If you claim of having been to Berlin, then you must necessarily post pictures of the Wall. Or so I thought. The coming down of the Berlin wall perhaps marked the onset of serious television viewing. Raise your hand if you remember “The World This Week” by Prannoy Roy. Those images stay fresh in the mind. Of course, on this trip, I went to see the wall. Or whatever remains of it that is still standing.
At every street corner near the wall, the one thing that gets sold is a small assortment of broken concrete, purportedly remnants from the wall. Souvenirs, I am told. I cant imagine what people would do with a small piece of broken silly concrete. But then I was politely pointed to the fact that whatever pieces of the wall that fell have since found its way to strange places. Like a loo in Las Vegas. No, am not kidding. Odd things happen in Las Vegas, but a portion of the Berlin Wall as a backdrop to urinals perhaps reflects on Vegas. Or the Wall. Or pee. Whatever.
There are other places in the world, like a Conference Hall of the offices of Microsoft, in Redmond, where a portion of the wall still stands. (Gifted by Diamler Benz to Bill Gates). So, thats the other end of the spectrum. I have no idea why Diamler Benz chose to gift a portion of the wall to Bill Gates. Nor does it clearly occur to me, why this should adorn a conference room. Of course, all of this is clearly out of place if you start thinking of the monstrous cruelty of the wall coming up in the first place.
The wall came up in 1961 and went down in 1989. The wall was a wire fence to start out with and became a brick and mortar wall in 1965. The wall in its final concrete form was completed in 1980. Imagine one midnight, barricades come up along streets that you commuted to work for. Houses that came under the arc of a line drawn on a piece of paper, get vacated and destroyed. Neighbours find themselves in different countries. Two different ideologies to divide one city. With a thick concrete wall running in-between as a sordid reminder of how life could have been if it weren’t there.
Touching the wall now and wondering how successful it was to keep people of one city, divided for thirty years was quite something. Yet, in its fall, more than just concrete was felled. It fueled far more. in far away lands, than what people saw being felled. The Berlin Wall today is proof that art triumphs over divides and can well serve as both a balm and a reminder of a cruel bruise. Am glad some of it stands.
One side of it, the West German side had graffiti over the years, as people had access to go touch and do anything with it. The other side, the East German side, was supposedly a white thing, which nobody could go near. (They had one more wall built as some kind of a buffer wall). Naturally, when the wall came down it is the white blank wall that attracted artists from all over the world to come and express themselves. There is one long stretch which has been preserved and is still standing. After getting moved from where it stood, to where it stands today. It’s called the East Side Gallery in Berlin. .
The East Side Gallery is perhaps the worlds “largest long lasting open air gallery”. There are works of art on either side and it can take a whole heap of your time, if you are into standing, staring and appreciating such stuff. If you are up for it and want to go on a bike trip tracing the very places where the wall stood, well there is a guided tour. The Berlin Wall Trail. I discovered it much later and have put it down on the list of must dos for a later time.
The website proudly announces “Travelling along the Berlin Wall Trail, the traces of Cold War tensions are never too far away. Much of the trail runs on border patrol paths in the west (Zollwege) and their equivalents in the east (Kolonnenwege). You cycle through the city centre, past the museums, memorial sites and the last remaining watchtowers, and along the old border outside the city. This mix of nature and dramatic history means the Berlin Wall Trail offers the best of both worlds. It is a themed city tour and scenic route rolled into one”
Doesnt it sound alluring? I would have loved this. Having limited time and a surfeit of things to accomplish, I let go of the wall trail. I must hasten to bring to your kind notice, ladies and gentlemen, the last three lines of the website.
160 KM circular route of Berlin that is ‘easily managed by children’. Now, go on and make your choices.
The wall in itself, attracts all sorts of views. Like this one. Which I was pointed to by the receptionist at hotel I was staying in. She was from the erstwhile East Germany as we chatted about how it was and how it is now. A structure that stood that long and attracted so much acrimony, becomes a memory aid to prep deep feelings entrenched in people.
But that the wall stood for so long automatically induces thoughts about how people tried to escape it. There were numerous daring attempts to cross over. All very creative attempts that hog attention and emotion. Nothing though like this one, when 57 people escaped through a tunnel dug by students, right under the wall. Its fifty years since that escape.
That night I ate dinner from a street side restaurant run by immigrants from Africa. As I watched them move effortlessly between tables and serve patrons, I wondered if there were new walls in the minds, that have since come up. Since the time, the old wall that stood on the ground was torn down. There seems to be many new walls around the world.
Walls get torn down when new perspectives emerge in the minds. Yes. New perspectives must emerge. Art can help. Thats the drift to catch. If there was one at all.
