TAWOMG - Ghosts all around (1)

Dear Friend,

Berlin is one of the most fascinating cities that I have ever visited. During the nineties I used to go there fairly often. The first trips were to visit Clara when she was writing her PhD thesis at the Berlin Free University. When I lived in Cologne I went there a few times on private trips. Last time was many years ago. When I went there two weeks ago I was curious to see how the city had developed since it became Germany's capital.

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I remember Berlin just after the fall of the wall, when there were huge open spaces everywhere. Usually people that haven't been there don't know that there were two walls, not one. The first one was built following the border between East and West Berlin. After building this first wall, East Germans demolished everything that was behind it, leaving a free space whose breadth varied from around 50 to 200 meters. Then they built the second one. They also made sure that this no-man's land in between both was very securely guarded, in order to avoid people crossed it and escaped alive to the West. The inner wall was seen on West Berlin side, the outer one was seen by east Berliners. Another curious thing is that many people imagine that the wall was around communist Berlin, making it impossible to flee it. It is surprising that so many people believe it, because in reality it was the other way round: West Berlin was an island inside communist Germany and the wall circled it. West Berliners were the ones inside the fence and the ones that could not freely move.

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The wall's history is something that has always impressed me a lot, probably because it is so tragic and absurd. Many times I invited friends to figure out how life would be if one night, all of a sudden, a wall was built in the cities where they lived. It doesn't matter how you draw the line of this fictive border, at the end of the day part of your friends and relatives will always be on the wrong side of it. This is what happened in Berlin. You can argue that the two sides were very clear to everybody and the complete closure of the borders didn't really come as a surprise. Nevertheless, there remained room for thousands of private dramas. I remember that in December 1990 I travelled by train from Frankfurt to Berlin. At the same compartment there was a 60 year old German travelling with us. He told us his story: he was a young man and lived with his family in East Germany in 1961. However, the night the wall was built he was at a party in West Berlin. When he realized what was happening, he could choose to go back home, but if he did so, then he would not be aloud to cross the border back to the West. He decided not to go and stayed in West Germany, at the cost of not seeing his family and friends for 28 years! His drama was just one among thousand others.

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One thing that has always impressed me a lot in post-wall Berlin is that after it was demolished, crossing it became just a banality. My hotel was very close to where once was Checkpoint Charlie. Everyday, more than once a day, I walked up and down Friedrichstrasse. Before November 1989 it was one of the best and most controlled borders between communist and capitalist worlds. All around Berlin hundreds of people lost their lives trying to go to "the other side". Thousands more probably dreamed of doing it, knowing that it was impossible. And then, one day the border is opened and people can freely cross it. Later the wall is removed and there are no longer two sides. Going from East to West and vice-versa is as easy as crossing a street, like in any other city. But because during so many years it was physically and politically not possible, Berlin is not like any other city.

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After the Wall fell and was removed, the land between the two walls became a vast, flat open space in the middle of the city. It was particularly impressive around what in former days was Potsdamer Platz, one of the most important places in pre-war Berlin. It was very difficult to imagine how it was before the war, because nothing remained of it, even not the streets, let alone the buildings. The last time that I had been to Berlin Potsdamer Platz was already a huge construction site. By that time some of the buildings had been finished and it was already possible to figure out how it would eventually look like. This time I could see the outcome: Potsdamer Platz, Leipziger Platz and Leipzigerstrasse came back to life. All over the place fancy new buildings herald the XXI century Berlin. Twenty years ago the Philharmonic building was in the middle of nowhere. Today it is in the middle of the city. I was glad to see it so.

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In the old days one of my favourite places in West Berlin was the old Embassy District, within a walking distance from the Philharmonic. Before the war many embassies were in the area beside the Tiergarten. After the war, this region was in West Berlin, part of Federal Germany's territory, whose capital was Bonn. As West Berlin was not the capital, there were no longer embassies there. Most of these old, beautiful buildings were just abandoned. The doors and windows were walled to avoid invasions and they were left behind. As embassies are considered part of the territory of their countries, there were legal issues that made it even more difficult to find an use for these abandoned buildings. I particularly remember the Italian Embassy, a beautiful Palazzo severely damaged during

the war. Promenading around this quarter was like walking on the streets of a ghost city. Now I went there to see what had happened in this neighbourhood. It is no longer a ghost city. The old buildings were either renovated, like the Italian Embassy, or demolished. New ones were built in their places. Today only the old Greek Embassy remains in ruins, as you can see on both photos beside, but apparently it will be soon renovated.

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There is a lot more that I can tell you about my visit to Berlin, but I will leave it for the next posting. Meanwhile, I wish you have a nice week!

Maurício