5 p.m., freezing cold and night was falling rapidly like a heavy blanket over what looked like a ghetto in the backstreets of Kreuzberg, Berlin. I powered up the phone and texted Karsten who assured us he'd be there in a few minutes. Our luggage was propped against a crumbling, graffiti-scarred wall outside what looked suspiciously like a crack den's oversize, creaking front door which had seen better days, when Karsten rolled up, led us into a tagged-up stairwell, up 5 flights and ushered us inside our "communist era style" apartment. Central heating units not dissimilar in size, colour and consistency to 1960's style Volkswagens dominated the two rooms, yet seemed to be throwing out the heat of a disposable lighter. Four huge arched windows, unadorned with coverings of any kind, boldly looked into the inner courtyard and all the surrounding apartments. Karsten commented that we could, "Walk around naked in this heat if you like..." Welcome to Berlin!
Although taken aback a little from this less than auspicious beginning, we quickly found the groove of this hippest neighbourhood of modern Berlin. Once the Turkish quarter, real crack dens and squatter buildings are nesting side-by-side with gentrified apartments, retro communist pads (like ours)and tiny studios hidden away in pretty, but crumbling pre-war blocks. Looking beyond the graffiti, we saw uber-mod restaurants and bars, young families walking the streets in safety and galleries and boutique shops dotting the maze of backstreets near the Schonleinstasse underground station from which we'd make our many forays into another new city.
Alexanderplatz became our hub for the next 5 days. From here we ventured far and wide, catching the U bahn, the S bahn, trams and lots and lots of walking. After a few days, we had the layout of the inner city pretty much nailed down in terms of geography and transport links, and found ourselves asking, "Should we take the 'U' or the 'S' to get to Spandau?" After the unexpected success of our Alternative Budapest tour, we decided to try the original, Berlin style. This was a fantastic journey over 4 and a half hours where we walked through alleys and back lanes, through postage-stamp parks and building sites, under freeways and in and out of train stations, hopping on and off different trams and walking a lot, all in the cause of discovering some of Berlin's most surprising and hidden gems. We stood on great mounds in the exclusive suburbs where Nazis first detained citizens in concentration camps, explored acres of re-vamped brewery buildings, marveled at cutting edge street art and ate currywurst in the shadows of the S bahn at the original stand where it was invented (and stood on the spot where the very first short moving picture was filmed, of a train leaving the same station). We saw sections of the Berlin Wall that most never see and saw incredible, historic buildings, sites and art that are not in any guide books or maps...our guide was young, energetic, smart and knowledgeable and it was a real treat.
We traveled out to the Olympic Stadium one morning and this was yet another reminder of the sick genius of Hitler and the Nazis. Berlin still resonates with all sorts of reminders of the war and it is encouraging to see the way Germany deals with this delicate issue: there are monuments, memorials, museums and exhibitions of all manner of atrocities, yet somehow they have made them all accessible without watering down the real and horrific history. The stadium had an amazing museum which captured the mania of the time, and the stadium itself stands as a monument to the image of strength and vitality that Hitler sought to instill in the populace: in fact, it is a gorgeous piece of modern architecture that takes your breath away even today.
Wandering Under der Linden on the way to the Brandenburg Gate, we could eat Brandeburger sausages or see bubble shows on the street along the way. Back on down, Cass was particularly taken with the subtle memorial in the ground at Bebelplatz commemorating the book burning that occurred there in 1933 at the instigation of Goebbels. Back again to the imposing Reichstag and all it's associated history and across to the Holocaust memorial, a haunting and unusual piece of open air art. On other days we travelled out into the suburbs to visit Berlin's answer to Versailles, the Charlottenburg Palace, and we both agreed it compared favourably (I actually think it was better, but my resident Francaphile does beg to differ!). I spied a Knights helmet amongst other things!(see above). It's just so European to be wandering back to the subway and stumble across an exhibition by Goya, Daumier and Toulouse-Lautrec on the way, a coincidence as we'd become new fans of the French satirist artist, Daumier, after seeing a colossal exhibition of his work in Budapest the week before. The Jewish Museum was a confronting visit, yet gave so much background of which we were unaware. We left having a much better picture of how they have been unfairly and unmercifully persecuted for many hundreds of years, culminating in the WWII genocide attempt.
Of course, we managed to eat our share of German cuisine, and I must admit I was in heaven in this land which worships both meat(sausages) and beer. Cass managed to find other delicious options everywhere we went, however, and we also managed to sample a lot of fine cakes and coffees Deutschlandstyle! We discovered that sugar portions are called "zucker sticks" and discovered that you need to know some German to buy coffee in the supermarket...fun times!
The German capital is ablaze with independent thinking, avant garde style and exciting life. We loved the feel of this very different European city still struggling to come to terms with its past, while triumphant in its resurrection from the ashes of the allied bombing in 1945. Our minds filling up with the echoes of war atrocities and horrors perpetrated, we were ready to travel to Poland and face them head on in the most uncompromising setting of all. Photo album slideshow above for a time, then here.