Gritty City

            As much as Munich is quaint, wealthy, and conservative, Berlin is big, hip, poorer, and wrestling with the difficulties of reunification.  Munich, small in size and with a healthy dose of self-satisfied nostalgia about its cultural roots, reminds me of Boston.  Berlin, even more diverse, claiming title as the defining metropolitan hub of a reunified Germany, and with an edgy coolness, reminds me of New York.

Brandenburger Tor, topped by the Quadriga

            Hannah and Tobias had school vacation (a whole week, just six weeks after the start of school!), so we made plans to go exploring for a few days.  Hannah went up to Hamburg to visit our friends and to see the teenage nightlife there, while Tobias and I headed to Berlin.

            As the other members of the family will attest, when I plan vacations to visit exotic places, I cram in as many activities as possible.  This trip was no exception, and Tobias and I went all over the city, to some places we had been before (on our last visit when Tobias was much younger) and to some new places that neither of us had seen.

            As with many tourists, we spent the majority of our time in the former eastern part of the city with a few brief forays into the old western sector.  The western part, obviously the wealthier area for decades, has more parkland, more elegant residential neighborhoods (including a palace recalling an older imperial time), and more wealth.  On this side of town we went off to see the zoo and the Reichstag.  The former was extensive, but had the sad atmosphere of an older city zoo in which the animals live in often cramped quarters that were common before more enlightened zoo design was introduced.  The aquarium was more interesting for me, and filled with smaller fish that did not seem too big for their tanks. 

            Our other western destination – the Reichstag, part of a large complex of government buildings – was impressive on many levels and a fitting symbol for modern Germany democracy.  The glass dome of the building rises up out of the center of the old stone frame, in a wonderful blending of old and new.  The “green” construction demonstrates the German commitment to environmental progress, including a series of mirrors to direct sunlight down into the parliamentary chamber and thereby save on electricity, passive air exchange from the center of the building up to get fresh air, and recapture of heat from the venting air.  The audio tour they give you for free is first rate, telling all about the building as well as Berlin landmarks and history while you make your way up a spiral walkway to the top of the open-air dome. (The audio is equipped with a GPS so it starts and stops in all the right places.  No fumbling to punch in the proper number codes to get the narration going again.)

            Making arrangements to visit the Reichstag is a little bit of an ordeal, including registration to get a timed entrance slot, and two security checks with photo identification.  Since we were traveling within Germany, I neglected to bring our passports, but was lucky to find a sympathetic woman at the registration counter who accepted by Carson Center I.D. and pronounced that Tobias didn’t need anything because he was 12 years old.  Well, our best laid plans nearly fell apart when we showed up the next morning at our appointment time, only to have the guard cross-checking registration letters, I.D.s, and the printed list of visitors to scoff at my flimsy-looking I.D. card and to declare that Tobias needed a passport.  I asserted that the woman who registered us the previous day said that our identification was legitimate, otherwise she wouldn’t have given us the letter of permission.  The guard yelled a little more that this is not acceptable, but knew he couldn’t stop us since we had been issued permission already.  We walked through the security booth as he sputtered that the next time we visited the Reichstag we better bring our passports.  (Here was an instructive example about the enforcement of rules in Germany;  see previous blog post section on standing your ground in the face of bureaucratic intransigence.)

            From the Reichstag, we headed off for the Holocaust memorial just a few blocks away.  On our way there, we came upon a relatively new memorial to the Sinti and Roma killed during the war.  It is simple and moving with soft music playing in the background as you stand in contemplation.  

            The memorial for Jews killed in the Holocaust is, in contrast, massive, covering a whole block with large, slightly off-kilter concrete slabs, into which you gradually descend.  Going through it, you are dwarfed, and somewhat trapped, while the sounds of the city are muffled by the concrete and fade into the background.  It is a highly effective, moving memorial.  Below ground is a well done museum designed to highlight the effects of the Holocaust by telling the stories of individuals and families, not by giving a comprehensive history of the events.  The museum is filled with excruciating detail and testimonies.  

            We then ventured off to the old Jewish neighborhood in the east, and to the rebuilt Neue Synagogue.  The massive building dates from 1866;  it was partially destroyed during Kristallnacht, then almost completely destroyed in Allied bombing in the war, and rebuilt in 1995 as a museum and worship space.  Its elegant golden dome is visible from all over the city.  (Like Jewish sites throughout Germany and elsewhere, there is heavy security here with crash barriers in front, constant police guards, and metal detectors to get in.)

Looking up at the Neue Synagogue

We ducked into a small, nostalgic kosher café run by a conservative synagogue a few blocks away where we ate our lunch amid a hodge podge of eclectic antiques while listening to an Edith Piaf recording in the background.

We headed back into the postwar period with a trip up the old East German TV tower (Fernsehturm), built in 1969 to demonstrate communist prowess to the West Berliners.  Today, it is a prime tourist attraction with spectacular views of the whole city.  (We went up at night which was quite dramatic.)  So popular is the tower that you have to queue up forever, only to get timed tickets for three hours later. 

A view of the Fersehturm

 (As I stood on line waiting for the tickets, I couldn’t help but think that the outfit which ran the kiosk must have been established under the old regime;  I was yearning for some of that stereotypical German efficiency!  One ticket seller had to serve the near constant line of about one hundred people, while intermittently stopping all commerce to make announcements over the loud speaker.  Upon my return to Munich, I told one of my German colleagues about the experience, whereupon he laughed, “Well, what do you expect, it’s in the East!”)

            Anxious to kill three hours before we could go in the tower, we set off for a small private museum about the DDR (what we call in English the GDR).  The museum was crammed with artifacts and memorabilia from the old East Germany, instructing visitors about all the ways in which the East had been inferior.  The museum oozed judgmental nostalgia, making fun of East German kitsch and backward culture, and condemning the ideology and political system.  There were even exhibits illustrating how poorly East Germans had raised their children.

An old East German Trabi (not in the DDR museum, but part of a kitschy group tour caravan)

I couldn’t help thinking what a psychic toll reunification must have taken on former East Germans – even those who were strongly opposed to the old authoritarian regime.  It must have been exhausting to hear the constant drumbeat pronouncing all aspects of your identity inferior to that of your countrymen who happened to have been born on the other side of the wall. 

I certainly don’t mean to imply that the heavy-handed oppression of the East German government was imagined by western propagandists.  It was on display in all its brutality at the Stasi Museum in an eastern suburb of the city.  After a lengthy subway ride – changing through stations which Tobias labeled as “dumps” – we arrived at a poor neighborhood dominated by massive, squat old apartment and office buildings built in the Soviet era of architectural eyesores.  The Stasi was the East German secret police, and the current German government has preserved the former headquarters as a museum detailing all of the organization’s horrors.  Stepping through the doors here is like stepping back in time to when the Cold War shaped reality for East Germans.

Front entrance of the Stasi headquarters

The museum freezes time with retro décor from the 1960s and 1970s.  The office suite of Erich Mielke – the longest serving Stasi head from 1957 to 1989 – looks like where some ordinary executive might have worked, masking the horror that was carried out there.  It is hard to underestimate the power and reach of the man, and the number of people who were under his thumb.  The museum also contains exhibits on various dissidents and prisoners, propaganda organizations, and artifacts of the old spy trade, including hidden cameras in handbags, tree stumps, and fake garbage cans.  The items look like props used in a cheap James Bond knock-off dating from 1965.  Unlike at our last visit a few years ago, the museum has become more accessible to non-Germans, including English descriptions in most rooms.  But it’s clear that the main audience is still Germans coming to terms with the old regime.

            Our day was not yet done, as we made our way back into the center of town for a visit to the Jewish Museum, an innovative institution housed in a pioneering building whose architecture is designed to reflect themes of Jewish history, identity, and persecution.  The museum’s permanent exhibit starts with Jewish settlement in what would become Germany back in Roman times, and comes up to the present day.  The history and cultural explanations are extremely well done, and accessible to people who know nothing about Jews or Jewish history.  The story of the Holocaust is told comprehensively, but the museum is careful not to reduce Jews in Germany to that horror.  The museum is popular, hip, and very crowded.

            Finally, we stayed alert in “Bear”lin for the life-size, individually decorated bears scattered throughout the city.  Like the exhibit CowParade in cities around the world (first seen in the U.S. in Chicago in 1999), “Buddy Bears” were initiated by a sculptor in Berlin in 2001.  They are a whimsical addition to this gritty city.

Posted by Michelle and Tobias