November 4 Berlin

We have been charmed by ancient and medieval city walls preserved in Italy and Germany. Here in Berlin, the legacy of the Berlin Wall is in-your-face present and anything but charming.

I did not understand that the Iron Curtain was not just a metaphor but an actual fence erected through Germany and Europe. I always naively thought of the Berlin Wall as a north south running wall dividing the two sides of the city. But it was a double wall surrounding all of West Berlin, an island in Communist East Germany.

Reminders of the wall are abundant. Firstly, former East Berlin is filled with Soviet style architecture. Our hotel is one of these. Outside, it’s plain. Inside it’s functional with sharp angles and very long halls. (When I woke up this morning, for about 30 seconds, I thought I was in Moscow.)

I learned that seventy to ninety percent of Berlin was destroyed. The big, functional apartment buildings were ugly but, I think necessary to get people housed efficiently.

We saw a few remainders of the wall. Most of it has been torn down but parts of the wall still stand. It’s only twelve feet high, and old wooden water pipes line the tops. Our guide explained that they would grease the pipes to make them difficult to climb over.

The wall was double, with a no man’s land in the middle. I think I’ve seen movies of the watchtowers and ugly scenes of people trying to escape.

Of course most of the wall has been torn down. The city has a Berlin Wall Trail, a brick path in the streets you can follow.

This week, November 9, the “fall” of the Soviet bloc thirty years ago will be celebrated. We saw preparations for the show around the old Brandenburg Gate, now a symbol of unity. We also saw the touristy Checkpoint Charlie, the gate that Americans and foreigners could pass through.

Psychological scars must remain. I heard people make snarky jokes about East Germans. Our guide, an East Berliner, told me she never went out of East Germany through any gate. Her older sisters escaped, and as a result her dad was demoted in his Communist post, her journalist mother lost her job and she was kicked out of grad school before she could finish her a PhD. She later researched her “file” and guessed that her advisor was a spy, and that he reported her.

I am drained by thoughts and images of barbed wire, machine guns, protesters, ugh. This wall dividing Berlin was tragic, and the repair and reparation will go on for many more years.