I last visited Berlin in 1991, when the wall was open but the city was very much two cities. In the west a colourful, modern, hectic western city with all the trappings of a big European city, including foreign tourists and immigrants.
And in the east – a dull, grey, run-down city with few tourists, no immigrants and a population driving awful East German Trabant cars on poorly maintained roads.
Where I stayed was just a few minute walk from Alexanderplatz, near the centre of old East Berlin.
The building above was once the Centrum Warenhaus, what passed for a department store in communist times. Like much of this part of Berlin, it’s been refurbished inside and out and doesn’t show much evidence that it was ever a communist eyesore. Indeed, you can drive back and forth in many parts of Berlin now and not really notice where the wall was. The roads, trains and stations have been brought up to western standards, as have many, many buildings. The typical concrete slab communist buildings can still be found, but many have been demolished and many more have been refurbished into something more livable.
However, a couple of blocks away I found this:
A classic concrete slab building that hasn’t been touched since the collapse of communism. I wondered why this particular building still stood untouched while so many around it have been modernized and repurposed.
It turns out the building holds the Stasi archives, which are still being preserved.
Another interesting note – two major streets that intersect Alexanderplatz are named after Karl Marx, and Karl Liebknecht, a founder of the German Communist Party. I found this a little shocking at first, especially at such a prominent location, but these communist era names still exist all over the former East Germany. It’s common to see a Marx-Engels Platz, Lenin street, and even a German-Soviet Friendship street, which surprising still exist even though the Soviet Union no longer does. I expected such things would have been renamed by now, but it appears the locals are happy to keep them.
Wow Kevin, I spent 3 years working in Russia, and those buildings go on for miles in Moscow, Brings back memories! Tell Lone Ranger to calm down. Sheesh!
Why is sympatico blocking access to the bolging Tories website? What is going on? Midnight EST to now at least.
Actually, when the Stasi started to “delete” their files, they started using huge industrial shredders. These weren’t enough, so they had to use basic office shredders. Still not enough. So there are rooms still there full of hand ripped files. Tons of them.
Read a nice article a while back about a woman who finally read the file the Stasi had about her. Terrifying in that she barely made a move without someone watching her, usually her neighbours, even though here “crimes” were minor. The lead investigator eventually killed himself, the guilt was so bad.
Hoarfrost: Blogspot and Google have been goofy all day.
You should see Winnipeg’s Orwelian style ‘Public Safety Building.’
http://www.canadaphotos.info/photoscanada/photographs/winnipegarchitecture/16.jpg
Hoarfrost many Blog site (Right and then Left) have been affected. Google “spam” where there is a spincounter?
But back to the topic – Berlin is absolutely incredible but don’t take to long to visit. Now that it is the capital again – the reconstruction is excelerated. I have been there several times in the last decade and in parts – it is as if time stood still.
We stayed in a part where (bunkers now tourist (“Horror sites”) still exist and still some railway/metro/U Bahn entrances are like they were towards the end of WWll.
Sad to see what the collateral damage of war inflicts on a culture and a nation – however caused.
I, too, was in Berlin in the summer of 1991. I stayed with some university friends in the Kreuzberg district of West Berlin. I could remember walking from the former west to east Berlin. The Wessies didn’t care what I was doing; the Ossies still had a habit of staring at me while I walk down their streets.
I haven’t returned to Berlin. However, I did travel through both the western and eastern parts of Germany in 2005 and 2006. The eastern part is getting better after many years of de-population. The people are nicer. The shops have been westernized. Unless one digs deeply, it is sometimes hard to tell if one is in the former East Germany.
Mr. Mao Stlong, tear down this wall!*
*http://www.greatfirewallofchina.org/
*H/T Ronald Reagan
I was in Berlin in 1980 did all the touristy things for that time, go through checkpoint charlie, visit the soviet memorial,look at 40 years of decay. the beer on that side of the wall was insipid plonk beer similar to the canadian multibrew (blue/canadian/pil/kokanee) served warm because no one cared. the brandenburg gate was always lit up in west berlin as a beacon for the grim folks in east berlin.
but 28 years ago beer was more important to me than politics –and bamberg in the west had the best.rauchbier being a highlight.
http://www.beerguide.de/bamberg/bamberg.htm
planning on heading back thru in 2010 and will stick Berlin in on the itinerary.
…what no concrete row housing? I mean, Soviet row housing, I used to see in the East Block when I was in Hungary/Romania. As in rows and rows 16-20 stories high buildings.
Like the one in the 2nd Bourne Identity, what was the second one called? Ultimatum?
I always wondering if an earthquake hit how many of those would collapse like a house of cards.
Mabus, that building indeed looks spooky, like a jail cell.
700 pages. That’s how big my cousin’s husband Stasi file was. Two bulging binders full of reports and even photographs. In the 60’s whenever my Dad visited his village where they lived, the “Spitzel” reported it. By the seventies we weren’t allowed anywhere near his birthplace. By 1983, none of us were allowed into the country at all.
There was ABSOLUTELY NOTHING that came out of the DDR which could be considered as even remotely positive.
Do ya think the commies of the East will appreciate the face lift or will it make them feel to bourgeoisie?
Cal2, Bamberg should be on your list to visit again in 2010. Still beautiful, still has great beer.
I wonder if it’s so much the locals not wanting it to change as it is part of the “deal” that reunited Germany. I believe most Berliners hate the monstrosity in the Tiergarten but the removal of memorials, like that one to the “Unknown Rapist”, was forbidden in the reunification. Perhaps changing street names is too?
There was ABSOLUTELY NOTHING that came out of the DDR which could be considered as even remotely positive.
Well, there was Katarina Witt and maybe the odd story of the Ampelmaenchen (www.amplemann.de). But otherwise I agree, the DDR was one long nightmare that I thought everyone would rather forget. I can’t believe the persistence of communist-inspired street names and monuments from the DDR times.
Bureaucracy, Jaeger. The commies may be out of power, but the city clerk’s office hasn’t changed. Probably somebody doesn’t want to do the paperwork of changing all those signs.
Stupid reason to leave Stalin and Lenin’s names all over the place IMHO, but then I’m a conservative. Everything ain’t relative.
Well, to be fair, there are elements from the DDR that have influenced my visceral hatred of attacks on freedom of speech, thought police, and cowardly submission and complicity of the populace. So, yes, there was something positive that came out of the DDR experience. It’s: “It is better to die fighting than to serve your own enemy.”
Schwarze, the good that came out of the DDR are the people like us.
I’ve been to Berlin once – three days in 1965. I stayed in West Berlin and crossed over (Checkpoint Charlie) into East Berlin for 3-4 hours on day-2. WB was ok (downtown reminded me of Cleveland for reasons I don’t remember) but EB was a dump unlike anything else I’d ever experienced. But my visit to EB was nonetheless instructional: I got to observe first-hand communism’s vision of a “Worker’s Paradise”. Sounds like not much changed in the years between 1965 and 1991. Why am I not surprised?
Great post, Jaeger.
Stayed in a cheap hotel that they converted from one of those concrete tenements in the ‘burbs of Prague one time when I played in a soccer tournament out there (with a Dutch team but that’s another story). What a hole.
Never realized until that first trip to a former Eastern Bloc country, the terrible effects that Communism had, even on architecture. We take for granted the individualism and art of a free market society.
so, once the all important state tracks you they never let go no matter who is in power. that is why they have to be destroyed. all of them.
Whenever I see that bland monotonous type of architecture, I think immediately of Canada, and especially of Toronto.
I have always marveled at just at the remarkable balance between blandness and hideousness of major structures in the GTA area. Monstrous apartment blocks bereft of any imaginative flourish, with the utilitarian windows located so high on a wall (so children cannot climb out), to the non-see through balcony walls that obscure any semblance of a view, all adding to the anemic commie chic aura.
When flying internationally into Toronto, you might easily confuse it with East Berlin or Moscow housing projects quite easily. IT starts with the getting off the jet and walking a long prison like subterranean hallway into customs in terminal 1. Once through here, you are delighted by the commercial doors that are exceedingly hard to open and of course too narrow for you, and your luggage to get through. If that is too much for you than you can take the steep stairs( like getting up to the Blues in the old Maple Leaf Gardens) or take the quaint Soviet style elevators that extract mere lifetimes to arrive and even longer to actually move.
Once outside the terminal you are greeted by a Guggenheim Museum helical parking ramp structure like thing that dominates the landscape. Very Commie chic replete with filthy crumbling concrete. Leaving the terminal you are the immediately treated to a belching stinking brewery, surrounded by miles of rusted old Hydro power right-of ways. Then you come upon some actual interesting road work via their 427-401 interchange which still looks impressive, in a very 1960’s sort of way. After driving south down the 427 you are the treated to endless mountain ranges of the aforementioned apartment blocks.
Ugly, hideous, breathtakingly bereft of any architectural and cultural significance, these massive warehouses of Canada’s burgeoning welfare class are stored, homogenously packed like sardines patiently awaiting their pogey checks. The true multicultural make-up of these structures becomes even more evident with a trip inside. You can almost smell the reeking hallways of unCanadian cooking in the street!
A little bit of East Berlin in Canada complete with Euroweenie Pinko mentalities and pro-union mindset.
If you’ve never seen the movie “The Lives of Others” you’re in for a treat:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lives_of_Others
It’s about the Stasi prior to the fall of the wall, and it’s one of the most engrossing films I’ve seen in a long time. You’ll come away with a new understanding of life under totalitarianism, a new appreciation for individual freedom, and a renewed disgust for the pretentious schlock that comes out of Hollywood these days.
Five out of five stars.
Nothing good? I beg to differ.
The “Trebant” has made a revival and there is even a planned SPORT version.
Schwarze Tulpe, re bamberg.
it will be, the promise to my kids in 2000 at Oberammergau was that I would bring them back in 2010. ten years and now some are spoused and childed, the promise will be kept but at significant higher price.
me and the mrs. will break free and do the beer and wine tour after.
bamberg has been on the iterary for 80,84, 90, 00 and again in 2010. love that rauchbeir. easy pattern to pick on those visits.