Berlin - The Wall

Top photo: Atrium at the Sony Center at Potsdammer Platz.

Middle photo: the bricks marking where the Berlin Wall existed throughout the city.

Bottom photo: A view of the Bradenburg Gate.

Berlin's history about the Berlin Wall is still very much a part of the city sights. Our first stop was to visit Potsdammer Platz, where the vibrancy of Guilded Age Berlin had been thriving. We found many photos of the square back in the early 1900's, where tram traffic moved back and forth, where people streamed across the streets, and where large buildings held many stores, cafes and hotels.

We bought photos of this area after the Allied bombing completely destroyed it. Then the Wall went up right through this area about twenty years later. Now, twenty years after the Wall came down, Potsdamer Platz is again a hugely vibrant area, with brand new buildings that rise many stories in the air, where there are several luxury hotels surrounding the square, and where shops and restaurants are full of shoppers and visitors.

Sony has built a huge theater there, within the confines of a beautiful atrium, with light shows, cafes, places to explore and much more.

There is a brand new arcade, which is like a mall. The stores are wonderful, everything you could ever want to buy. It has lots of places to eat and sculpture throughout the arcade, and even a huge grocery store to get supplies on the way home. We loved to go in there for a bratwurst and a croissant (Jack the bratwurst and me the croissant). There were several very good restaurants that we frequented for lunch and dinner. There were also the chain restaurants, as in Tony Roma, all around the arcade.

There was a live theater at the end of the block, near the Sony theater. In the front of the Platz, there was always some kind of demo on selling something or giving away goodies.

Across the street from the Platz are huge new buildings where businesses are housed - everything from Price Waterhouse to DHL, and not all businesses are American. There are several European logos to be seen there.

Through all of this was the ever-present rememberance of the Wall - a brick line on the sidewalk that was the demarcation of the British and the Soviet sector. The brick line runs down the street, all the way to the Brandenburg Gate.

Just on the edge of the Platz is a remnant of the Wall, and then we saw how tall this thing was. It is well over six feet tall, so there is no way to see over it except to get a ladder or stand on someone's shoulders. Thick and ugly it was. I was shocked. Of course it was covered in graffiti over its ugly concrete gray facade.

We walked down to the Brandenburg Gate - all restored now to its former glory. We also have photos of the Gate at the time of the Wall, and the area was a wasteland. Right inside the gate stands the newly restored American embassy. The Adalon hotel, a luxury hotel before WWII but destroyed during the Allied bombing and neglected during the Soviet occupation, is now fully restored to its beauty and, I am sure, its high prices for a room.

The new British embassy is right around the corner, and the Russian embassy is down the street. The French embassy is also in the vicinty.

The Brandenburg Gate draws hundreds of visitors almost everyday, taking photos and buying souvenirs from the hawkers.

Not far from the Brandenburg Gate is probably the most famous checkpoint of the Berlin Wall era - Checkpoint Charlie, separating the American from the Soviet occupation areas. All around the area are big poster boards, showing photgraphs of what it was like in 1961, when the Wall went up. Down the street they have saved one whole block of the Wall, with all of the grafitti all over it. They have also saved a block in the neighborhood to what it looked like in the twenty years of the Soviet occupation: completely barren, with weeds and pieces of concrete strewn about - probably a building was there and it was torn down by the Soviets for security purposes. They had to be able to see everywhere to make sure that noone was sneaking over the Wall.

It was hard to take all of this in, especially since all of terror and hardship of a people happened during one's lifetime. We walked around and saw local people who probably lived all through this, and we wondered what kind of stories they could tell.

This area of Checkpoint Charlie is a huge tourist draw - tour buses always driving up and down the streets, and knots of people reading the information on the wall and snapping photos. Jack was at this very checkpoint back in the early 60's. His dad, who was in the military, was sent to this area when the Wall went up, and so the Luehrs family moved to Germany for three years. Jack, his mom and his brother Bruce had visited eastern Berlin one cold afternoon, and he said it was spooky, with all of the security measures and the Soviet soldiers everywhere. He said when they entered, their passports were taken from them until they returned back through the checkpoint.

The whole Soviet sector of the city is now trying to revive or regain its former stature. Rich places, like the Stadt Mitte and the area near the Brandenburg Gate, are already back to normal, with thriving shopping, eating, luxury hotels and apartments. The concert house is now a thing of beauty and the churches on the Gendharme square are magnificent.

Other neigborhoods, especially those east of Alexander Platz, deep in the Soviet sector, are still trying to restore themselves. They were the working class neigborhoods of Berlin before the War and the Wall, so they are trying to maintain that image while being a vibrant and safe area to live. We visited the neighborhood way up north in the city, where they have a Saturday market, and walked around, after enjoying a bratwurst and a beer. The place was full of young families, parents walking the strollers, others playing in the children's playground. Some of the apartment buildings had seen better times, but others, right next to them, were newly painted and regenerated.

I thought that Berlin would try to eradicate the remnants of the Wall, but they celebrate its demise and how they eventually overcame the Soviet control. And they want others to see how it was and how they have bounced back in such a short period of time to become the great city that it used to be.