Believe it or not, despite the fact that I have been teaching German for 25 years and have visited so many times I have lost count, up until last week, I had never been to Berlin! In celebration of our 24th wedding anniversary, we decided to put this right and booked ourselves a 5 day city break. It was also the first time we had been away on our own for more than a weekend in 20 years!
So you can imagine how excited I was to arrive on the famous Alexanderplatz. From our hotel, you could see the famous world clock and the tv tower, which used to look out over a divided Berlin.
Peter and I share a love of history and Berlin's history is a fascinating one. He did not, however, share my passion for the Ampelmann. The traffic lights in East Berlin have these iconic little green and red men (the Ampelmann "the traffic light man") who have become part of the phenomenon of Ostalgie (nostalgia for the old East). I was so beyond excited to fight a giant Ampelmann in the street.
We walked for miles on our first full day, taking in the cathedral and climbing up the 250 steps to the top of the dome, from where we had a brilliant view of the city, including the sighting of a very brave workman/woman swinging from the top of the tv tower. We walked over to Checkpoint Charlie, the old gateway from east to west and found it all pretty incredible.
There they had a segment of the old wall, which had been moved from Potsdamer Platz. It was positioned near Checkpoint Charlie, in an area which is now an artificial beach bar! (The Germans have a bit of an obsession with putting down sand and making beach bars, probably due to their lack of genuine beaches).
More excitement was to come; we found Trabi world. You could even have hired a Trabant to drive on a Trabi safari round Berlin, but it was obscenely expensive.
Then we actually got to see a part of the wall still standing in its original setting, built on top of the bombed ruins of the former SS headquarters and now beside the appropriately named Topography of Terror museum.
Peter and I had witnessed some Japanese tourists taking photos of one another in front of the opera house. When he posed for a photo by the wall, I told him he always looks slightly grumpy in photos and should be more like a Japanese tourist. From that conversation came my favourite photo of the trip:
I also rather like this one, which really expresses the new East Berlin.
With my A level group, I study a film called Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others), which opens in the Stasi prison at Hohenschoenhausen. It was top of my wish list to visit, so I had checked in advance on good old Google Maps, how to get there. Unfortunately I had taken note of the direction the tram went in instead of which stop we should get off at and was pretty shocked to find that we were over an hour's walk away, according to Google Maps. Thankfully, we had a day ticket and so were able to hop back on (and off again and back again because I got the wrong tram) and arrived with two minutes to spare before the daily tour in English started. (I don't think Peter would have got much out of the German one).
The two and a half hours we spent here were amazing.
Our guide, it transpired, had been arrested by the Stasi at the age of 18, for trying to flee East Berlin in 1984. You could tell, before he told us this, that this place was significant to him.
He said the corridors still had a hint of the disinfectant and stale cigarette smells from all those years ago.
In Das Leben der Anderen one of the main characters is arrested and transported in what appears to be a fish van, to the prison to be interrogated. Our guide showed us this prison van and told us how they were disguised as fruit and veg vans and such like.
In many museums and historic sites around the world, photography is not allowed. Here it was actively encouraged, "Don't forget to photograph this.." Plus you were allowed to sit on and touch exhibits, hence this photograph of Peter in an interrogation room, one the many lining at least two of the corridors.
On Saturday we went up to the top of the tv tower. I had read on trusty old Trip Advisor, that the queues were very long and it was well worth booking VIP tickets online to skip the queue and get a guaranteed window seat in the revolving restaurant. What excellent advice that was. We just strolled across Alexanderplatz from our hotel and sailed straight on up to the top. As we entered I heard, "The queuing time is two and a half hours." It was a strange sensation to be turning so high up over the city (albeit it very slowly). The views were sensational. We were so glad we did it.
Back on the ground, we visited the DDR museum, where you actually got to sit in a Trabi.
We just fitted in a visit to the Reichstag before leaving and of course, the Brandenburg gate, where we witnessed many different ways the locals had of milking the tourists, one being dressing up as Russian and American soldiers and charging people to have their photographs taken with them. Really?
I loved this trip and it was well worth the 25 year wait.
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