The Wall

And on last Sunday we travelled to see the Berlin Wall.

We expected a gigantic structure, but what met us was a very ordinary-looking wall. It made us stop and reflect on the power of ideologies that are stronger than the physical dimensions of the wall!

First, we travelled to the Ostbahnhof (or East Railway Station) on the Stadtbahn. The East Side Gallery, where a large portion of the Berlin Wall remains, was just outside the station, and indeed stretches all the way from Ostbahnhof to the next station, Warschauer Strasse. Apparently, it's around 1.3 kilometres long!

When we got out of the railway station, we followed a whole lot of touristy-looking people into a gap in a random-looking wall we saw there. In all innocence, we thought that must be the entrance to the "gallery". Imagine our surprise when we entered and saw dozens of sunbathing tourists scattered over a sparkling lawn! On the other side, we saw the River Spree, where people were serenely engaged in boating. 

And as for the Wall, where was it? We asked some Asian guys, and they said they're also searching for it. We asked another guy, and he told us to turn around. We'd just come in through the Berlin Wall! East Side Gallery was no museum or gallery; the Wall was the gallery!

And yet we fumed awhile, feeling betrayed by the ordinariness of the Wall. Where was the famous graffiti? All we could see were random colourful scrawls, saying "ghost writers" or "smoke weed" or "cold beer rules"! Was the famous Berlin wall reduced to advocating cold beer? We shuddered. And worst of all, we saw one guy peeing on the Wall!

 














And we have people sending messages back home.




This (below) was the most "political" of the scrawls we saw there.

We almost left the place, frustrated. We had come expecting revolution and we found only cold beer and sunbathing tourists. Suddenly, it struck us. The Wall had another side, didn't it? We entered the lawns through a gap in the wall, so there was another side of the Wall that was facing the road. And then we realized what idiots we'd almost been. I mean, we'd almost left without seeing the actual sight: the paintings made by more than a 100 artists from 20-odd countries on the Berlin Wall.

I couldn't get very good photos because, idiot that I was, I went in the afternoon when the sun was shining directly in my face and the paintings were in shadow. And some photos I could only take as fragments because I don't have a DSLR camera with a zoom lens that allows me to stand on the other side of the street and photograph the painting in its entirety. Still, here are some of them:

This (below) is one that I really loved. I like the one above as well.

This one (below, the following few frames) is one of the most intricate pieces I've seen on the entire wall.

Europeans seem to be fascinated by the 'Om' symbol. Imagine someone painting one somewhere in India and claiming to be radical!

What hopes! Perestroika!

Below: Danke, Andrej Sakharov by Russian artist Dmitri Vrubel

"My God, Help Me to Survive This Deadly Kiss" or "The Fraternal Kiss", again by Dmitri Vrubel. It's one of the most famous paintings on the Berlin Wall and an iconic image of the Cold War. It depicts the celebratory kiss of two Communist leaders -- the Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev and the East German leader Erich Honecker. 

Below: "So strong, and yet vulnerable. The nation, the human, the forest, the tree." 

Below: And there's even the Buddha, painted by Narendra Kumar Jain! 

So many symbols of hope, in so many different languages and cultural registers.

Weekend Travels

Glienicker Brucke, also known as the Bridge of Spies, spans the Havel river between the erstwhile Soviet-occupied Potsdam and US-occupied West Berlin during the Cold War. According to our tour guide, the bridge was used by spies from both areas to meet. It was also used by both powers to exchange captured enemy agents. And if you observe carefully, the farther half of the bridge has a darker colour than the nearer half! 

Cecilienhof, a palace in Neuer Garten, was built in English Tudor style by Kaiser Wilhelm II between 1914 and 1917 for his Crown Prince (another Wilhelm), and his wife Cecilie, after whom the palace takes its name. It was also the venue of the Potsdam Conference of 1945 after the defeat of Nazi Germany, where Churchill (and later Atlee), Stalin and Harry S Truman gathered to decide the fate of Germany.

well

 The wishing well at Cecilienhof (above)

Below: This star of red geraniums framed with blue hydrangeas was planted in July 1945 for the coming conference of the "Big Three".

With Vivek and Musadhique

This pyramid was the 'fridge' of the royal family... in winters, ice was taken from the frozen lake to line the cellars of the pyramid where food would then be stored!

With Min, a Vietnamese girl studying in Potsdam, and Delia, a Spanish engineering student currently interning in Potsdam. The building behind us is a huge greenhouse. The photo was taken by Quynh, Min's husband.

The view from the top of a double-decker bus in Berlin, on our way to Fort Hahneberg.

And this is Fort Hahneberg, hidden away in Berlin. Part heritage building, part nature reserve. Fort Hahneberg was a fortress built in the late 1800s to protect another citadel in Berlin. It was used by German soldiers until 1945 as a place for training, storing ammunition and medical supplies. But you'll get all that info from Wikipedia or something. The important thing is, a few scenes of Quentin Tarantino's Ingourious Basterds were shot here! 

Above: Vivek and Musadhique. The building behind these two guys was used by soldiers to keep a watch on the trenches and shoot any intruders. However, during the second world war, this fort was not attacked and, slowly, the building became a casino for the officers! 

Below: No, this part of the building was not demolished by the war. After the war, there were several houses and other civilian buildings that needed repair, and the German government gave the order that the fort -- by then a despised memory of Nazism and war -- could be demolished and bricks and material taken from it for these repairs. However, the fort was built to stand severe cannon fire, and the dynamites had to finally retreat in defeat.

Bats live within the walls of this fortress which is also a nature reserve.

Now Sandra, our guide, explains to us exactly where Brad Pitt was sitting in this scene from Inglourious Basterds.  

Apparently, the Nazis used to line up prisoners -- mostly their own soldiers who were there for misconduct -- against this wall and shoot them. Or so they say.

A bullet embedded in the wall.

From here, we can watch the bugs that are protected in the valley below.

And this is inside Park Sanssouci, Potsdam. Sanssouci, meaning "without sorrows" or "without care" was a summer palace built for King Frederick of Prussia in Rococo style around 1745. It was later occupied by Frederick William IV in the 19th century.

The terraced gardens at Schloss Sanssouci.

They don't make them like that any more!

In front of the big fountain at Park Sanssouci.

Schloss Sanssouci