Up in the air over Berlin

I'm a sucker for tall buildings with good views over their cities. So I guess I was bound to find my way up the Berlin TV tower eventually. 

It's 368m tall, and the tallest structure in Germany, and was built by the then East German government in the 1960s, and was partly intended to be a symbol of East Germany's strength.

I just read an interesting piece in the Wikipedia entry, about how the reflection from the dome on a sunny day looks like a cross, an effect neither predicted nor desired by the planners. It was therefore known as 'The Pope's Revenge' (Citation needed!)

Anyway, I didn't see the reflection because it wasn't a sunny day, but made my way up from Alexanderplatz to the 207m level observation deck, and looked down on all those famous landmarks.

There was the Dom, Museuminsel, the Hauptbahnhof, Unter den Linden, Kurfuerstendamm, Charlottenburg, Tiergarten, Zoologischergarten, Brandenburger Tor, the Reichstag, and in the distance in the western sunset sky, a big long line of wind generators.

More Berlin

Reichstag/Bundestag

Holocaust Memorial

Brandenburg Gate

Currywurst man







                           Cathedral

My life with the Stasi

It's tough being a Stasi operator. You work long hours for low pay in cramped and uncomfortable conditions. You can't tell anyone about your work, even though you know half the people you're spying on are probably employed as informers for your employers anyway.

On this occasion I was watching and listening in on every visitor to a rock music festival - all probably with subversive thoughts and tendencies. All needed to be thoroughly documented, though the working conditions were cramped and uncomfortable, the instruments were crude, the feedback rang in my ears, and it was hard to see anything useful really.

This was part of the fun to be had in Berlin's DDR Museum, an excellent little museum designed to give visitors and younger Germans a taste of life as it was behind the Iron Curtain. As well as the state's intrusion into the lives of everyone, it was also about shortages of goods, collective military  and potty training, nudist holidays (the regime tried but failed to stamp this out), and how everyone who owned a Trabi became a first class mechanic (because they had to). There was a game in which you tried to advance your education by all kinds of strategies, but the only one that worked was to be a patriotic and faithful party loyalist. And in another game I was a factory manager desperately trying to meet production targets using the tools of the planned economy. I actually did manage a slight surplus once, but then got swamped by the corresponding increased target for the next year.

It wasn't all bad though. Apparently quite a few East Germans harbour a bit of nostalgia about the bad old days. They even have a word for it: ostalgie. Here's Wikipedia's piece on it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostalgie  It's largely about the absence of unemployment and severe poverty during the period.

The DDR Museum's site is at http://www.ddr-museum.de/en

24 years on, it's still about the wall

For tourists like me, Berlin has to be still largely about the Berlin Wall, so powerful was it as a symbol of the Cold War that dominated so much of my formative years.

For 30 years the city was divided in a cruel and artificial way, much as today are the two Koreas which I'd caught a glimpse of a few weeks earlier. So much human suffering, and so much tension and potential for disaster with worldwide ramifications.

Berlin has been very much rebuilt and refashioned since the 1990 German reunification, but it's been sensible enough to leave lots of little reminders, like the garishly painted wall sections scattered around the place, to remind themselves, and to satisfy the curious tourists. There are also a few sections left standing much as they were, looking astonishingly thin and flimsy, presumably having relied mainly on all the rusty reinforcing to hold it all upright as long as it did.

My hotel was on Zimmerstrasse, just around the corner from Checkpoint Charlie, and clustered around there were a number of very interesting attractions. There was the 'Cold War Black Box' museum, illustrating milestones in Cold War history. There was the

'Berlin Wall Panorama', in a large steel rotunda, where you take in the rather realistic view as it would have been 30 years ago at that spot. There's another museum, which is apparently good on the subject of escape attempts (submarines, hot-air balloons, tunnels), and of course there's Checkpoint Charlie.

The original Checkpoint Charlie has been recreated, complete with warning signs, sandbags, and actors dressed as American military police. You can pose with them and get your passport stamped for a few euros. Lonely Planet says it would be nothing but a tacky tourist trap but for the Checkpoint Gallery nearby. I found it quite moving nonetheless, though I didn't part with my euros.

Berlin by train

Many years ago I set off from my then English home, on a summer hitch-hiking holiday, across northern Europe, but with the loose destination of Berlin. Good rides were coming thick and fast, and when I got an offer of a nice long ride with an American adventurer in a VW beetle, I stuck with him. He was bound for Copenhagen though, rather than Berlin, and turned left at Hamburg. So I changed my plans, and had an interesting exploration of southern Scandinavia instead.

I've often thought about completing that trip one day, actually making it to the fabled city this time, and last month I had my chance. I headed off from my recent winter English exile, and did a little north European exploration again, this time by fast trains.

It was Eurostar from London St Pancras to Brussels Midi/Zuid, then German ICE (Inter Continental Express) trains on to Berlin. It's a little over two hours to Brussels, even with a couple of stops along the way. Then from Brussels to Cologne in another two hours, then change trains and Cologne to Berlin in four and a half. Both the Eurostars and the ICE trains are said to travel at up to 300 km/h. The Cologne - Berlin one had a speed indicator in the cabin, which indicated up to 250 on this particular journey.


Here's a view of a French train and a German train, nose to nose in Brussels Midi station. The French one was about to head back to Paris, while I was about to board the Berlin bound German one going the other way.

The German ICE trains were comfortable and roomy. I found the Eurostar rather cramped though. Very much just another train, though it was fast and it was on time. There was a 20 minute period in a (rather too normal) railway tunnel along the way.

Being connected to England, which is always at war with various parts of the world, the British requirement of special security screening, with consequent extra check-in time, means that you have to add extra time to your journey planning. It strikes me that if they go ahead and build their next high speed train, from London to Birmingham, and save 40 minutes of journey time, they will then throw it all away if they feel the need for extra security and check-in measures on that one too!

Back to Berlin though. What a delight of a city to travel around in! You arrive at the fabulous new Hauptbahnhof, looking like a five-level ultra-modern shopping centre with concourses and train platforms

running through at all the right places - serving underground, on-ground, and elevated lines. You show up at the tourist office there. They sell you a 72 hour ticket for 27 euros, which gives you useful discounts at most of the museums and other attractions you'll be visiting, but also unlimited travel on all trains - U-bahns, S-bahns ('Stadtschnellbahns' - the older, partly elevated rapid city railway) - as well as trams and buses . Just get it stamped when you start your first journey, and then hop on and off as you like, with never another thought of price or payment procedure.

There are quite a few cities that could learn a lot on simplifying their public transport fare structures from Berlin. Sydney for instance, while priding itself on finally introducing its smartcard ticketing system (originally promised for the year 2000 Olympics), is nevertheless sticking to a ludicrously complex pricing system for it.