Berlin: when I visited.

Berlin

I spent several days in Berlin during 1995. Visiting a friend whose apartment had until six years previously been about 300 metres inside East Berlin.

By then most of the wall which surrounded West Berlin had been removed, along with its gun towers, barbed wire, trenches and minefields. The city was in the process of putting itself back together after 28 years of separation. 28 years in which West Berlin had moved with modernity and East Berlin had decayed. Streets had their cobbles removed and neatly piled alongside, temporary gas mains emerged from the ground, wide, pink-painted pipes which rose up the height of two storeys, crossed the road and descended back into earth.

I went to look at a portion of the wall that remained. It was concrete, about 10cm thick. Wafer-thin really, but enough to split a city into two nations, two worlds.

My friend was working during the day, so I walked. Absorbed this unique town, took its temperature. It fascinated me. On the Eastern side buildings were being restored to their original state, washes of outlandish colours being applied to pristine render work: lime green, bright blue, canary yellow. Beside them were brown frontages, peeling paint, bullet holes not filled in since 1945. The Battle of Berlin.

On the ground floors of many restored buildings were spaces that would one day maybe house shops. But before being put to this purpose they were being lent to artists. In no five days have I ever attended so many art exhibitions. In no five days have I ever seen so many bars and cafés open, so much newness, so much hope in a place. Berlin was in a state of spring, fresh growth emerging constantly.

On my last day I walked into town, following the line once taken by the concrete ribbon that sliced Berlin apart for a generation. What was once the ‘death strip’, the land which defended the wall from those wishing to cross from East to West, was now grass. From a depression in the ground several children were playing a game of war, their machine guns made of sticks, their ammunition imaginary.