Europe @ 2.4 km/h (29 page)

On a visit to Pankow this afternoon, to see what the city’s east looks like beyond the swank city shopping districts, I see on the station platform a sticker,
Gegen Nazis!
(No to Nazis!), bearing a diagram of a fist smashing a swastika. Old battles are still being fought over here.

840-843 km

My overriding impression of Berlin is succinctly summed up by a young American woman I overhear on the footpath in Friedrichstrasse, who says to her companion, ‘You’re in a world city here’. The rate of construction is the fastest of any European city, and third in the world, trailing only Shanghai and Dubai. This city has more parks than any in Europe. And its nightlife, if not quite as racy as in the legendary Twenties, is still electric (sorry if that sounded quaint: photovoltaic).

I am in the Deutsche Bank branch on Unter den Linden (which, incidentally, must be one of the most descriptively beautiful street names in all the world) when I meet a tall, reserved gentleman whose accent, even after decades living here, instantly identifies him as a product of the English upper middle class. Having established that we’re heading in the same direction, he offers to put into context the two buildings I will see at the end of the street. And, despite his English diffidence, it emerges that he used to be in charge of one of them.

The first building, one of the most famous in Berlin, has been demolished, though not without a fight. The Palace of the Republic, itself built on the wreckage of a magnificent
Schloss
East German supremo Walter Ulbricht ordered to be destroyed, had great sentimental appeal for many East Berliners, according to my informant, Derek. There were several reasons why this was so. Plenty of GDR citizens had attended concerts or conferences there; and it was the backdrop to many a wedding photograph.

In there, between the exposed girders and concrete rubble, you can make out what must have been a grand interior before the wrecking ball struck. Outside the ‘construction site’, on Puschkinallee, is a hoarding that trumpets a thoroughgoing lie. ‘Palace of the Republic — A Project of Prestige’, it says. ‘East Germany Asserts Its Legitimacy.’ The decision to act
against
what easterners wanted, preservation of the ‘people’s palace’, had to be justified as the will of the people. It was ever thus. ‘The building is progressing in response to public opinion’, continues the message. (‘This is pure doublethink: ‘in reaction to’, ‘in spite of’ or ‘in the teeth of’ would be closer to the mark.)

Opposite it stands a smart two-storey building with an imposing balcony, a survivor because it has found a post-communist use. Formerly the
Staatsratgebäude
(State Council Building), Derek tells me, it was the only place where East Berliners could ever hope to see their leaders in the flesh. In the late Fifties and early Sixties Ulbricht, general secretary of the German communist party, and his acolyte, Erich Honecker, would appear on the balcony after Politburo meetings. Since the fall of communism, the building has been converted into the European School of Management and Technology, churning out today’s and tomorrow’s capitalist managers. My informant is Derek Abell, the school’s professor emeritus. As he says, ‘The one thing that would have had them (the old communist leaders) rolling in their graves was to know that an Englishman was running the building where they held their meetings’.

850-855 km

Rain is pouring down this morning and, as I make my way out to Zoo Garden where the tour is to begin, I am thinking what a waste of time this is. Surely it will be cancelled. But, come 10 am, we fifteen or so people, a tightly packed group, set off in spite of the foul weather.

We’re on the Berlin ‘Walking Tour’. On hearing of its existence I immediately thought,
That’s just the tour for me. As a wheelchair user
I don’t go on many walking tours
. How much of it will be accessible? All of it. Yes, inequality of a sort remains. But, out of deference to the others, I do sometimes slow down so they can catch up.

Luckily, our tour guide is someone who combines an outsider’s detachment — he happens to be English — with a genuine commitment to the city. Jason Andrews introduces himself by telling us he came to Berlin six years ago, and fell for a German girl who later moved to Bonn, urging him to join her. He adds, with undisguised wistfulness, ‘I would have to say that Berlin is my first love’.

When we get to Friedrichstrasse, he divulges one of Berlin’s great in-jokes. Near the top of the Fernsehturm, the TV tower that dominates the skyline and was built as evidence of socialism’s superiority, two shafts of light in the form of a crucifix appear on its silver sphere whenever the sun shines (which it won’t be doing today). Berliners, who love to nickname their buildings, call this one The Pope’s Revenge. Religious symbols were banned under communism, and crosses removed from every church, so in the last years of the GDR the only crucifix you were likely to see in the east was the one on the building the communists had raised above all others.

Reaching Mitte by train, we soon wade our way across to Bebelplatz. In this square on 10 May 1933, just three months into the Thousand Year Reich, the Nazis held their first book-burning. The siting, right opposite Humboldt University, was no accident. Its library was handy for ransacking; and the more ‘intellectual’ the books on the bonfire, the better for their purpose. Through a Perspex ‘skylight’ in the centre of the square we peer down to empty library shelves. Nearby is inscribed a chilling prophecy uttered by Heinrich Heine in 1820, which would be fulfilled in the following century not only in Nazi Germany but in Maoist China. The English translation reads, ‘When one starts by burning books, one ends by burning people’.

Jason, who has a cheeky English turn of phrase, explains that Friedrichstrasse is where Roaring Twenties Berlin began, with its bars, clubs and cabarets the haunt of playwrights by day, prostitutes by night. ‘The Nazis didn’t really like women in skimpy skirts doing the can-can,’ he says, ‘so in 1933 they closed down 250 commercial establishments in the heart of Berlin, bringing that era to a close.’

A few hundred metres south on Friedrichstrasse we wheel right and find ourselves opposite Checkpoint Charlie, the most famous of Cold War flashpoints. Shouting over the storm, Jason tells us a few things we may not have known about the Berlin Wall. It was built after the GDR lost 2.7 million citizens to the West between 1953 and 1961. ‘On the morning of 14 August 1961, after a night of feverish construction, 40,000 troops stood here and declared the border closed,’ he states. In its 28 years of existence, more than 1000 people were killed trying to breach the ‘Anti-Fascist Protective Barrier’.

Jason has a knack for bringing history alive. He particularly likes the story of a ten-year-old boy who lived in the western sector and whose school was in the east. One day he came home in mid-morning and said a border guard had stopped him from getting anywhere near the schoolyard. ‘Next day he got a US tank escort to school.’ Jason’s eyes light up. ‘It turned out later he was lying.’

One of the tour group asks how the GDR could afford to build the Wall. That one’s easy. ‘Extorting money from the West. They sold their own people, you might put it, although I’m not supposed to say so.’ (I can’t imagine who would stop him: it’s a free country now, isn’t it?)

Two blocks after we’ve inspected Göring’s Air Ministry building, Jason calls a halt to announce with a flourish, ‘And now for Germany’s best-kept secret. Directly below your feet, 10 metres down, is where Adolf Hitler’s bunker was. Berliners have no idea where this is.’ We are at a street intersection with ordinary-looking kerbs, on the edge of a car park, and nothing to indicate that below us is the Führerbunker, the pit.

‘After the Wall came down, it emerged that Churchill and Truman seriously considered flushing Hitler’s ashes into the sewers, and were only deterred by the thought that they really wouldn’t like the idea of his ashes riding through the rivers of Europe.’ It sounds improbable but makes a good story nonetheless. ‘They were going to open up the bunker to the public and people said, “Don’t do it.” They obviously didn’t want to attract neo-Nazis. So it was decided to seal it off for 50 years and review the decision then.’

The tour finishes at the Brandenburg Gate. The ace up Jason’s sleeve is a powerful account of the East German trade minister’s press conference on 9 November 1989 when his bosses had failed to briefed him on how soon the travel restrictions were supposed to be lifted, and he blurted out the fateful words, ‘As of now’. ‘Watching on TV, in Berlin and around the world, people gasped,’ Jason concludes. ‘And a three-day party ensued.’

860-870 km

It’s a long story, how drowning my camera in Berlin led to a personally guided tour of Versailles. It began just on midnight after an arduous day of tooling round the German capital. I was taking off my shirt in the bathroom at the hostel, prior to taking a shower, when — my mind a blank — I momentarily forgot that the camera I’d taken 1000-plus photos with was in the shirt’s pocket.

Well, it wasn’t now. Before I knew it, the digital had done a swan-dive into the toilet bowl without touching the porcelain. The water was clean, but I knew there would be consequences. The device was fished out of the bowl quick and lively enough but no amount of button-pressing would induce the lens to project itself in the approved manner.

Apart from this morning’s Reichstag tour, I cleared the decks of all commitments for the day, and after the tour I headed to the Hotel Adlon. If there’s one thing you can be sure of, it is that the chief concierge in a five-star hotel will know whom to approach in an emergency. I felt a bloody fool explaining my plight, and at a severe disadvantage when requesting help, given that I wasn’t even a guest of the hotel. After listening with amused tolerance to my tale, Raffaele Sorrentino, the Neapolitan ‘customer service manager’ at Berlin’s most elegant address, said no camera shop these days would do on-site repairs, they would only send it away for a couple of days.

But I would not be put off, and my obstinacy was soon rewarded as Raffaele patiently phoned a number in Schoneberg, a southern suburb of Berlin, and then announced I must see Klaus Borosch, whose address he gave me. An hour and a half later I had located my man, but there was the tiny problem of a staircase standing between me and the first-floor buzzer. After knocking on the wall failed to alert anyone inside to my presence, I used the only other weapon at my disposal, and hollered, ‘Herr Borosch! Herr Borosch! Herr Borosch!’

Herr Borosch could not hear me, but retired Bundeswehr lieutenant-colonel Siegfried Karbe, a neighbour who had been trying to relax on his balcony, did. ‘Can I help you?’ he called out. I turned round, replied yes, and made an instant friend. Siegfried was on the scene within a minute, and proceeded to summon Klaus. Explaining my predicament, he handed over my digital cot case.

Siegfried and I — soon joined by his wife, Ingrid — adjourned over the road for a coffee while Klaus went off to inspect the damage. The tiny compartment containing the memory card looked dry enough but I didn’t dare get my hopes up. About an hour later Klaus appeared, with good news and bad. The camera was unsalvage able but the memory card was intact. He refused to take any money for his services — I
did
press him — and recommended a shop in the next suburb where Siegfried was good enough to drive me, even insisting on taking me back to my hostel in the evening.

To join a tour of the Reichstag, you need to apply in writing. My permission came through weeks ago and I was not going to miss it for anything. It was just a damned pity I couldn’t take a picture of it. Our tour guide, Nina, says parliamentary standards here are ‘relatively disciplined’. Asked what the word ‘relatively’ means in this context, she equivocates, ‘On the one hand we’re in Germany; on the other, we’re in a parliament like any other.’

After initial hesitation, architect Norman Foster’s dome design has become a hit with Berliners. Nina says they like its transparency, in both senses of the word. Lord Foster’s original preference was for all the deputies’ seats to be grey, until Helmut Kohl put his weighty foot down. Now they sit amid a sea of copyright-protected violet known as ‘Reichstag blue’. Nina says blue, associated with conservatives in Britain and liberals in America, is ‘politically neutral’ on the Continent. ‘People look at blue and think of the sky,’ she tells us.
Not this summer they don’t, Nina. You need to get out more.

‘The Reichstag is the most visited parliament in the world,’ she glows, ‘with two million visitors a year.’ But then she spoils the effect by saying, ‘It remains a bit of a mystery why visitors come here’.

In what looks like a locker room full of post-office boxes, everyone who has been democratically elected to the Reichstag at any time since 1919 has his or her own archive, indicated by a small rectangle. Adolf Hitler, who was also democratically elected, is represented by a black box with no name. The decision to include him at all was made only after much heartache.

We go up to the dome by lift. Arrayed around the viewing platform are historical snapshots. One memorable image by photojournalist Erich Salomon (1886 Berlin-1944 Auschwitz) shows Nazi members gathered at table in the Reichstag restaurant wearing their Brownshirt uniforms. Another Salomon photo shows the visitors’ gallery on 4 June 1930. Among those present, paying keen attention, is a bow-tied Albert Einstein, his black hair just starting to grey.