Berlin: My day continued

Many people have asked why I bothered to visit the Berlin Zoo when there were so many other things I could have done in the city that afternoon. My response was “why not?”

We walked back along Unter den Linden, where I tried “currywurst” from a street vendor. It was actually pretty good. I could have travelled to the top of the Fernsturm, or gone inside Humboldt University, but after the Berlin Wall, I needed an emotional break. We decided as a group that the Berlin Zoo would be a fun, relaxing way to spend the rest of the day, and so we went.

Initially, we decided to walk through the Tiergarten, because the zoo is located inside the park. After about forty-five minutes of walking, we realized the park was gigantic, and it would take hours to figure out where we were going. In front of the Napolean Monument we stumbled across a bicycle taxi, and for €4 each he took us the rest of the way. It was the greatest idea ever, because our driver pointed out interesting sights in the park as we passed by.

The highlight of this little side tour was when we crossed the Rosa Luxembourg Bridge. It is the location were Luxembourg and Karl Liebknecht - both Marxist theorist philosophers – were assassinated in 1919.

After spending a few hours at the zoo, the three of us hopped onto the subway and headed back to the hostel. We knew we needed to get off at the Rosa Luxembourg stop, so it was actually quite a painless ride home.

I would recommend stopping at the Kaiser Wilhelm Gedachtniskirche (Memorial Church), which is right outside the zoo. It was a lovely church that was bombed during the Second World War in 1943. Instead of rebuilding the church – when many other buildings were rebuilt and reconstructed – the ruins were left as they were. A modern glass structure was attached to the ruins, and now the church represents both old and new. There is a square – Breitscheidplatz - around the church, and a subway station nearby. Even though it is off the main beating path, there are restaurants and shops in the surrounding area, and I suggest anyone travelling to Berlin checks it out

The remains of the church. You must check it out if you go to Berlin.

Our group went on an evening walking tour to another area of Berlin where sections of the wall still remained intact. This area was very different, and as our tour guide explained, a section of the wall was built on either side of a local cemetery. Whenever there was a funeral, family members would hang over each side in an attempt to pay their respects and hopefully catch a glimpse of surviving family across the graves. I couldn`t imagine living like that, and seeing the cemetery brought home the fact that families were literally torn in half when the wall went up.

There was also a reconstructed version of what “No Man’s Land” (the space between walls that separated the Allies from the Soviets) looked like, and this was very interesting. But what stuck out for me more than anything was when our tour guide walked us down a street full of apartment buildings.

One side of the street used to be East Berlin, and the other side used to be West Berlin. Even twenty years after the wall came down, it was still easy to discern the differences between communist and capitalist architecture. The East Berlin apartments were dull, simple, ugly, and looked very "stiff." In essence, I was staring at a concrete jungle. The West Berlin apartments looked much friendlier. The paint wasn’t as chipped, the colours were brighter, and each building wasn’t an exact carbon copy of its neighbour.

The area of the city we walked through was also one of the places where Berliners attempted to tunnel underground from one side of the wall to the other. Our tour guide could even point out the exact locations where people died underneath the road.

The Ampelmann is also a reminder of the differences that used to exist between the east and west sides of the city. At intersections, on pedestrian crossing signs, is a little man wearing a hat that tells people when to walk and not walk. As we ventured through the city, we realized that this little man was only featured on some of the signs. When we brought this to our tour guides attention, she explained that it is a Soviet soldier. When the USSR had control of East Berlin, they changed the signs. In West Berlin, they remained the same. Now that the wall is destroyed, it was decided to leave the reminder of what used to be.

The significance of the Ampelmann similar to the double line of bricks in the street in front of Brandenburg Gate. It`s not a blatantly obvious reminder, but a symbol that the past will never be forgotten.