42point195
By marathonerArchive for Destinations
Former border crossing
When Berlin was still divided into East and West, there were designated crossings along the Berlin Wall where people and traffic could move between East and West Berlin. Checkpoint Charlie was designated as the crossing for foreigners and members of the Allied Forces, which is possibly the reason for which it is the most well-known of all.
In those days, the Wall at Checkpoint Charlie used to form the border between the former American zone and the former Soviet zone. Today, little of the former checkpoint is left at its location in Berlin. Traffic flows freely along Friedrichstrasse, where the checkpoint was located. On what was then the American side, sit a replica of the old guard house and an old sign informing people that they were about to leave one sector, stepping into another.
A private museum, Haus am Checkpoint Charlie, is just a stone throw away. It opened a couple of years after the Berlin Wall was erected. Because of its close proximity to the checkpoint and its windows that dominated the crossing, it was also used by “escape helpers” as a hiding place where they would observe, from behind the windows what was going on at the crossing. This usage was on top of its function as a museum. Today, the museum houses exhibits that include written and graphical accounts of escape attempts, both successful and unsuccessful, and escape devices used by some of those people.
Although the East-West border is long gone, visitors will still find a few young men dressed in military uniform at the checkpoint. This should not be an unexpected sight at other tourist sites in Berlin associated with the East-West division. I had come across another one of such person at Pariser Platz, just by the Brandenburg Gate.
If you do see them when you visit Berlin, do not hesitate to step up to them to say hi. They will gladly pose for a photograph with you. Look out also for the ones who have a stamp in their hand. They probably also have a stack of passport-looking booklets with them. They are likely to take one of those booklets and stamp a East or West German visa for you. I have not tried getting one, but just like any other type of touristic memento, I think you probably have to pay for the visa. For the price, you get to keep the stamped “passport” as a souvenir of you trip to Berlin.
The Wall
When I was visiting Berlin, The Wall was the first thing I headed out to see the day following my arrival, after having a good night’s rest at the hostel. This is the 20th year following its fall, and today, 9 November, happens to be the anniversary of the Fall of the Wall.
Saying that I headed out to “see The Wall” may sound misleading, because there is really no one location where the wall is. The Berlin Wall was a boundary, a wall, literally, that divided Berlin into East and West and separated West Berlin from the East German territory that surrounded it.
20 years on, the wall has long been torn down and the former East and West Berlin is now one city. Although there is no one place in Berlin called “The Wall”, a Wall Memorial does exist and several locations with remains of the old wall can still be found. If you pay attention, as you walk along the streets with which The Wall once intersected, you will find the trace of a path intentionally built into the streets, marking the position that was once taken up by The Wall.
So perhaps as you drive along Potsdammer Strasse towards Potsdammer Platz, you may come across a narrow strip of cobblestone across the road. This was where The Wall once stood. Perhaps as you stroll along the pavement near the Sony Centre, you may find a strip of the pavement that is indented, like what you see in the picture above. This was where The Wall once stood.
Even though it was known as the Berlin Wall, the boundary dividing the East and the West actually had more than one wall. At the Wall Memorial along Bernauer Strasse, an observation deck allows visitors to contemplate on a reproduction of the wall at that location. There was a a wall on the East German side and another on the West German side. Between these two walls was “No-man’s Land”, or the Death Strip. It was heavily guarded and was made to be escapee-proof. Mines were laid at some stretches to deter people from making forbidden crossings.
Taking a peek through a crack in the reconstructed wall from the “East German” side at the Wall Memorial.
As I learned from the museum’s exhibits at the Wall Memorial, The Wall was not built in one day. After the Second World War, Berlin was divided into the American, French, British and USSR-occupied zones. The USSR-occupied zone would later become East Germany. How The Wall came about started with East Germany beginning to restrict its residents from crossing over to West Germany. Road barriers made of barbed wires were set up overnight blocking access between the USSR-occupied zone from the rest of Berlin.
Film footage at the museum showed scenes shot at Bernauer Strasse, along which the border between the French-occupied and USSR-occupied zones ran. In the footage, Berliners, east and west, stood and watch the barriers made of barbed wires being laid. Later, columns would be erected to set up a more rigid form of barrier. In a scene, a young woman waved from one side of the division to somebody on the other side, possibly somebody dear to her, a handkerchief in her waving hand, dabbing her eyes with it from time to time. The fence-like barrier would in turn evolve into a wall, and the wall, eventually, over the years, into a security installation. Could anyone have imagined how those first barbed wires could have turned into The Berlin Wall?
The former East German side, bordered by Bernauer Strasse. A panel by the street here indicates that tunnels were found in one of these houses and were used by East German in their attempt to move to West Berlin.
The same location on Bernauer Strasse, but looking towards the former West German side.
Engraving at one end of the Wall Memorial
The Wall Memorial and the observation deck at the Documentation Centre.
Like the rest of the city, the wall no longer stood as imposing as it did. The stretch of wall that remains along Bernauer Strasse is now a reminder of the city’s history. The city has moved on during the past 20 years and will continue to. 20 years on, the city and the world remembers.
Exhibits at Potsdammer Platz, outside the Sony Centre. This was an original piece of the wall. Panels with photographs and text were affixed to the other side.
One of the exhibition panels at Potsdammer Platz showing Brandenburg Gate behind The Wall. The sign reads, “Caution, you are leaving West Berlin” or something like that. During those days, Brandenburg Gate stood on the deserted No-man’s Land.
Brandenburg Gate
Here we go, Brandenburg Gate, built during the Prussian times as a ciy gate to Berlin, survived World War II, and during the years when the Wall still stood, found itself in no-man’s land and often seen in footages that covered Western leaders’ visits.
Sunday, we will all be running through the gate. When that happens, the finish line will be real close.
In NYC once again
Flew in to NYC this evening. The shared shuttle took me for a long ride, dropping passengers uptown, zigzagging its way along the city’s streets, before letting me off on 24th Street.
Long ride, it may be, but looking out the window as the shuttle weaved through town, I knew the sight belonged to one of a big city’s. There was traffic on the roads. There were people on the streets, walking. There were shops along the roads, many still open for business in the sevenish-eightish.
Each time I find myself in a city like that, I would picture myself living there. It can be New York, it can be San Francisco, it can be Chicago. More recently, I visited Mexico City, and why not, if language is not an issue? And how can I forget Paris?
What is it that is common among these cities? That they are big? That different parts of the cities seem connected to each other? That it feels like there are things going on in the cities all the time?
Probably. There are possibly other things too, that would take too much of my time to write in this short post. It may also be the result of trying to make contrasts with where I am living.
Treat this as another of my whines about the city where I live.
Getting around in Mexico City
Is easy.
This city has an established subway system, which is called the Metro. For most tourists, the Metro is more than sufficient. Between the metro station and your final destination may be a pleasant walk and if you find walking around is too much of an undertaking, you may be like me and hop onto one of the privately-operated buses that are very common in town.
That said, I used either the Metro or my legs to get virtually everywhere, including the airport and the bus stations, when I was in Mexico City. There were only a couple of occasions when I took a bus. To begin with, there was a Metro station almost at the doorstep of the hostel where I stayed. Taking the Metro to get around was a convenient option for me.
These are the stations of the Pink Line, or Line #1, that stops by my hostel. Each station has its own graphical representation. You need only to look out for that to know your stop. (Though I prefer to know the name of the station too.)
The DF’s (Districto Federal, what Mexico City is called) Metro is, in all sense of the term, a mass transit system. It is among the mass transit systems in the world that transport the most people around. We are looking at ridership that is comparable to those of NYC and Paris.
In the DF’s Metro, you encounter people from all walks of life. Well, maybe not those who would be riding in their Benz or BMWs anyway, but there are so many others who ride the Metro. It is interesting to watch people in the trains.
One day, in a crowded train at a crowded station, a Tío (uncle in Spanish) was wrestling his way into the carriage, holding a piñata in the shape of Wall-E over his head in both his hands. Christmas was near. Perhaps that was meant for the little ones at home? Tío managed to find some standing room next to a seated passenger but as the train left the station, he lost his balance and one of his hands had to grab on to a handle bar so that he could stabalise himself. Wall-E fell onto the laps of the seated Señor Passajero (passenger in Spanish) and Tío conveniently left it to his charge, now freeing both hands to hang on to the handle bars. When Tío arrived at his station, Señor Passajero gladly handed over Wall-E and the two warmly exchanged smiles and a melodious ¡Gracias!
The Metro is also a place for hawking stuff. Tidbits, tissue paper, pirated CDs or DVDs… and I have seen someone selling nail clippers. The hawkers would make sure that they did not go unnoticed. They would announce their presence once on board by crying out what they were selling and would walk from one end of the carriage to the other end repeating what they said so that everybody had a chance to hear them. The CD and DVD hawkers would inject some lively music to the commuters’ ride by having ‘live’ demos of their goods. They had music blasting from their backpacks, where they carried their speakers and players. If you observe carefully, they do not just have their speakers kept in the backpacks. The backpacks were designed, maybe even improvised, such that a piece of meshed fabric was used in place of a solid one, exactly where the speakers sat, so that sound that came out would not be muffled.
Observations of gross behaviour can be made in the Metro too, for one day, I saw a man who was seated facing me pinching some bodily substance from his face using his fingers and wiped them off a handle bar next to him. Eeeks! He repeated that two more times and the bodily substance left on the bar each time remained very visible to me from where I sat.
While that was definitely disgusting, different people may have different ideas on what an agreeable train ride is like. To me, a reliable and accessible public transport system is like arteries in the body. It is vital to giving a city its life. As city dwellers belonging to the same city, we may not all live in the same neighbourhood, but we can share this common experience of commuting and being part of the city. The public transport system connects people to people and people to places. This is what the city I live now so lacks.
