Day 2 in Berlin Exploring Berlin’s Dark and Light Side. The Stasi Museum and the Christmas Markets

Berlin Day Two  

Don’t eat 5 breakfasts.  Don’t eat 5 breakfasts. Don’t eat 5 breakfasts.

Of course I didn’t get too excited at the help yourself breakfast and have 5 different sittings.

I got too excited and had 6.  Mainly cheese and ham sandwiches and so, you know, nice and light, but what a way to start the day.  All washed down with a few gallons of watered down fruit juices and deceptively good coffee from a very Germanic coffee machine.

You know the score with city breaks, there is a lot of walking and a lot of admin and planning.  One of those I’m terrible at, but I learned to walk at about 15 months and haven’t had a problem with it since really and so I focused on that and let Titchy plan the day.

Straight out of the hotel and, in the daylight and in the clear skies, it was much more apparent that we were in the former eastern side of the city.  It was 1989 when the wall came down, 35 years have passed, and yet still the architecture is very different on the two sides of town.

Function over form.  As you can see, they have tried to update the brutal, harsh, concrete boxes by pinning some coloured squares on the windows, but we can see you hiding behind there!  It’s the building disguise equivalent of putting on a pair of those glasses with the fake nose attached to it.

It was only a few minutes’ walk from the hotel to Anhalter Bahnhof, where would be taking the UBahn to Magdalenenstraße.  Anhalter had been one of the largest stations in Berlin prior to the war and was the station from which around one third of the pre-war Jewish population of Berlin were deported to the camps.  The station was devastated by allied bombing campaigns and only a small section of the original building remains.

We read that it was just a short walk ‘around the corner’ from Magdalenenstraße station to the Stasi Museum that we planned to visit.  We still managed to get lost, fortunately, as we stumbled upon a beautiful Coptic Orthodox Church.  It was absolutely beautiful and totally under the radar.  No signs, no fuss, just an incredibly pretty building sat in total peace, only interrupted by the odd bird chirp and passing car.

We eventually found the Stasi Museum, is was just around the corner and quite easy to miss as it was just another bland concrete box.  It was the home of the GDR’s Ministry of State Security that was responsible for the surveillance and monitoring of the populous under the leadership of Erich Mielke.

It was a fascinating and, frankly, terrifying view into the lives of the former East Germans where neighbours were expected to report on neighbours if they were not ‘conforming’ and the state were authorised to listen in on conversations round the family dining table using listening devices secretly inserted into furniture.

As the suspicions of the state grew, so did the army of people required to monitor both the populous and the people doing the monitoring.  5.6 million people had files kept on them and there were 90,000 full time employees backed up by 170,000 informers.

The offices had been locked up and left for years and so it was eerily very much as it was ‘back in the day’.  I only have very limited memories of the 80’s but as I walked around the perfectly preserved offices, it all felt weirdly familiar of my teenage years.  It felt wrong that there was NOT a cloud of smoke hanging over the cheap looking basic furniture and I suspect that the wood panelled walls would have been impregnated with the smell of tobacco, if I had not been scared of being caught sniffing the walls, I could have checked.

We stopped for a brief drink and, I am not sure if this was a deliberate feature of the café or not, they really doubled down on East German customer experience.  No eye contact. No smile.  No please and thank you. Just two drinks thrown at you where you sat in silence, drinking your drink and contemplating all the things that you should feel guilty for…..and we didn’t even have a cake!

As we made our way back to the centre of Berlin, I think I felt grateful for the freedoms and the happiness of my formative years having previously totally taken them for granted.  I had visited Berlin before but I don’t think I had  truly appreciated the stark divide that the wall provided until today.

We hopped back on to the tube and made our way back to the centre of town where we had booked into the tour of the Cathedral which had been highly recommended to us by friends that had been to Berlin previously, but with a heavy warning that there were a lot of steps to deal with.

We got off at Museumsinsel, meaning Museum Island, and ambled our way through the gloriously majestic buildings and stumbled upon a tourist information office.  We popped in to find a huge model of Berlin which gave you a great feel for the layout of the city and distances between the key areas.  We tried to have a chat about the model and Berlin in general with a friendly faced guy that came to greet us, but he spoke as much English as we did German.

As we walked across the large open square in front of the Cathedral it started to sleet down and so that encouraged us into a little bit of a trot.  Passing through the comically large wooden doors, we paid our money and walked into the gloriously peaceful and respectfully silent dome.  Despite neither of us being religious men, I took a moment to light a candle for my late father, sit down and remember him.

I have great memories of our time in Berlin on family holidays as a kid.   We had visited West Berlin before the wall came down on a camping holiday and my Dad was desperate to return after the collapse of communism.  Both trips are stained on my mind, I think more so than other holidays, of how happy my Dad was being able to tick things off his bucket list, years before such a thing was invented.

I will never forget him walking into a strip club with a tin of fruitcake under his arm or the time he parked up within spitting distance of the changing of the guard at the Brandenburg gate so that we didn’t have to walk too far….and the sight of US servicemen sprinting towards us with rifles ready, only to stand down when they saw a pensioner slowly stepping out of a VW camper van.  Priceless.

The warnings were right, the walk to the outer section of the dome, which gave incredible panoramic views of the city, was a tough one.  There were, apparently, 400 steps to the top but I didn’t count them, I was too busy trying to not lose my footing on tiny steps in dusty spaces that got narrower the higher you went. It was absolutely worth it.  

We spent a good half hour in the bitter winds with tears being blown horizontally across our faces taking in the sights as the weak sun dipped down.

The 400 steps felt a little easier on the way down and, back at sea level,  we made our way down to the Brandenburg gate to tick off the last part of our to do list.

It was dark and cold by this point and we headed south.  Just a short walk and we were in amongst the heavy concrete blocks that make up the memorial to the murdered Jews of Europe.  2,710 concrete columns laid out in a grid with fairly dim lighting intermittently spaced out.  I have to say, it was maybe lost on me, but I didn’t really get it and it really didn’t feel like a fitting monument in my eyes.

We kept on heading south towards Potsdamer Platz where, we were told, that Berlin’s Christmas markets had started to open up; four of dozens were starting that weekend.   Having visited the markets in Dusseldorf a few years earlier, I was all excited at the prospect and I was hungry and looking forward to the different stalls to check out.

The highlight of the limited stalls that were there was the one selling warm nuts coated in as many different coatings as you could imagine.  We picked Baileys and were slightly taken aback by the €6 price point for around 20 nuts.  Bloody Brexit.

The rest of the stalls was mainly the sort of tat you would see in shops in any holiday resort, the likes of flashing shoes, ‘funny’ t-shirts and football tops which don’t pass the sniff test of authenticity.

Slightly disappointed with the spirit of Christmas future, we headed for the warmth of what looked like a garden shed that seemed to be bouncing.  It was warm and full of the happy faces of well wrapped up punters.  We both decided that we needed a little bracer and so Titchy picked Gluwein and I plumped for a hot chocolate laced with brandy.  All of a sudden, the rosy red cheeks, smiley faces and happy chatter made much more sense!

Titchy was so ‘relaxed’ after her little toot of booze that she managed to leave her hat behind in the little wooden hut.  Having walked back to pick it up we headed out to find somewhere to have dinner.  It was biting cold by this point but it was one of those walks where the cold was held at bay by the warm buzz of booze.  We passed and assessed many different options on our walk which was Titchy’s idea of hell, walking aimlessly while hungry.

We ended up in a Mexican restaurant called Cancun and our view, through the condensation soaked windows was of the Anhalter Bahnhof, the day had come around full circle.  

15,183 steps, 10.98km, 1,053 calories