Scratching the surface of Berlin

24 August 15 2014
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BREAKS I HOTELS I FLI GHTS
BY TRONA DOHERTY
Berlin is one of those places that
regularly pops up on lists of cool places
to live. It is hailed as a musicians mecca,
an artists haven, and unmissable for
anyone with even a passing interest in
20th century history. Many of the citys
residents we met over our weekend stay
seemed to have arrived in Berlin by
means of some grand adventure - like
the street artist from Australia who
came for a weekend, fell in love with the
city, and ended up staying six years.
Arriving in early May, my question was
this - just how much of this famed city
can you experience in one long
weekend?
As it turned out, the bank holiday
weekend was an interesting time to visit
the city. May Day is the day when
political demonstrations combine with
raucous street parties and family events
- our first day unearthed an outdoor
medieval festival and an open air dance
party, though we just missed the better-
known Kreuzberg street party.
Speaking of Kreuzberg - one of the
first things a visitor to Berlin will notice
is the prevalence of murals and graffiti -
they dominate the landscape, popping
up on every available surface, giving the
city a gritty, lived-in feel.
We took a street art tour (booked
through the alternativeberlin.com
website) which brings visitors through
some of the lesser visited streets to take
in some of the best examples of street
art, graffiti, and murals. Our guide,
himself a street artist, talked us through
the various works, explaining who is
behind them and what their motivations
are, before bringing us to a workshop
location to try out some of the
techniques for ourselves - a highly
recommended eye-opening experience
that helps make sense of the urban
landscape.
Also available on the Alternative
Berlin website is the Anti Pubcrawl, an
ideal way to discover Berlins diverse
nightlife by taking in such delights as a
goth horror rock bar, a flower power bar,
burlesque pub, upside down bar, ping
pong bar, live bands - just some of the
options! Berlin is brimful of buzzing
bars and restaurants. Just around the
corner from our hostel, a New Zealand-
themed spot called Schlafmeile in the
Friedrichshain area, we came across a
little music bar called Bar Bobu - a tiny,
accidental discovery where we spent a
happy evening absorbed in some
amazing jazz and soothing soul.
Anyone who was around in the 80s
will remember the iconic images of one
of the most significant events in this
citys history, the fall of the Berlin Wall
in 1989. Remnants of the Wall are still
visible - the longest remaining stretch
has been turned into a 1.3km long
gallery, the East Side Gallery,
representing the changes to the city
when the wall came down. Each panel is
more intriguing than the last, with
scenes depicting the great sadness and
hope of this time of great change for the
city.
Then there are the eerie reminders of
some of the darkest chapters of
Germanys history. Nothing is brushed
under the carpet here, and the
memorials are designed to disturb.
Right in the heart of the city, for
example, stands the Memorial to the
Murdered Jews of Europe, designed by
architect Peter Eisenmann. Spanning
19,000 square metres, the extraordinary
design is a maze of over 2,700 concrete
pillars of varying heights, though which
visitors are invited to make their way on
uneven terrain.
A visit to Sachsenhausen
concentration camp just outside the city
is a must for the visitor to Berlin, a
hugely unsettling experience that is still
haunting me months later. The Jewish
Museum offers some historical context
with a journey through the history of
Jews in Germany. The most striking
exhibits here are the Holocaust Tower,
an empty concrete room lit only by the
tiniest sliver of light, and an installation
entitled Fallen Leaves by Israeli artist
Menashe Kadishman - 10,000 metal faces
litter the ground in a cold, echoing space
to represent victims of violence and
war.
In fact you could spend any number of
weeks touring just the citys World War
II and Holocaust memorial sites. Our
tour guide in Sachsenhausen left us
with this thought: If every city or
country faced up to its past the way that
Germany and Berlin do, imagine how
different the world would be.
But Berlin has so much more to offer.
There were scores of museums and
cathedrals, parks and palaces, bars and
street markets which we had to pass by,
promising ourselves wed get around to
them next time. Berlin is a city full of
reminders of its past yet not at all bound
by it - it is like spending a few days in a
bubbling ball of energy. I came home
feeling as if I had barely scratched the
surface.
Fallen Leaves by
Menashe Kadishman in
the Jewish Museum