on to berlin

Finally, on my long weekend (which was a few weeks back now!), I met up with Carmen, Cynthia and Shanaka in Berlin. Thankfully, it was a bit drier in Berlin than in Copenhagen.

Note to the intrepid traveller: travelling in Europe on May Day long weekend can be annoying. In Copenhagen there were noisy protests with police in armour looking on. In Berlin the buses were on strike. Luckily they ran "emergency" buses, which were packed to the rafters (if buses had rafters). Also note: don't buy the German version of the lonely planet guide if you can't speak German. Good thing I tried to read it straight after buying it. Interestingly the English version is €5 more than the German one!

Being in town the night before the others I went on a scouting mission to find good food and maybe a bar or two. Not too difficult in Berlin: head to Friedrichshain. They have a passion for graffiti and the drinks are cheap. The food was pretty good too. Interestingly I had to pay €1 deposit on my glass - maybe they have a problem with them going missing? Getting broken?

Berlin is the capital of Germany, and it has famous symbols such as the Reichstag and the Brandenburg Gate, I suspect however it is best known for the Berlin Wall (and the fall thereof). The start of the cold war can be characterised by the Berlin Airlift. The Americans and the English airlifted food and supplies into the city after the Soviets blockaded the western half of the city. At one stage a plane was landing at Tempelhof airport every 90 seconds! Tempelhof is currently being closed and replaced by the other two airports in Berlin. I used both the other ones, and they're crap. Hopefully by having only two airports they can focus on making a couple of decent ones! The residents near Tempelhof disagree with me given the amount of protest posters on street poles, shop fronts and alley ways.

The most interesting I discovered during my visit was that West Berlin was an enclave inside East Germany: the wall surrounded West Berlin entirely. I'd imagined it was a "vertical" spilt down the middle of Germany. Not much of the wall remains. Mostly the route of the wall is traced by metal "tracks" in the pavement. One section is preserved and protected - ironically - protected by another wall! Really it's only a fence, but it's amusing none-the-less. Another section called The East Side Gallery, is open for anyone to graffiti: it was quite interesting. We visited it at dusk:

Personally the wall raised all sorts of interesting questions for me. For instance, so many East Germans fled to West Germany. This prompted the creation of the wall. But the again, many East Germans did not flee. When is the point at which you decide it's time to flee a country? When are conditions so bad, that you are forced to move? What made people stay? What factors weigh in when deciding to stay? Family? Friends? Work? Familiarity? Habit? The unknown?

The fall of the wall is also amazing in its randomness. One time-poor, unbriefed, government minister, reading the incorrect information caused the wall to "fall". What the chances of that? One single utterance changed history!

I really liked Berlin. The very recent history. The graffiti, while not always great: the vast majority is just plain old "tagging"; the best stuff was artistic, and the political commentary was also good. I even found some graffiti supporting Internationalised Domain Names (IDN's):

This system is a non-issue in Australia and the USA: it allows "extended" characters (such as: ß or ä) to be used in domain names (such as: www.google.com). It must be quite important in Europe and the rest of the world however! The German domain name system has allowed IDN's since 2004.

I'd definitely recommend visiting Berlin. It's dirty, relatively cheap and very interesting.