Berlin in a Day

Today was Berlin and the big question as I meandered through Wolfsburg (must visit some day, great architecture of the 60's industrial variety) was what I should see, the list is not endless but Berlin has been, and is destined to remain either a catalyst of European history or the heart of it. Passing Berlin Spandau that seems worth a visit, and at one point was on the list along with Potsdam, in the end I chickened and decided to see what I bumped into on a stroll around.

Walking aimlessly is not an efficient strategy for a day visit, but it worked for me - bumping into the Humboldt University, the Berliner Dom, and Alexanderplatz was more than enough for me. Walking down Unter Den Linden with the smell of flowers wafting through air - honest I smelt flowers - was a chance encounter that I could not have planned, along with the view of Alexanderplatz with the the Telecom Tower ands the Church in the foreground almost emphasising the changing history of this city from the centre of decadence to terror, to repression to liberation with the fall of the wall./

More than anything I didn't really do the sights of Berlin, but I tried to contextualise you, to get to know it for myself, to make sense of the history - it is a city with a 'past' - and try and make sense of how other people see it, how Berliners see it. I tried to see how the remains of its grandeur - its old railway stations at Fredricrtrasse, Alexandraplatz and Ost Bahnhoff run through to Berlin Hauptbahnoff and Leherter Bahnhoff like an artery through its history; the solid high level stations that ran through Berlin during Communism missing stops out because they were in the wrong Sector to Ost Bahnhoff which the link to Eastern Europe and to the East the new Hauptbahnoff built as a monument to reunification. In a testament of defiance the wrought iron roofs of the old stations stood as testaments to the 'old Berlin'.

It is hard for me to write definitives because it is not my city, not even my country, but I can say this is my impression of what is there, and how I interpret it - whether that be wright or wrong.

My major confusion was the street hawkers selling 'genuine' Russian armed forces hats, and the odd Nazi hat, it was this that made me stop and think about Berlin and the changes that have been made, and it interprets its history - for the me the war is over and the lessons learnt, so move on, Communism has come and gone - but I find it peculiar and disturbing at the trivialisation of these momentous events, as if the memories are there to be sold; I am not sure what I feel about the hats, its strange one trivial thing can have such a profound effect, I am sure that when I last visited back in the late 90's there would have been such a trade.

Berlin in day took me from the Bundestag via the Brandenburg Gate, to Alexandraplatz, but in time it took me from the 1920's to the 2010''s a roller-coaster ride that is still running .

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Location:Berlin