Berlin Log

Log: Berlin. Dec 2006.

With time short this was a meeting of first impressions, a brief encounter to - cast an eye, take in the mood.

Day 1.

The regional night train from Schonefeld Airport was as any shabby stop -at -most - every-station night train anywhere in Europe and exiting from the grime of an almost deserted City Centre Zoo Station could have been depressing. It was 23.00 hours and the city centre had closed…we trundled our case down towards the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church at the eastern end on Breitscheidplatz, the pre unification metropolitan centre of the then West Berlin. The darkened Christmas Market around the Memorial church had long closed, the smell of stale brat wurste and gluh-wien hung in the air. The only pedestrians were visitors new to the area trying to make sense of street maps in the dark and the odd, lonely yet hopeful restauranteur standing outside of their establishments. Where was the Capital City reconstruction…was this the new vibrant hub of euro life?

Day 2.

Sunshine…I speak German again for the first time in many years… fruhstuck mit echte brotchen…that coffee aroma, it felt good…the people were welcoming…yes it was looking better…

Amazingly, around the corner from what was last night a silent city centre, traffic poured down Tauentzienstraße famed for KaDeWe, claimed to be continental Europe's largest department store and down the The Kurfurstendamm- home to some of Berlin's luxurious stores. That sense of city centre was growing … but not a sense of ‘THE’ capital city as conjured by the hype…but then this was still only Monday morning.

Undergrounds , overgrounds, Z Bahns & S Bahns, Regional trains, Express ways, trams…

Somehow we arrive at Alexander Platz…concrete and glass… here the Christmas market is small presumably as no one stays very long…. The vast windswept square felt cold flanked by the grey rectangular eastern-block architecture of the 50s and 60s. ...but the chestnuts were hot and tasted good.

We are told the best place to go to visit a Christmas Markt was old Spandau town…so we did.

Passengers gossip in different languages as the train pulls into Spandau…… on the left of the rail track is a grey sprawling town with illuminated shopping mall and wide multilane roads, on the right is the old town, dense, intriguing, colourful, ornate. A street market, closely packed stalls exactly as you’d imagine… this was the first of that festive nostalgia we sought…but something was missing…no market sounds…the church bells chimed but the punters weren’t buying . Behind the stalls the shops looked down-at-heel, stores once affluent now down graded to discount stores obviously fighting to exist in a world dominated by the commerce on the other side of the railway… all but one…Festers Knoditerei, a gem with the glamour of yester-year… here a proud elegance ignored the world.

That Evening: > Content on Gluh Wien and nice foods we wandered along the Ku'damm shopping street and through the Europa Center…it rained but no one cared …it was almost Christmas, the festive decorations where lavish and there were serious Christmas shoppers to be observed.

Day 3.

Freidrich Strasse. Unter Den Linden, the Brandenburger Gate.

You can feel the stone facades glowing with the scrubbing of reconstruction, the sterilized monuments and the newly finished gateway – a scene made respectable only by something of real sentiment - a triumphal Christmas tree for a triumphal arch.

Can a republic have a regal heart…then this is it….the grand gesture …history, like freshly ground coffee, percolated and served up as the best cuppa in Europe…it’s all impressive…the mall, the Reichstag, the Gate - but then youngsters dressed in soviet or allied forces uniforms pose for 2.euros., tourists throng with cameras to join the game and the banners and queues at the Reichstag all connive to turn the entire into the unreal of grand theatre.

Brimming with a sense of time & place we seek out that other icon - Check Point Charlie… but the developers have taken over… The museum and nearby shops are grimed grey from the dust of builders rubble, the inevitable youths in US army uniforms collect money from the tourists but the one bonus…somehow the most fitting element on this rather dowdy section of the famously glitzy Friedrich Strasse - is a Christmas Tree … once again this simple timeless tree has introduced a sense of atmosphere, the scene with tree recalls images of the nineteen seventies, when the cold war was at its height.

Everywhere I go I have this feeling that there is something missing…it’s like watching a film with no sound track…

Niederkirchner Strasse: We saw the ‘Wall’ (or the bit that was saved here), the land and buildings around and the documented Memorial.

On its own it meant little…because I have little or no experience to compare it to. ... and there is no drama, no atmosphere here to help me understand.

On its own it meant little - as it seemed so small a memorial… imagine, these had once been the greatest city walls of all time - 155km long.

On its own it means little - as it obviously means little to the government of Berlin or so it seems... do they want to airbrush history, to forget?

On its own - that’s how I saw it … on its own....an isolated artefact ...struggling to establish a proper context.

I photographed a section of wall with a lamp-post and the simple geometry of the building beyond. This isolated image is without a sense of time…it is as if nothing has changed … perhaps it hasn’t.

Now in Berlin they say the ‘wall in the mind’ has replaced the concrete.

For details of this 200 metres of Berlin Wall, the museum Project and importance of the immediate area go to ‘The Topography of Terror’ at www.topographie.de/en/index.htm they tell it better than I can. I find it unfortunate that I am perhaps more angry toward the present day authorities for their blindness to the importance of this history than I am toward the horrors that went to makeup the history. Is this displacenment the airbrush already at work on me?

Gendarmen Platz ..flanked by the Conzert Hall, the French Cathedral and the German Cathedral…the most romantic of reconstructed settings for a Christmas Market. This was the market of that nostalgia we had sought…suddenly people were laughing and smiling…there was theatre and music and it was Christmas

Bebel Platz, once known for the infamous Burning of the books but to night it is home to another Christmas markt… and in Schloss Platz…the festive city centre funfair….

Schonefeld was relaxed, a small time airport…it was evening and a week before Christmas…but the duty frees closed early and the attitude was lighthearted. This wasn’t the Capital City Airport that I had expected but then neither was Berlin the Capital City I had expected. The flight home was thought filled.

Whilst I travelled to Berlin to soak up the romance of pre Christmas in this city of Christmas Markets and super-stores I also came with a curiosity and a set of preconceptions. From the web sites, editorials and the advertising it was clear in my head that with German re-unification and the regained status of Berlin as German Capital there is an almost desperate need & desire for Berlin to be seen as a leading Euro-capital. The level of hype re the immensity of the cities redevelopment and restructuring on all fronts suggested that this was a city trying to regain its reason for being, a city locked on a contrived process of change, a city with an agenda. I wondered about the peoples of Berlin…where did they fit into this plan …how did the history of these peoples fit in, how did the experience & memories of the older generation fit with the experience and forward-looking younger generation? Was this a city eco plan or a city ego plan? I still don’t know… I don’t think I met a Berliner and yet I feel that everyone I met was a Berliner… perhaps they have achieved the ‘public’ face that England seems to strive for - one of a characterless multi cultural anonymity. I will go back and look again.

Peter Juerges. 2006.

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