I got to know Berlin last spring break. Before my visit I had watched three good movies which set the mood for it; Goodbye Lenin, depicting the contrast between East Germany and West Germany, Downfall telling the story of der Führer's suicide, the Good German an homage to Casablanca filmed in post WWII Berlin. Also Das Leben der Anderen/The Lives of Others -which I watched later on- depicting the Stasi era. Also I went to Berlin via Amsterdam where I did my best to avoid visiting Anne Frank's house as her Diary is the most morose book I read as a child (which reminds me I ought to advise the school library to take it off the shelves, and that has nothing to do with my opinion of the whole Holocaust issue).My days in Berlin felt like days aboard a time machine. Passing from Checkpoint Charlie and marveling at the means people devised to escape from Eastern Germany; wandering along the lines of the former Wall and feeling the energy of those who brought down the wall; trying not to notice the Holocaust memorial, attending Palm Sunday mass at the Berlin Cathedral that still carries traces of the Allies' bombing; collecting socialist memorabilia from a street market in Mitte (got a bargain for a Karl Marx medallion), I truly felt transported in time.
The contrast between Soviet “wedding cake” buildings and more modern buildings on the other side of the wall made me wonder how crossing the wall made people feel. I imagined East Berlin's supermarkets filled with the most basic products and run down apartments adorned with faded wallpaper, feeling like it's lightyears away from West Berlin with its modern cafés and shops filled with brightly packaged consumer goods (check out the devout socialist's reaction in Goodbye Lenin when a Coca Cola ad materializes on the building opposite hers in her East Berlin neighborhood. No more spoilers I promise!)
The contrast between Soviet “wedding cake” buildings and more modern buildings on the other side of the wall made me wonder how crossing the wall made people feel. I imagined East Berlin's supermarkets filled with the most basic products and run down apartments adorned with faded wallpaper, feeling like it's lightyears away from West Berlin with its modern cafés and shops filled with brightly packaged consumer goods (check out the devout socialist's reaction in Goodbye Lenin when a Coca Cola ad materializes on the building opposite hers in her East Berlin neighborhood. No more spoilers I promise!)
History aside, Berlin is very modern friendly city, full of gigs and street markets, offering good food (amazing variety of creative veggies), its lively atmosphere and cultural scene are quite remarkable . There's beauty everywhere in the city and some of the museums are good - I still can't understand why I had to pay 4 euros to see Nefertiti, well I've got only the Egyptian government to blame.
Berlin is a perfect city from all attributes. However, I don't think I can live there, aside from my my poor German which Goethe Institute couldn't' fix, I cannot live with such quiet people, I would drive them nuts. Chatting away in this coffee house in Alexanderplatz, my friend and I saw heads turning and disapproving looks shot, we were two Egyptian gals as Mediterranean as can be (my friend and I were living in Italy and Spain at the time) and were just expressing ourselves!
Carrying a bit of the wall in a bookmark -and nothing makes me happy like a new bookmark and nothing upsets me like loosing a bookmark- I head back to Madrid. I still smile when I see my photo resting from a long walk in Museumsinsle in the relaxed sunshine in a barist outside Hackescher Markt station.
Photo: part of the Berlin wall at the entrance to Checkpoint Charlie museum
Links:
Checkpoint Charlie museum
Museumsinsle
Check out Berlin Wall graffiti art and chronology
Walk down Unter den Linden
Stay at A&O hostels
Go to Quasimodo jazz bar, the neighborhood itself is very nice
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