the East side. If there was a bunch of graffiti, you were on the West side.

 

These days, instead of guards, they have large photos of an American soldier and a Russian soldier surveying the territory, one on each side of a sign. 

 

 

      

 

The wall might not be there, but they remember. 

Ronald Reagan famously said:

Behind me stands a wall that encircles the free sectors of this city, part of a vast system of barriers that divides the entire continent of Europe. From the Baltic, south, those barriers cut across Germany in a gash of barbed wire, concrete, dog runs, and guard towers. Farther south, there may be no visible, no obvious wall. But there remain armed guards and checkpoints all the same–still a restriction on the right to travel, still an instrument to impose upon ordinary men and women the will of a totalitarian state. Yet it is here in Berlin where the wall emerges most clearly; here, cutting across your city, where the news photo and the television screen have imprinted this brutal division of a continent upon the mind of the world. Standing before the Brandenburg Gate, every man is a German, separated from his fellow men. Every man is a Berliner, forced to look upon a scar…

General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!  

(Except leave part of it up because it will make a cool place for tourists to walk and take pictures, okay?)

 

When one hears “Berlin,” the “Berlin Wall” pops to mind. It was torn down in 1989, but they did leave part of it up as an art gallery cleverly named “The Berlin Wall East Side Gallery.” It was a commissioned work by 105 artists who painted on the east side of the wall. (The west side was already painted on by those Graffiti-loving West Berliners.) Not surprisingly, many of the paintings were destroyed by graffiti and had to be repainted, which really ticked off a lot of the famous artists who painted them in the first place. 

You can see the gallery on the left side of this picture. 

And you can see it even closer in the left side of this picture.

 

This was the first panel we came to. With all the signatures there, I thought it probably was a place provided for people to sign their names. We’ve seen similar things in museums, and the museums even provided pens! 

 

 

But then, right next to this wall panel was this notice:

OH NO! At least they don’t know who we are or anything!

 

AAAH! No, Libby! NOOOOO!  

 

Anyhow, let’s tour the wall, graffiti and all.

              

 

This image was all over bags and shirts and postcards and all that.

 

What is it? Well, on the 30th anniversary of the Deutsche Demokratische Republik (aka East Germany), the guest of honor at the party was Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev. When Brezhnev finished his speech, East German President Erich Honecker opened his arms to congratulate him with a big kiss, a normal ritual for socialist comrades.  But they were a bit too enthusiastic, apparently, leading to decades of mocking and this image called “The Kiss” (which was based on a photo). Yeah, I don’t much like it either. 

 

    

 

This was cool. Depending on your angle, they looked like fun scribbles. But seen straight on, they were faces! 

 

  

 

       

 

This was our favorite part of the wall. Rachel wanted a poster of it, but we had to settle for a mug and a postcard. 

 

     

 

And it started drizzling…but we had more outside stuff to do!

 

   

 

On Wednesday, the family and I hopped a train for the eight-hour train trip from Linz to Berlin.  We wanted to visit Germany, and we chose Berlin because it is the capital and also because the man from whom we rent our apartment in Linz also has a place for rent in Berlin, so it made finding a place to stay easy.  I didn’t know what to expect from Berlin. I know there was a wall there, and there was Hitler stuff, but other than that, what did I really know about the place? 

 

Since I didn’t know much, I decided to learn. And you get to learn along with me! Berlin is a  ”new” city in Europe, only getting its start in the 1200s. It was built on the banks of the Spree River (which still runs through the city today). Pirates kept attacking the town, so in 1411 Berlin asked for protection from the Pope. He sent Fredrich von Hohenzollern, Burggraf of Nuremberg, and his army. (What do you want to be when you grow up, Little Bobby? I wanna be a Burggraf!).  The Hohenzollerns wound up being the rulers of Berlin and a lot of Germany for a few hundred years. They founded the German Reich in 1871 which was around the time they finally defeated the French, who had been hassling them for quite awhile. 

Losing WW1 sort of flabbergasted the Germans, so they decided to go with a new sort of government and booted the imperialists in favor of a democratic constitution. Things went along okay until Hitler marched in in 1933 and imposed military rule. It rather ruined the 1936 Olympic games and also the lives of 50,000 Jews.  The city’s population took quite a hit as well.  Only two-and-a-half million of Berlin’s four million inhabitants were left after the fighting ended.  (I don’t think they ALL died, but a lot abandoned the city, perhaps?)  

After WW2, Berlin was divided into four parts: the Soviet Union, United States, Britain, and France. By 1948, the United States had claimed West Germany, and the Soviet Union had assumed control of East Germany. (I guess the other two went home?) Berlin’s location in the east of Germany caused problems since the country was split east/west. The democracies wanted to keep some hold on Berlin, but what to do since it was in the east? In 1961, the Soviets built a wall dividing the city in half, which remained until 1989. At this point, the western capital moved to Bonn while the Soviet occupiers stayed in Berlin. 

In 1989, the border between the two countries was opened, and the citizens started hacking down the wall themselves. In 1991, they voted to move the capitol back to Berlin, but they didn’t get around to actually moving the offices until 1999. I guess packing took a long time? 

There was a lot about Prussia I didn’t quite understand when I read (er, skimmed) the history, and we failed to make it to any of the “History of Berlin” museums. But I think in the 1700s and 1800s Germany was more like we think of Russia–it was a country, but it was also the general name of a whole group of countries? Maybe? (There is reason no one asks me to write history books.)

Anyhow, back to real time. 

Before we went, our New Friends, the Moores, had us over for pizza and to watch a Rick Steve’s travel DVD of Berlin, so we were able to look for a few things, like these:  

 

  

These Walk and Don’t Walk traffic light men are unique to East Berlin. I am not sure why they are so beloved, but when the city was going to standardize the crossing signals, there was quite a furor, so they mean something to Berliners. 

Another thing Rick Steves pointed out was this television tower. It’s called the Fernsehturm, and it was built between 1965-69 and is the tallest structure in Germany. 

What Steves pointed out was that the East Germans built this during the time they were tearing down all the crosses from the cathedrals and churches. But, when the sun strikes their tower, it shines in the image of a cross.  It’s nicknamed “The Pope’s Revenge.” 

Ronald Reagan talked about it in his Tear Down This Wall speech:  “Years ago, before the East Germans began rebuilding their churches, they erected a secular structure: the television tower at Alexanderplatz. Virtually ever since, the authorities have been working to correct what they view as the tower’s one major flaw: treating the glass sphere at the top with paints and chemicals of every kind. Yet even today when the sun strikes that sphere, that sphere that towers over all Berlin, the light makes the sign of the cross. There in Berlin, like the city itself, symbols of love, symbols of worship, cannot be suppressed.”

What were MY impressions of Berlin? Well, the first thing Berlin offered to me was the answer to a question that’s been burning in my brain ever since my son David asked it. “What do they call a footlong Subway sub in countries that don’t use inches?” 

 

The answer? It’s a 30 cm. And a six-inch is a 15 cm.  Plus, the Subway in Berlin served Walkers crisps. Yum.

 

My second impression was “Dang, this city is full of graffiti!”

 

     

Every surface seemed to be covered in spray paint. It seemed to be a contagious infection. I longed to spray my name on some cement surface! Although, escalators, walls, and even ticket kiosks did not escape. 

Berlin itself seemed to realize this. On the East Wall Gallery (which I’ll talk about later), one of the paintings shows four windows.

 

And how did Berlin describe itself?

 

Yep. That’s about right! 

Most of Berlin was dirty. There was dirt and garbage and a lot of construction. The buildings themselves seemed run-down and sad. And there were random water pipes that just ran above ground. What was with that?

    

And when we’d walk down the street, we’d get this occasional whiff of open sewer from the sewer vents. It was like Camp K on a bad day!   

 

Berlin was much larger than I thought. It took us an hour by three trains to get from our apartment to any of the touristy places we wanted to go. So we did a lot of this. 

    

To sit on this (many trains smelled like pee and were pretty worn out looking)

 

Now, with all this negative nonsense, you would think I didn’t like the place. But, I did!  The people there were kind and friendly and helpful, which I did not expect. I was told that in general, Germans were more haughty than Austrians. I don’t believe that. We had total strangers come up to us and offer to help us when we were staring at maps or trying to puzzle out what a German word meant. (Behinderte means “handicapped,” in case you wondered.) And Berlin had wonderful museums and the best food we’ve had and more.  But, I’ll get to that in later entries.