Erstellt am: 7. 11. 2009 - 13:08 Uhr
"Poor but Sexy"
20 Jahre Mauerfall
Der Spezialtag auf FM4
- The Dark Side Of The Wall - Über eine Zeit, in der so viel möglich schien, und doch so wenig eine Chance hatte
- 9/11 in Berlin - Der Mauerfall und die Ironie der Geschichte
- Poor But Sexy - Back To Berlin
The last time I came to Berlin was in 1994. It was just a passing through trip on my way to Copenhagen and I gave myself twelve hours to walk around the place and discover Berlin for myself without a map, a guide or anything. That was a bad idea. I ended up going round in circles, not really finding anything apart from buildings covered in building sheets earmarked for repair. Tired and fed-up, I was glad to hit the train station thinking to myself: "I’ll come back one day when it’s all patched up."
These last few days were the perfect opportunity. This time with a map in hand I’d actually researched a lot about the place and I was keen to make amends with the city that mayor Klaus Wowereit once famously called "poor but sexy". With the 20th anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall, there’s a lot going on: retrospectives, arts projects and people talking about then & now.
Ostalgie
The wave of ostalgie has been in the air in recent years. After the success of movies like Goodbye Lenin & Sonnenallee, people come to Berlin looking for traces of the divided city. You have to look hard. Out of 43 kilometres of Berlin Wall that cut through the place only about 2 kilometres are left. Post 1989, the government decided to dispose of the wall to eradicate ghosts of the past and some of the concrete was used to repair roads in East Berlin.
The Ostel
Talking of nostalgia for the east, as well as visiting the DDR Museum and finding out all there is to know about those former times, you can now enjoy a spell at the Ostel Hostel. Having found the place (just a short away from the Ostbahnhof), yes the DDR décor was there as soon as you walked through the entrance; black & white TV showed wall to wall footage of the Socialist Workers whatever, the wallpaper, the pictures of Honegger on the wall just like it used to be pre-1989 days I guess. Step outside and take a tour of the city in a Trabant. Berlin is a city that enjoys mad ideas sometimes and all of these things fit the bill.
Times change
But I think what’s been changing more recently is a new found confidence amongst those who lived in the pre-1989 times in East Berlin. It’s only now that East Berliners feel happy to admit they are proud to have grown up during this transition in history. Even though they didn’t support the system, what’s more important to them is that it ended peacefully.
Heading East
Heading round to the East of the City along Mühlenstraße is a long stretch of wall that since the opening up in 1989 has become a magnet for artists from around the world and they have come to paint their tributes. It’s known as the East-Side-Gallery and in fact it’s the longest open-air gallery in the world and it’s well worth the trip over to that side of the city.
I think what interests me overall about Berlin and 1989 is that clearly things could have turned out very differently. East Germany was the most hard-line of the former Soviet satellite states and East Berlin border guards were trained to shoot to kill.
There are accounts of soldiers nervously with their fingers on triggers waiting for the orders to come down from on high. That never happened but in all that confusion on the night of the 9th of November, it’s a miracle that not even one trigger-nervous guard decided to resort to his weapon.
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