Berlin re-visited: Summer 2017

A painfully rigorous and harsh semester had finally come to an end in Hamburg in late July 2017, which only meant one thing: Blowing off some steam. Actually, it meant two things: Blowing off some steam and another painful endeavor for moving, visas, residence permits, accommodation and switching universities. But the latter ones could wait because we had a long overdue trip to the capital of Deutschland – Berlin.

I had actually travelled to Berlin already, in the winter of 2016, and the cold, chilly, rainy experience I had had there left an old, dingy, dark and bleak impression in my mind. I also didn’t have much time to see the city that well because the whole purpose of my visit was data collection for a research project. This time, it was completely different because not only was I visiting Berlin to have fun, but it was also the summer. And I got to realize how different a perception of Berlin I had had just because I was in the winter. We were very lucky because the weather was really nice this time for the four and a half days we were there (sometimes a bit too nice for my liking). And the dark and grimy city that I once perceived transformed into a vibrant, living, breathing city that was showing off its liveliness and energy constantly. Berlin was an unpredictable place that had streets, squares, parks, multifunctional spaces and buildings that had stories and offerings that took you by surprise. Berlin truly showed an example of globalization, where you could listen to music from around the world in the streets, where you could eat food ranging from Lebanese to Vietnamese to Mexican to Jamaican. Berlin had alternative lifestyle, and it seemed like people could do whatever the hell they wanted to. It had a versatility to attract people who had different tastes, different cultures and different lifestyles. Berlin had art, where you could see graffiti everywhere, museums about anything and everything. And most importantly, Berlin had history.

I had only four days with me in Berlin, and I’m pretty sure I experienced only the tip of the iceberg from what the city really could offer. But it was still an overwhelmingly wonderful and diverse experience.

A trip to Teufelsberg

Teufelsberg was once a US Military Espionage Operations Center in Berlin during the Cold War. After they shut down the operations permanently in 1992, a few years after the end of the cold war, the abandoned building was turned into a graffiti museum, where artists from around the world expressed peace, humanity, empathy, anti-capitalism, love, irony, satire, philosophy, hate, life and much more through graffiti art. The building and the whole area had a crude setting, and it looked like after it was abandoned, renovations were not done at all. To me, it served the purpose of preserving the cold, empty and indifferent vibe it probably used to have when it was still in operation. Graffiti were amongst unmanaged staircases, dusty doors, water-leaking ceilings and moldy walls. The area had three domes (which were used as radomes to conceal the antenna for satellite connection) that were already ragged and pretty much destroyed, but served as an excellent place for a DJ stage and reverbing music. The best thing about Teufelsberg was that it was in the suburbs of the city, pretty much in the middle of a jungle. We walked for about an hour in the sweltering heat amongst unforgiving mosquitoes (yeah, I hadn’t seen that much mosquitoes in my life. No exaggeration) to get there, but once we did, the experience we had was all worth it. I don’t have a basis of comparing Teufelsberg with other street art galleries around the world because I haven’t been to any other, but the people who run it claim to say it’s one of the best street art hubs in Europe, and I believe them. 

Some spectacular views of Teufelsberg:

The wilderness path to Teufelsberg

One of the domes of Teufelsberg

Olympiastadion Berlin

A few days before my planned trip to Berlin, a friend let me know that there was going to be a friendly match between Liverpool and Hertha FC in Olympiastadion Berlin, and when I looked it up, it was the same day I was arriving. I thought it was a good opportunity to see Liverpool play live and experience the stadium atmosphere, so I decided to go immediately. It was a great decision in the end because I not only got to see Liverpool play, but got to see the venue for the Summer Olympics hosted by Nazi Germany in 1936 as well. I later found out that the stadium was used by The Third Reich as propaganda, showing the world the power of Imperialism and the ambitions of Nazi Germany. It looked intimidating and eerie, like something straight out of a dystopian fiction novel. Never-the-less, the neoclassic architecture adopted for the building was still grand. Fun fact, this was the same stadium where poor Zinadine Zidane head-butted Marco Materazzi during the 2006 world cup finals and got sent off during his last ever match.

The grand Olympiastadian, Berlin

The Walking Tour

I had already mentioned that free walking tours around any European City were the best, and I always try to squeeze in my time for that. And the walking tour in Berlin was no exception. The tour guide took us to a number of places around the city, talking mostly about Berlin History. We started off at the famous Brandenburg gate at the Pariser Platz. The gate had historical significance because before Napoleon conquered Berlin, the gate was topped off by a statue of the goddess of peace, which was subsequently taken away to France by Napoleon after his conquest over Berlin. Later, after Napoleon’s defeat, the statue was returned back again, but this time, she would be known as Quadriga, the goddess of victory, and now she would be mounting a chariot pulled by four horses, and ironically, even today, would be looking at the French Embassy (which is in the same location) as if she was keeping an eye to protect Berlin from the French.

The Brandenburg Gate

We also saw the Parliament House of Germany (Reichstag) from the outside. The magnificent thing about the dome was that it had a glass dome at the top, where locals and visitors could go in and have a panoramic view of the city. The guide explained that one of the ideas behind the dome was to remind the politicians that the people are always above the government, and amazingly, from the glass domes, you could also see the inside of the parliament, see the politicians at work. It was a symbol of transparency which I think was very inspiring.

Then we went to the memorial site for the murdered Jews of Europe, which was pretty close to the Brandenburger gate. The memorial were irregular concrete blocks on irregular ground, and looked very randomly distributed into a maze like setting. The tour guide was not unequivocal to mention the horrors of holocaust and how far racist ideologies (like the concept of racial hierarchy and Social Darwinism that was conceptualized by Adolf Hitler) could go. Apart from this, we walked around the Berlin Cathedral (the best cathedral I have been to so far), Museum Island (yes, as the name suggests, it’s an “island” full of museum), Hitler’s Bunker (it was left in ruins and a parking lot was built around it so that no-one would glorify this place as a memorial and serve as encouragement to neo-Nazism…it was here where Hitler took his own life in 1945) , Alexander Platz (a commercial area in Berlin, also home to the famous TV tower of Berlin) and Checkpoint Charlie (a berlin wall crossing point between East and West Germany during the cold war).

Memorial of the murdered Jews in Europe

Inside the concrete blocks of the memorial

The Berlin Cathedral

Bits and Pieces of the streets of Berlin

And that was just the beginning, we went to the east side gallery. The gallery here is, guess what, yes, graffiti on the Berlin Wall from artists all over the world. The story behind the wall and how families were torn apart, jobs were lost, and even the lives of Berliners trying to escape East Germany were lost were chilling to say the least and each and every graffiti painted in the wall somehow resonated those stories.

Here are some graffiti from the Berlin wall and other hip locations from the city:

It reads "So strong, yet so vulnerable; the people the person, the forest the tree"

We went to food truck festivals, famous ice-cream places (Amorino <3), bars and pubs, parks, and to small alley ways and hip places that were full of amazing graffiti, each telling a story of the city, its past and present. One of the parks we went to was having a crazy Sunday afternoon with alternative music every 100 meters, an open Karaoke place with a huge audience, markets for colorful tees, earrings, necklaces, shoes and so on. It was like a huge festival, except that it would happen every week on Sundays, which was crazy. We went to a Jamaican bar (called Yaam, highly recommended) that was a riverside bar with a huge ground that had football, basketball and table-tennis courts. We spent hours there because of the ambience it had and that chill feeling it gave. It even had an art gallery that was mostly about Jamaica.  We walked for hours and end exploring the city for food, music, architecture and history, and found them in every corner.

An open Karaoke in a park in Berlin (picture by Fabricio Bonilla)

The stairs that led to a book shop near Alexanderplatz

Graffiti in an alleyway near Alexanderplatz

I’m writing this as I leave Berlin, heading towards the south of Germany, and I still haven’t processed all the experiences I got from the amazing city. I’m exhausted to the bone because the last four days was like a roller coaster ride to a place that had a culture I wasn’t quite familiar with, but something that I could very much love. While I am quite excited to be leaving for Barcelona soon, I’m also sad that I will be leaving Germany, a country I’ve come to admire, enjoy and respect, and because I don’t have enough time to delve in deeper with the culture of the country.

In the end, I have to say that while Lisbon topped my chart of the best city in Europe (so far), Berlin came along and swooped away the title. One of my friend had a sudden realization when we were chilling in Yaam Bar, and he said, “Guys, We are in THE place”, and I completely agree. Berlin is THE place in Europe.