A Touch of Berlin

A city flourishing, destroyed, rebuilt, divided and reunited. Berlin is a city with many tales and after visiting it for a few days in October while on the Berlin to Budapest Contiki Tour I find myself feeling like it is a Janus like city. Janus the Roman god of beginnings and transitions is usually depicted as having two faces so that he could look both at the past and towards the future. Similarly I feel that Berlin as a city struggles with simultaneously looking at its past and future.

Its turbulent World War I and II history, combined with the horrors of the Holocaust and Cold War have left  the landscape of the city and country as a whole marked with deeply embedded scars. Yet the city is hopeful and have done well in attempting to address issues of whether to commemorate or condemn some of its history.

It is definitely one of the most diverse cities that I have traveled to as of yet, with something to offer every traveler. If museums are your thing then Berlin has an entire island of them. I kid you not, in the central Mitte district of Berlin there is an island in the Spree river that is home to five world class museums. The museum complex is even listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site. For the military enthusiast and history buffs there are plenty of museums and exhibitions like the Topography of Terror and outdoor museum on the site which previously housed the headquarters of the Gestapo and SS. There is also the Check Point Charlie Museum where you can spend hours wondering through the corridors of escapee history as people tried to cross the Berlin Wall. For nature lovers the Tiergarten near the mighty Brandenburg Gate is a lush and beautiful garden in which to stroll, relax and forget that you are in the middle of a city that is nine times bigger than Paris.

I found that the best way to explore Berlin is by doing a walking tour. Contiki offered us one as an option on our tour and it was marvelous. Our guide was an American named Rick and he was extremely knowledgeable on German history and explained it all in a way that after a roughly four hour walking tour around the city centre I felt I had learnt more about German history than I ever did at school. He encouraged us to ask questions and really think about how history is taught and represented in the present day.

Well that is enough of me talking for now, why don't you take a little wonder through parts of Berlin yourself with the help of my photographs.

Berliner Dom or Berlin Cathedral is the largest church in the city and its still referred to as a cathedral although technically it has never been the seat of a Bishop 

Brandenburg Gate is a former city gate and the only remaining one of the series of 18 that were used to enter the city in the 1730s.

The Alte Nationalgalerie is one of the five museums found on Museum Island.

Some entertainment for the young and old on Museum Island.

In 1993 the Neue Wache (New Guard House) was rededicated as the central memorial of the Federal Republic of Germany for the victims of war and tyranny. Inside they replicated and enlarged a sculpture by Käthe Schmidt called 'Mother with her Dead Son'. The sculpture is located directly under an oculus (rain-hole) allowing it to be exposed to all measures of weather as people in war are exposed and battered. 

'Labour makes (you) free'

This phrase was a widely used slogan over the entrances to concentration camps and Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp located in Oranienburg about 35 kilometers from Berlin was no exception. Sachsenhausen was established in 1936 and was used mostly to imprison political prisoners and as a training ground for the SS (Schutzstaffel).

'Appellplatz' is word used in concentration camps to refer to the roll call  that was a daily occurrence and source of punishment for prisoners as they served the purpose of not only helping to count the prisoners but also to intimidate, inspect and humiliate them. Prisoners worn thin uniforms and had to stand still in all weather conditions while thousands of prisoners were counted no matter how long it took. If you were late or did not stand still enough you would be beaten or even killed.

About 200, 000 people passed through this camp between 1936 and 1945.   

An anything but neutral zone. 

The camp consisted of a 3 meter high stone wall and then an area for the soldiers to patrol. Then there was the lethal electric fence and a gravel strip referred to as the 'death strip'. This strip was a forbidden area for prisoners and anyone stepping into it would be shot on sight. 

Morgues and medical rooms leave you shuddering as you read about the many brutal medical experiments that were carried out on the prisoners. 

One of the many memorials that can be found outside the concentration camp.

After the concentration camps were liberated prisoners struggled with the concept of being free. They had lost their families, homes and some would say themselves. Some of them remained at the concentration camp as they had nowhere else to go. 

Checkpoint Charlie or checkpoint C is the name given by the Western Allies to this Berlin Wall crossing during the Cold War. It is also well known for the stand off between Soviet and US tanks that occurred there in October of 1961

A wall to divide, a wall to conquer, a wall to express. 

'The Kiss' was painted by Russian artist Dimitri Vrubel in 1990 just months after the wall was opened to artists from around the world. 117 artists from 21 countries painted the 1316 meter long section of the Berlin Wall. The East Side Gallery which runs parallel to the River Spree is the longest remaining piece of the wall. 

 

I was lucky enough to arrive in Berlin for the last two days of the Berlin Festival of Lights which was fantastic and a great way to bring historical buildings alive at night. 

The TV Tower at Alexanderplatz. 

Streets of Berlin. 

Images projected onto the Berliner Dom as part of the Festival of Lights. 

The Altes Museum.