Tear Down The Wall

 I signed up for another free walking tour with Sandmans, this one was the Communist Berlin and Berlin Wall Free Tour. I can not recommend these tours enough if you are in Berlin, aside from getting to locations that you would eventually make your way to on your own, the insane amount of detailed historical information you receive gives depth and honesty to the historical experience. It also puts into context the humanity of it all. As I have mentioned before, we tend to whitewash the fact that real people suffered, and at times at great lengths, just to survive and I don't mean "the Wifi is down, this is BS" suffering.

However, today I decided to talk to the meeting point near the Brandenburg Gate. Google maps says it was about an hour so no big deal. There was a large park called the Tiergarten along the way and I figured a bit of nature was never a bad thing. When I cleared the park after a 30 minute stroll I came to the Victory Column that I was eyeballing yesterday. It 67m-high gilded column commemorating victory in the Prussian-Danish war of 1864, with a deck for city views (Wikipedia). I paid the 4 Euros and huffed up the spiral stairs to the viewing deck, cool views. The spoke layout of the city reminded me of Paris and the Arc de Triomphe layout.

I like to walk, within reason, when I am in a new city because you never know what you will stumble upon. I knew that it was Soviet Red Army that liberated Berlin but it never crossed my mind that there would be memorials to the Soviet Fallen in Berlin. 

20 year old Russian killed in the Battle of Berlin

There is Treptower Park which is a must visit. I first came across the Soviet War Memorial Tiergarten as I was walking to join my tour. It actually caught me by surprise, much like Langemark German War Cemetery in Belgium dedicated to fallen soldiers of World War 1. 

War Cemeteries are fascinating to me, as are all cemeteries. I see this etching and wonder, what was I doing at 20 years old. This kid did not volunteer for this but here he was, battling Nazi Germany to the end. What were you doing at 20 years old? I bet your biggest worry was getting drunk, stoned and laid, but not in that particular order, mine was. Perspective is everything sometimes.

The Berlin Wall Death Zone

What was the killing zone? There were two walls in Berlin. The main wall or Vorderlandmauer averaged 13 feet tall. The inner wall, or Hinterlandmauer was 6 to 10 feet tall. In between was the "death strip" of about 20 to 25 feet. This strip was filled with sand or gravel and the guards in towers were under to "shoot to kill" anyone who entered this zone. There were 140 registered people who died trying to avoid the anti-vehicle trenches, watchtowers, floodlights, and trip-wire machine guns. I honestly did not know this and it was explained to me as to why people just did not climb the wall and escape to the West, or the East for that matter. Families were separated and they wanted to return to the East as well to be reunited. So desperate for a better life, over 140 died in the death zone between 1961 and 1989.

This is the famous photo of Hans Konrad Schumann an East German Border guard escaping to the west in 1961. It is etched onto the wall of this building is because this area of the wall that the photo was taken. Another moment of standing on the ground of history.

The stone path in front of the picture is, if you can believe it, a tunnel. Berlin was built on a marshland and there are very few "rises in elevation", this place is the exception. It was high enough that a tunnel was dug and this one was the famous Tunnel 57, named for the 57 people that escaped to the West. Overall there were over 70 escape tunnels were dug and about 300 escaped.

Here is a story from Joachim Neumann and his tale of escape from East Berlin to the West from one of these tunnels.

I only scratched the surface of Berlin but here are a few fun facts. It is a city covered in graffiti, where flop house bohemians mix with phone staring tourists while busy well dressed workers ignore it all. People will not jaywalk and they wait patiently for the little icon to change green regardless on there not being a car in sight. The Turks and the Vietnamese were one of the first modern day immigrants and there are Pho and Shawarma shops on every corner while smoking is still an olympic sport. The transit system is honor based and excellent and the people are friendly but in a standoffish kind of way It is all wrapped up in a dark history that has obviously been tampered down and monetized over time. It is not a place I would rush to get back to, but I am sure there are some pleasant surprises in store if I did.