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.
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.
Thank you for this :) Even I was feeling a bit down at the outset hearing that it is so ordinary, and then with the dramatic twist you changed it all :)
ReplyDeleteheehee... that's why pramod used to call me dramatic i guess :D
Deleteheyy, this is awesome, aparna..!! i wish i can see this amazing graffiti someday..!! :)
ReplyDeletethanks! i was thinking of you when i was there. and i'm sure you'll visit it one day! (also, let's create some graffiti like this back at you-know-where!)
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