Berlin, Old and New

Berlin, centuries old, millions strong, two cities become one in my lifetime, was three days of surprises.

We stayed two nights in a very nice, glassy, affordable hotel, in what was from 1945-90 East Berlin, the capital of the German Democratic Republic.  Neither the country nor the capital remain, but many old buildings retain the contrast with West Berlin, a sprawl of big roads and new buildings.

There are streetcars, a subway, above-ground trains, buses, and many routes for bicycles and pedestrians, and many of both.

On the first day, we walked around the towering radio tower and its adjacent squares and old streets, and on Museum Island, some of whose museums we would visit on our third, last day.

On the second day, we walked to many historic sites based on the Berlin Wall, built in 1961 to strengthen the divide between the two Berlins.  We saw plaques and artwork, some on pieces of the wall kept for display.  We saw a graveyard, some of it moved to make a buffer on the east side of the wall.

We saw Checkpoint Charlie, a former gate between the Russian and United States sectors in this city divided in 1945 among them, France, and Britain.  Again, there were pieces of the wall, vertical slabs of cement about a metre wide, three tall and 20 cm thick.  Here played American rock and roll music, for the touristy area which displayed photographs show to have been a sombre place for decades.

Another part of the wall still up, covered in artwork on one side, exposed re-bar on the other, was by a bridge from the 1200s which once formed part of this barrier between the cities.

On this second day, we walked more than 33 000 paces, according to my sister's pedometer, more than 20 kilometres.

A trendy area in the south part of the city had a busy south Asian restaurant where we ate a memorable lunch on a sidewalk table.

A sunny area near the centre of the city had Rosa Luxemburg Place, with lines from her writing embedded in iron on the surrounding cement.  

Day Two's long, fascinating walk almost over, we passed a concentration of army vehicles seemingly now used for Roma housing.  A city election campaign is on, and  one night online I found one possible reason for graffiti on a nearby wall telling one candidate to go away:  there was a 2016 police raid on Berlin Roma, and perhaps this candidate helped bring about the police raid on these peaceful people.

Power poles along many streets sport party signs, from the ultra-left Communist Party, through The Left, the Social Democratic Party, the Green Party, the Christian Democratic Party, and the Free Democrats on the right.

On our third and last day, we left the recent past for the distant pass because we toured notable national museums, grouped together a ten-minute walk from our hotel.  The two-hour line up to enter the Pergammon Museum was longer than I waited to enter the Louvre in Paris or the British Museum in London, each with neolithic and Babylonian artifacts at least as old as I found in the Pergammon; but this museum had whole stone gates, five m high and 7-10 metres wide, hinting at quite a feat of transportation from the Eastern Mediterranean to Berlin.  Much from Ancient Egypt was in this and one other museum.

The national art gallery had many paintings by Germans from the Romantic Era, from the late-1700s to the mid-1800s, when industrialism and capitalism replaced cottage industry and feudalism in Europe.  Much artwork celebrated military distinction then and after, for example victory against France in 1870; much ancient stonework sported armed Assyrians in chariots.  A room of colorful paintings of peaceful scenes from the late-1800s and early 1900s contrasted sharply with this dark art.

One museum had ancient European artifacts, from the Celts and Germanic people, whose migratons some displays explained.  One could press a button to blow a horn such as Celts used.  One display, in about five minutes, traced the evolution of humans.

In my lifetime, this city has evolved from a military flashpoint between empires to a example of peace and multinational harmony.  The West subjugated the East; displays brag about that, and vilify the East.  Tyrants, from Assyria, Egypt, and Rome once crowed over their defeated foes.  Where are those tyrants and empires now?  In Berlin, I felt both change and permanence:  fleeting martial glory and fulfilling human potential.