At this moment it is 10:45am and we are over an hour into our 4 hour journey to Berlin. Looking out the window I see more factories and soviet apartment blocks and I kind of like it. There is a soul and a story that comes out of poverty or industrialism. I think we are approaching the Czech/German border. Our journey will take us through Dresden, that once beautiful city destroyed by the British as revenge for Coventry. Then arriving in Berlin for about 3:15pm. Our directions to hostel look precise and German. They are long and any deviation or attempt at Ad Hoc will be punished with stress and domestics. With one night in Berlin we have to take advantage of the city. Berlin is a city I've never visited but feel is a vague part of me. My mother served in the army in Berlin after the war as part of the British presence I guess. A friend of hers was murdered in Berlin and that had an effect on her in my early childhood. She also undertook the risky task of taking children to see relatives stuck behind in East Berlin, and told us stories of how The Stazi followed her and made this practise discontinue. I have a bad or almost non-existant relationship with my mother. However, her stories of Berlin and Germany fill me with some pride in the woman. For me no other city more than Berlin is where the West met East during the cold war and The Wall was more than bricks and cables and dogs, it was more symbolic. It also reminds us that the war ending is only a recent thing. When Germany reunified in 1990, WW2 ended properly. Because up to this point there was always a NATO and Warsaw Pact presence. When both sides pulled out they left Germany properly to itself and completely demilitarised. WW2 was actually from 1939 to 1990, quite thought provoking. Also I'm hoping to see my admiration of West Germany which absorbed its Eastern Lander, and worked hard to ensure their quality of life and wages came up to the high level of their Western counterparts. The fact Germany seems to be achieving this and still maintaining its position as the largest economy in Europe and stabiliser of Europe boosts my admiration even further. It makes me think Angela Merkel (Germany's first female and East German Chancellor) should have the final word on Europe, and the toff in Downing Street should just sit down and listen.
Arrival in Berlin
Its now 9:45pm here in Berlin and I've had a good look around the city and I love it. I don't know what to add which is before the fact, as it measured up in many ways and confirmed what I expected. Our hostel deserves a shout out. It's Plus Hostel Berlin. The same chain we've used in Florence and Prague. However, this is best and I would say the room we have to ourselves is better than hotels I've paid of £100 for, and the cost was £32. The building is situated in the Eastern part of the city and as such appears to be an old soviet style office block with has been reused as a hostel.
Berlin is a sprawling city and you can see from where we are the difference the wall made. One side the western side is traditional and European and the Eastern side under Soviet control up until 1990 has been a focus of new trendy bars to replace the drab of life just inside the iron curtain.
Essentially the Berlin wall does dominate the cities past and future, but its still not bigger than Berlin. Obviously we visited the wall, and the Brandenburg Gate (BG) and Check Point Charlie (CPC), so lets get that out the way. The Brandenburg Gate and CPC are quite excellent monuments, as major junctions in the oversight of the four way devision of Berlin up until 1990. However, a walk following the route of the former wall from BG to CPC throws up some thought provoking sights. Keeping west of the wall from BG and walking towards Potsdamer Platz you first come across an array of some 2000 large bricks, this amazing small landscape is a memorial to the murdered Jews of Europe. For some reason the size of the blocks and the area seems to fittingly magnify the injustice of the holocaust. Keep on walking and by Potsdamer Place you see your first remains of the wall in any great size. A good quick picture stop but not the best. The best view of the wall comes when you left on Streseman and then a right on Neiderkirchherst to a long stretch of wall and bunkers. Alongside this wall is The Topography of Terrors. As you slowly walk from left to right reading the story of the beginning of the nazi party to their seizing goverment to grabbing every power which should be seperated to, well stop something like the nazis happening. To filling everyones minds with propaganda. To the final days when the Soviets took Berlin and in retaliation for years of being called subhuman and worthless by nazi retoric, decided to treat German citizens in the same way. It is also fitting that Neiderkirchherst Strasse where they built this prominent chunk of wall was also a prominent strasse for the nazis during their processions. Its at time like these that I want to be balanced about the freedoms or lack of freedoms by the former East Germans. I'm a firm believer in the free market, and growing up under a free system I have grown comfortable that I can say call David Cameron a useless cock here on this public website and noone will arrest me. This is something that the East Germans never had. However, as communism is frought with contradictions, most criticisms of socialist regimes are a lso covered in inconsistencies and hypocracy. Therefore, I'm slow to be critical of the Soviet regime for all its downfalls. Because the Russian Revolution was the biggest economic experiment and probably the last of its significance to appear again. The East Germans and Eastern Europeans suffered but we benefitted at their expense, and let me explain this. Would the post war welfare reforms of 1947 in the UK have happened if there wasn't one eye to the east thinking we need to give the working classes something before they storm our palaces? Likewise the New Deal in the USA. Everything we working classes have is because our governments looked east and saw the power the workers possessed if only they had the guts and wit to use it as they did in Russia. The problem of course with equality is that humans want to be better than eachother not equal. You have to reduce freedom to keep things equal. In a way I'm sad communism failed in Eastern Europe as had it thrived the freedoms would have come back naturally, or people will be like the Chinese and be intelligent enough to notice that if freedom is all about criticising government and playing on facebook, then how bloody shallow. So the wall was a place of regret for me. It was also an intimidating place which leads me to admire my mother for smuggling children to see their parents over the wall, good for her. Going back to communism, it didn't work in Europe. However, looking back to 2008 it seems capitalism failed in Europe and the west also, whereas communism thrived in China.
Tomorrow back to Prague and start of the route all the way down to Istanbul. My excitement is back.
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