If you read my blog regularly, you'll see that I've already posted about part of my trip to the Deutsch capital, Berlin (see 16/12). This post covers the second and final half of my trip.
You may have noticed from my first post that one of the most famous elements of Berlin - the Berlin Wall - was conspicuously absent in our whistlestop tour of all the sights. That's because we made sure to cover that on Saturday, my second day in Berlin, braving absolutely freezing wind and fog to do so (woe is me!)
We started off my taking the U-Bahn over to the site of the East Side Gallery. The East Side Gallery is a 1.3 km stretch of the Berlin Wall, which runs along the River Spree and which has been covered in graffiti art by various artists - apparently there are 105 paintings [or at least there were originally - a lot of the graffiti has itself been graffitied], all painted in 1990, the year after the wall finally fell, on its east side.
It's interesting to go and see - despite the fact that what's left of this part of the wall is covered in colourful and meaningful pieces of artwork, and is full of gaps through which you can see the river and everything on the other side, I still found the wall to be very imposing.
We all walk past walls every day and barely bat an eyelid at them or what is in the other side of them. But somehow, I think that the Berlin Wall seems a whole lot more solid than your everyday wall.
I suppose that part of that is knowing what it once represented; what it meant to the people of Berlin. But some of it, I think, is it's height and length, even considering it is much reduced from what it was. It was built to be imposing, after all, and to cause unease to the human psyche, and cause unease it does, by both it's physical presence and, now, also by it's reputation.
From the wall, we headed back into Central Berlin to see Checkpoint Charlie, which was the only official entry point between East and West, marking the entry into the American Sector.
It took us a good half an hour or so to get from the East Side Gallery to Checkpoint Charlie, which really started to give you an idea of the scale of the disruption caused by the wall. But what really put everything into perspective for me was going to see the Gedenkstätte Berliner Mauer - the Berlin Wall memorial.
This is a 60-metre (200 ft) section of the former border, including an old watch tower, and information about how there used to be a row of houses there, from which people tried to escape in the early days, before being forced to evacuate. The houses were later blown up.
It was seeing this part of the wall - which felt a lot more real again than the section of the East Side Gallery - and reading about the effects of these evacuations and escape attempts, which really made me think about the wall. It only fell a few years before I was born, so not all that long ago really, and it's something I feel like I should make an effort to know a little more about, especially now having seen it for myself.
After we'd finished at the memorial we called a halt to our strangely Cold War themed day and stopped off at the department store Ka De We (which reminded me very much of Harrods, and was exceptionally festive inside). We grabbed some dinner and then attempted to go the Christmas market at Alexanderplatz (I say attempted because it was actually closing when we rocked up, but there we go!).
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| The Christmas Section in Ka De We |
Then on Sunday, we went for a meander around the flea market in Mauer Park before going back to Immy's flat to 'festify' it before some of her Erasmus friends came over, which lead to a lovely afternoon/evening of Christmas music, good food, conversation, and glühwein!
And with the end of my Berlin trip, that's basically my limit for cool year abroad stuff for 2013. We're already mid way through December. This week we've had a mini Christmas Dinner at our apartment with some friends, and in the next few days I am going HOME!! It feels like absolutely ages since I was there at the end of October for my 21st, so I absolutely cannot wait to see my family and to get in some Christmas traditions.
On which note, this will be my last blog post for 2013. I'm pretty pleased with how things are going so far with my year abroad (and with my blog) and I hope to keep it up for 2014!
So, I would like to wish everybody a Joyeux Noël et Bonne Année. I'll see you all again when I start posting again in the New Year!
A bientôt, Bis später!
Vicky xx
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