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May. 29th, 2023 08:08 pm
Germany, Tuesday
We go to another memorial to the Berlin Wall. At this point I’m worrying that I’ve turned into a tourist of other people’s painful lives, like some visitors to the Holocaust museum seem to be, so I try to stay aware and respectful of the history the memorial depicts. You start at an information center and go on to what used to be a ghost metro station. The metro had run through three stations in East Berlin without stopping, stations that had closed down so no one could use the train to get to the west, and as time passed they had started to fall apart and gather dust. People had tried to make it to West Berlin through the tunnels, and some of them had succeeded.
The station is being used again, but the upper floor has been left pretty much the way it was, with areas blocked off by broken concrete and signs in an old-fashioned font. It’s eerie.
We go on to what’s supposed to be the last remaining pieces of the Wall. (I’m surprised all the rest is gone, but apparently everyone wanted to forget it as quickly as possible.) There were two walls and a “death strip” in between; if you made it to the strip you would trigger lights and alarms and probably be shot by a guard in a watchtower. Grass covers most of the strip now, and steel posts show the names and photos of people who died trying to cross over.
The actual Wall. Probably not the actual graffiti, though.
This is what a segment of the United States wants at the southern border, I realize, something loud and terrifying that ends in death. Not the rickety contraption put up by trump, which can be climbed easily and blows over in a strong wind.
There’s a museum, with the history and people’s stories. The fifth floor is a lookout post that shows you what West Berliners would have seen, the Wall and the death strip between them, and the watchtower over everything. For a while people in the west could climb parts of the Wall and see friends and relatives on the other side, but then that too was forbidden. You could still visit if you had permission, and you could write letters, though of course they were read by officials before they were passed on.
What was that like, to be only miles from your loved ones but unable to see them or talk to them? And what was it like to meet them again after thirty years, when the Wall came down? Has anyone written a story about extraterrestrials putting a barrier over half a city and doing… something… to the inhabitants for several decades, and what happens when the barrier goes away? I’d write it, except I have no idea what the aliens would be up to.
We go back to Museum Island, but the museum I want to see, the Pergamon with the Ishtar Gate and some Assyrian artifacts, has a wait of two hours. This is the last day of our vacation and we’re pretty tired, so we’re sort of relieved to go back to the hotel and take a nap.
I found out later that Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy came to Berlin five days after we left. We saw a lot of yellow and blue Ukrainian flags, which was heartening.
The station is being used again, but the upper floor has been left pretty much the way it was, with areas blocked off by broken concrete and signs in an old-fashioned font. It’s eerie.
We go on to what’s supposed to be the last remaining pieces of the Wall. (I’m surprised all the rest is gone, but apparently everyone wanted to forget it as quickly as possible.) There were two walls and a “death strip” in between; if you made it to the strip you would trigger lights and alarms and probably be shot by a guard in a watchtower. Grass covers most of the strip now, and steel posts show the names and photos of people who died trying to cross over.
The actual Wall. Probably not the actual graffiti, though.
This is what a segment of the United States wants at the southern border, I realize, something loud and terrifying that ends in death. Not the rickety contraption put up by trump, which can be climbed easily and blows over in a strong wind.
There’s a museum, with the history and people’s stories. The fifth floor is a lookout post that shows you what West Berliners would have seen, the Wall and the death strip between them, and the watchtower over everything. For a while people in the west could climb parts of the Wall and see friends and relatives on the other side, but then that too was forbidden. You could still visit if you had permission, and you could write letters, though of course they were read by officials before they were passed on.
What was that like, to be only miles from your loved ones but unable to see them or talk to them? And what was it like to meet them again after thirty years, when the Wall came down? Has anyone written a story about extraterrestrials putting a barrier over half a city and doing… something… to the inhabitants for several decades, and what happens when the barrier goes away? I’d write it, except I have no idea what the aliens would be up to.
We go back to Museum Island, but the museum I want to see, the Pergamon with the Ishtar Gate and some Assyrian artifacts, has a wait of two hours. This is the last day of our vacation and we’re pretty tired, so we’re sort of relieved to go back to the hotel and take a nap.
I found out later that Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy came to Berlin five days after we left. We saw a lot of yellow and blue Ukrainian flags, which was heartening.
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