Why I Like Berlin

I am a sucker for any city with history, and Berlin certaintly has its share. For better or worse, however, much of it is in a state of confusion. From its struggles to conceptualize and understand the wall to its Nazi past, there is a certain schizophrenia about what Berlin's history means. The Museum at Checkpoint Charlie. (a private project that appears to have been funded by westerners, though I have not checked into this) presents the history of the wall as if it were still standing two blocks away (though the exhibit is undergoing some changes). Meanwhile, Hitler's bunker lies unmarked beneath a parking lot a few steps away from the abstract Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. And in an odd parallel, one of the best museums is still one of the most confusing: the Jewish Museum is a great effort, but the space is so controlled by Daniel Libeskind's creative architecture that the maze of exhibits constantly sends vistors down the wrong halls, leading to gaps and jumps in the story of Europe's Jews.



An exhibit room at Berlin's Jewish Museum. The exterior of the building can be seen in the photo above left.


But the challenges Berlin faces in understanding its history make that history all the more interesting and serve as a fascinating reminder of just how recent some of that history is (for example, the explanations of the wall at the Checkpoint Charlie Museum cause some confusion, but also provide and window on how the wall was perceived in the west before its fall). Like Paris and London, Berlin is a city with a Medieval European past. But it also has historic events that occurred so recently that they're still fresh.

On my second night in the city, Wabes and I went out with the mother and daughter who hosted Wabes during the first half of the summer. They lived in the East before the wall came down and continue to live in the Former East. The Mom had great stories that she was happy to share about the iron curtain days: what things were like in the East; why she was ambivalent about the fall of the wall; and how the amazing changes in the city have manifested in her life. It was a truly fascinating dinner.

Later in the week, we visited with Wabes old friends, H&S. They came in from Hamburg on our last day and wandered about the city with us as a got some last minute pictures of the Brandenburg Gate, the Reichstag, and the Wall (or the pieces that remain), and the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. H&S both grew up in the Former West, but still had interesting memories of Germany's reunification and strong feeling about its politics today.

The Reichstag on our last day in Berlin