I’d never really thought about going to Germany until I found myself in front of a computer, booking a flight to Berlin a few weeks ago. Although I can think of a vast amount of historical associations with Germany, I had no preconceptions as to what it’s like today. And I think that’s why I loved Berlin.
The tempo of Berlin is much calmer than the (occasionally) frenetic atmosphere of Paris. It didn’t feel like everyone on the road was in immediate danger of death by erratic motorists. Almost everyone spoke English, and they didn’t seem to resent having to do so (as my German skills are extremely limited and practically nonexistent).
Berlin was completely ravaged after the two World Wars and its years under the Nazi and Communist regimes. The country just finished paying off the reparations from World War I a few weeks ago, about 90 years later. Whole sections of the city were simply gone, and the ones that survived the bombings were cut in two by the wall. The city is now a strange combination of the strikingly new with an undercurrent of its long and painful history: the architecture mostly dates back to the last half of the twentieth century, even though many buildings were made to appear older. Berlin is marked by the past and a strong sensitivity to it. We took a walking tour that showed us the bunker where Hitler committed suicide, now under a parking lot for an apartment building. There’s a small sign that was just put up recently, because there was a lot of debate about whether marking the spot could possibly perpetuate or glorify him, or draw Neo-Nazis.
The walking tours we took were extremely informative; we saw monuments in both East and West Berlin, from the Brandenburg Gate to the Holocaust Memorial, Checkpoint Charlie, the Wall, the East Side Gallery, and the former Stasi headquarters. The Holocaust Memorial was haunting. It’s a large space just down the street from the Brandenburg Gate, filled with thousands of rows of concrete blocks resembling a cemetery. When you walk through the rows, the ground begins to slope down until you’re twenty feet down in the shadows, surrounded by the dark columns for hundreds of meters in each direction. There are no plaques, no words, no markings to explain the monument. The number of graves, 2711 I believe, has no meaning to highlight the utter absurdity and incomprehensibility of the scale of the Holocaust. Although the monument is controversial, I think it’s appropriate – it makes you experience something that will be engraved into your memory rather than just looking at a statue or reading a plaque.
Location: 35 Bredowstrasse, Berlin, Germany
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