Walking through Berlin’s Living History – Part 1 of our Journey

From Cold War shadows to vibrant streets, exploring how a city remembers, rebuilds, and redefines itself.

Usually when we visit Europe I’m awed by the hundreds and sometimes thousands of years of history. Greek, Roman, and Etruscan ruins, churches dating back to the middle ages, Renaissance artworks, tales of kings, queens, princes and princesses. Growing up in Nevada I was lucky to see things from the 1800s, and Las Vegas reinvents itself every 20 years or so, blowing up buildings they don’t need anymore.

During our vacation to Berlin and Poland – we did see some really old things – Malbork Castle outside of Gdansk was founded in 1274 – but what we really discovered was Europe’s more recent history, told by the people who lived through it. It was an incredible trip, some beautiful sites, friendly people, amazing food but also some dark and heavy days spent learning about the 20th century, World War II and the Communist era. 

Berlin is the home of IFA, a big consumer electronics conference like CES in Vegas and in January 2024 we decided that we would go if we could get approved for press passes. We didn’t find out until late in the summer, so we quickly planned a trip to go to IFA, a few more nights in Berlin, and a whistle-stop tour of Poland.

Berlin

We started our adventure in Berlin. I’ve wanted to visit for a long time. For most of my childhood it was the mysterious divided city of East and West, then I watched the Berlin Wall fall on TV when I was in college. At the time I didn’t really understand the historical context and the gravity of the moment, I was probably more concerned about my studies and my social life. Or vice versa.

Since the wall fell I’ve heard lots of good things about Berlin, the city’s re-unification and development and the thriving art culture there. I wanted to visit when I lived in London but I never made it happen. Business took me to Munich and Frankfurt but never Berlin. 

West vs East

The Berlin Messe is a big convention center on the west side of the city with a long history. Berlin has been hosting trade fairs since 1822 and the first IFA was held in 1924, making 2024 their 100th anniversary. 

When we originally planned our trip we booked an apartment not too far from the venue, but lucky for us, my cousin who has lived there for years advised us to change hotels to a different neighborhood. She was definitely right – the area around the show, Charlottenburg, while quiet and elegant, was more residential. While it was close to IFA, it was far from anything else we wanted to visit.

We wound up staying in Mitte, at a Courtyard Marriott in what was formerly the no-man’s land on the east side of the city. There are lots of new modern buildings in the area as well as lots of ongoing re-development, but there are still also plenty of communist-era high rises, abandoned buildings and empty lots. Walking around, you really feel the history and you realize that 35 years is not that long ago.

There are a couple of things about Berlin that I noticed right away – first, there is tons of graffiti everywhere. We travel a lot and I don’t really tend to notice graffiti that much anymore, especially in bigger cities. But Berlin had a lot more than I’m used to seeing – ranging from tagging to full-scale murals and intricate designs. Considering Berlin’s history, it makes a lot of sense – the Berlin Wall was a blank canvas surrounding the city and street artists filled it in protest. Now artists from all over the world come to Berlin to make art and the East Side Gallery is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. But to a sheltered American who lives in the suburbs it was still a little jarring.

The other thing that surprised and delighted me was how green Berlin is. So many trees, parks, open spaces, filled with people. It felt so lush compared to other big cities and it was very pleasant to walk around, even when the heat got to be a bit much. 

We spent the first several days commuting back and forth to the Berlin Messe for IFA. Berlin has a great public transportation system and we rode both the U-Bahn (mostly underground within Berlin) and the S-Bahn (commuter rail, mostly above ground trains). We had a U-Bahn station, Spittelmarkt, that was a short walk away. It was possible to reach the Messe from both lines but we soon learned that it was better to get on the S-Bahn as quickly as possible, since the weather in September was unseasonably hot and humid, plus it was much faster. We got a little cocky one day and tried to take a different route, but didn’t notice the signs in German for a line closure until it was too late so we added about a half hour onto our trip that morning.

After the show we had limited time but in the evenings we did get to walk around Gendarmenmarkt, a huge beautiful square that was under construction, and ate a couple of nights at a touristy (but good) Bavarian beer hall nearby. We also got our first taste of Soviet-era history by walking by Checkpoint Charlie.

Berlin was divided into four sectors right after the end of World War II – England, France, the US and the Soviet Union. Later, East Berlin became the Capital of East Germany and the West Germany capital moved southwest to Bonn. There was some immediate tension, including the Berlin Blockade and the subsequent Berlin Airlift – almost a year of the Western Allies supplying West Berlin with food, fuel and other essentials when the Soviet Union cut off all access – the Berlin Wall didn’t go up until August 1961. 

Checkpoint Charlie opened pretty quickly after the wall went up and soon became the main border crossing for anyone wanting to come in from the American Sector in West Berlin. None of the original buildings or signage are there anymore (the checkpoint booth is now in a museum) but they have built replicas and lots of people come to take pictures. The surrounding area was super touristy, notably there was a KFC just on the other side of the sign, kind of surprising since it was just a couple blocks walk from our more calm and business-focused neighborhood.

Historic Sites

After the show was over we had a couple of days to explore some of the more important museums and memorials in Berlin and that is where our intellectual adventure really began.

How does a country reconcile and educate its people about its history? It’s a question we often hear discussed here in America, and everyone has their own opinions of how we should learn and teach about it.  But I’ve never visited a place where you can see how they are doing it in near real-time like Berlin. 

We tend to think of Germany as an old country but historically it was a collection of independent states – Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony, etc. It was unified in 1871 and Berlin became the capital of the German Empire. 

Berlin saw the rise and fall of Kaiser Wilhelm II and Germany’s defeat in World War I, the Weimar Republic’s short-lived government, then the rise of Hitler and Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945. Then the Eastern part of the city was controlled by the Soviets until late in 1989. So the people of Berlin have been free for just 35 years, just a generation or two from when the wall came down. People in West Berlin may have been “free” but they suffered too, separated from their families and friends by an arbitrary wall. 

Berlin Wall Memorial

Our first visit was to the Berlin Wall Memorial. Most of the wall was quickly dismantled but a group of historians sought to protect this area on Bernauer Strasse. It was designated a monument for preservation just before German Reunification was made official in October 1990. 

We started with what’s left of one area of the original wall, a memorial area with photos and stories from the more than 140 direct victims. There is no official tally of all the people who died, but these are the ones they were able to research and document. We saw the faces and read the stories of men, women and children – young children who tried to cross on their own as well as babies who died with their parents or relatives trying to flee.

The adjacent documentation center has lots more history and photos of the area before, during and after the wall came down. They have an observation tower inside one of the buildings where you can look down to a replica of what it looked like behind the wall when it was operational – complete with barbed wire and guard stations. It’s separated and contained inside a squarish area, and you can look down on it or peep inside from ground level.

Beyond this memorial, there are still some remnants of the wall scattered throughout Berlin but we didn’t get a chance to explore them on this trip. 

Ghost Stations – Nordbahnhof

Across the street from the wall memorial we got to explore Nordbahnhof, one of the ghost stations in Berlin that were closed off when the wall went up. The U-Bahn and the S-Bahn remained open, but these stations in East Germany were blocked off and trains were not allowed to stop. People tried to escape via the underground tunnels and some succeeded despite the barricades and other obstacles. 

Nordbahnhof looks just like any other S-Bahn station when you first walk in but the exhibits and photos inside are detailed and chilling. What really struck me reading about that time was that the East Germany workers who managed the station were locked in and out every day when they went to work so that they were not able to escape during their shift. 

We also realized that one of the other U-Bahn Stations we had been using near our hotel, Stadtmitte, was also a ghost station during that time, but the other one, Spittelmarkt, was not. So we were definitely sleeping in between the former East and West every night.

Going Deeper – Visiting a few of Berlin’s World War II Memorials

The next day we headed to the capital and the surrounding sites. The German capital building, the Reichtag, was renovated after German reunification and opened as the official seat of the Bundestag in 1999. It’s surrounded by beautiful leafy gardens and a short walk to the famous Brandenburg Gate. 

We didn’t get to go into the new modern building that day. To visit, you need to pre-register and bring your passport with you. But we did get to see the huge modern glass dome, built as a symbol of transparency in government. 

Nearby the Reichstag are several holocaust memorials and the Germans don’t mince words with the names. The first one we found looked like a bunch of garden flagstones on their sides, they were kind of in a weird spot in the parking lot near a temporary trailer. 

When you take a closer look you can see they each have a name on the top, like a tombstone, with the dates of their deaths on top and where they died. This Memorial to the Murdered Members of the Reichstag represents the (at least) 96 members of the German parliament who stood up to Hitler and the Nazis after they took control of the government in 1933. 

This simple monument stopped me in my tracks. When we learn about Hitler and the Nazis in history we tend to forget that their atrocities didn’t start when they invaded Poland and that many of the first victims were German citizens from all backgrounds. When you see that the opposition politicians were murdered, you understand why people stopped speaking up against the regime.

Walking away from the Reichstag, we found the Memorial to the Sinti and Roma of Europe Murdered under National Socialism. They estimate that around 500,000 Sinti and Roma were persecuted and murdered, and the stories and photos there are very descriptive. As we read the history of the genocide there and the background and controversy of creating the monument, it’s sad to recognize that these people are still stereotyped and persecuted today.

Moving on, just past the Brandenburg Gate is the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. On top is a huge puzzle-like maze of different size concrete blocks. They are not quite organized into rows and the paths in between are slanted, making it a bit disorienting to walk through. When we were there the heat and humidity was stifling which made the memorial even harder to navigate. 

When we got to the other end of the site we were relieved to see there was a museum underground inside and out of the heat. It is free but we needed to go through a metal detector to enter, which in itself is a little disturbing, but not nearly as much as what we saw inside.

The museum is to remember the murdered Jews from all over Europe. In the Room of Dimensions there are big signs with the numbers of victims from 28 countries in Europe. Some numbers are huge like Poland and some are smaller but individual stories from all the countries are represented on the floor with artifacts. We read farewell letters written by extermination camp victims to their families and diary entries documenting the atrocities they witnessed. Both Mark and I read every one of these 28 stories. 

In the Room of Families there were photos of families taken before and sometimes after, if they survived. The Room of Names projects some of the victim’s names while recordings of their biographies are played aloud. Finally the Room of Sites plays historical photographs and film from 220 places of persecution and murder on a loop.  

The whole experience was nauseating and exhausting but I’m glad we visited. 

Brandenburg Gate and Unter Den Linden

Seeing the Brandenburg Gate up close is hard to describe. It’s something I’ve seen in so many movies, documentaries, and newscasts and felt embedded in my memory. By chance earlier in the summer I visited the Ronald Reagan and John F Kennedy Presidential Libraries. Both of those presidents made famous speeches in front of the gate and each museum had a dedicated area celebrating those significant events. 

These days it’s a significant tourist attraction with plenty of tour groups passing by on foot or stopping on a bus. Behind the gate is a big square filled with people enjoying the sunshine, snacking on treats with lots of vendors selling tacky knick knacks. But even with all the tourists, the historical significance of the gate is hard to overshadow.

Beyond the gate, we walked for a ways down Unter den Linden. It’s a lovely, leafy street with lots of elegant buildings, some hotels but mostly commercial, with some government embassies interspersed. If the weather wasn’t unbearably hot the day we were there we would have probably walked a lot farther, but instead we grabbed a bus so we could move on to somewhere inside. 

Modern Berlin

Beyond all the history, Berlin is a dynamic city that attracts young people from all over the world. Not too far from our hotel is Prenzlauer Berg, a trendy neighborhood packed with cafes, boutiques, restaurants and bars. Compared to relatively sedate neighborhoods around our hotel and IFA it was like a different world.

Prenzlauer Berg is home to Giomecca Pastry where we spent an afternoon sampling delectable Italian pastries and freshly-made gelato and catching up with family. On a warm Saturday afternoon the shop was bustling with customers, mostly picking up pastries to take home. Berlin has a large Italian community and they like their authentic taste of home.

We took a short stroll through the neighborhood and later returned to enjoy a pizza dinner outdoors. With the beautiful weather everyone was outside and the area was packed with people eating, drinking and chatting the night away.

Alexander Platz

Alexander Platz, or Alex, was situated between our hotel and Prenzlauer Berg and it’s another iconic Berlin landmark. In its day it was a symbol of modern communist Berlin, with its huge TV Tower (Fernsehturm in German). It soars over the skyline at 368 meters (around 1207 feet) tall and you can see it from all over the city. 

I had a vision in my mind that it would be a fun, thriving place to visit even though my cousin tried to dissuade me. We arrived in the heat of the afternoon and went looking for a place to have lunch, but we found it awful, full of over-priced tourist traps with English menus screaming about steaks, burgers and beers, cheap souvenir stands and lots of concrete with no shade in sight. On a different day I might have wanted to go into the TV Tower to see the view, but we couldn’t get out of there fast enough. 

Later we came back in the evening to their massive three story Hof Brau Haus, to enjoy a huge Bavarian meal, gigantic beers and a fun band. 

Leaving Berlin

We really loved our visit to Berlin, with all its lovely green spaces, heavy and complex history and vibrant youthful energy. There is so much more there to see and we hope to get back someday. 

On our last day the weather changed back to what we expected in September, cool and rainy. We left our hotel for the bus station to head to our next stop, Poznan, Poland.