Exploring Berlin - Part Two
Check out part one by clicking here.
Hopping off the Flixbus from Poland (more about that in an upcoming blog), I wasted no time in exploring another important part of Berlin’s history – the grand Tempelhof airport, once the biggest building in the world before the opening of The Pentagon. What makes it so bizarre is that it currently sits empty having closed as an airport in 2008. Its iconic status saved it from redevelopment with Berliners heavily rejecting the idea in a 2014 referendum that also keeps the vast 355 hectares of open land (more than fifty percent bigger than the entirety of Monaco) free for public recreation. It’s little wonder that it used to be the Kaiser’s parade ground and it makes the centre of Berlin that much more remarkable for its open spaces of land.
Coming into the last few days of my trip I had to use my time wisely in order to see everything I had planned (and a bit more). My next full day took me to the Topography of Terror and the newly opened Samurai Museum. The former certainly lives up to its name with a section of the Berlin wall sitting on top of a small part of the ruined Gestapo headquarters. Everything above ground was obliterated during the dying days of the Second World War, but the remains of the basement have been repurposed into an outdoor exhibition on the rise of fascism and the repression of those who the Nazis deemed as ‘undesirables’. It’s another great example of Berlin combining education with real pieces of history and seeing remnants of two authoritarian regimes side-by-side makes you realise how much the city suffered in just a few decades.
With my keen interest in Japan the Samurai Museum was a must see ever since I found out it opened in Spring of last year. I was not disappointed. Whilst I have tried to see as much Japanese history on display as I could back in the UK, exhibits are often limited in size and scope. So, to see such a huge range of armour, swords and other decorative items in one place was just incredible. I imagine few people in the West outside of museum curators have been able to see such a thorough collection.
Being a brand-new museum, the experience is very much one of the twenty first century. A set of items is supported by a large touch screen that goes into more detail than you could possibly absorb in both English and German. Certain items also sit on a plinth that you can rotate with a button and periodically a booming performance of drums is played on stage by a hologram. There’s nothing stuffy or boring here and even if you have just a passing interest in Japanese history its well worth the €12 price of admission.
Luckily whilst being in Berlin I was there at the same time at the annual Festival of Lights, and better still I had a local guide with me in the form of a woman I’d been speaking to on the language exchange app HelloTalk. Given the looming energy crisis the festival was somewhat toned down in comparison to previous years but it was still nonetheless impressive and a little surreal to see such lifelike projections on famous buildings like the Brandenburg gate. What gave me the most satisfaction though was speaking extensively in German to someone in person. Something I had never been able to do before up until this point.
My final full day took me to the grand abodes of the Prussian Kings – Sanssouci in Potsdam. Sanssouci Palace itself, built by King Frederick the Great as his summer palace, is famous for its extravagant Rococo design that has to been seen to be believed. It’s not big, with the self-guided tour only taking forty minutes, but it gives a good insight into who Frederick the Great was and his devotion to culture and the arts. Much of the furniture and paintings from that time period are still there, including the very chair that he died in, in 1786. Originally he wasn’t buried onsite despite having the crypt built during his lifetime. It wasn’t until German reunification in 1991 that he was finally interred there, and well-wishers often leave potatoes for the Kartoffelnkönig for his role in making the humble potato a staple of the everyday diet in his Kingdom. Sadly, I completely missed this as I didn’t realise where his grave was until I had left Potsdam. Looks like I will be going back on day (with a potato or two).
My final day in Berlin actually gave me a decent amount of time up until early afternoon to explore some more of the city before my flight back to the UK. Having left my hostel, I hopped on the U-Bahn to the Brandenburg Gate before wondering into the Tiergarten, another large public park dotted with many small monuments and statues. Seeing as it is fifty percent bigger than Hype Park there’s plenty to wander around and being a sunny autumn day, many people were sat out on the banks of the lakes and ponds. In fact, I had been incredibly lucky with the weather the entire time I was there. I never saw a drop of rain and the sun was constantly shining almost every day.
Along my walk through the Tiergarten both the Soviet War Memorial and the Sigessäule (Victory Column) certainly grabbed my attention. But the thing that really blew me away and what I would say was the most impressive sight of the entire trip came right at the end. The Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church. As I worked my way from the Tiergarten to the church it suddenly loomed out at me, this colossal ruin severely damaged during the Second World War. It’s hard to describe how I felt when I first saw it, but there’s just something so emotional about seeing such a grand building as a ruin. The damage and destruction of war is that much more tangible when you behold it. The true power of the explosives that rained down on the city laid bare. Of all the monuments left in tribute to Berlin’s tumultuous twentieth century history, this is by far the most effective. It wasn’t lost on me either that at the foot of this colossus was the small memorial to those who died in a more recent tragedy. The 2016 terrorist attack on a Christmas market which claimed the lives of thirteen people. Small portraits alongside a red candle and white stones mark each victim and a golden fissure marks the exact location where the truck came to a stop.
Despite its modern reputation as a party city of hippies, there’s a deep sense of memory that permeates every corner of this city. From the large monuments and memorials to the small plaques on the ground that mark individual victims of the Holocaust, the more you look the more you see the scars of the past. But with death there is also rebirth. The city has seen huge amounts of rejuvenation since the fall of the wall that still carries on to this day. In fact, 2020 saw the completion of the reconstructed Berlin Palace that had been originally demolished after the Second World War and replaced by the East German Palace of the Republic which in turn was demolished in 2008. A reminder Berlin remains very much a city that is and not just a city that was.
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