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| Berlin Hauptbahnhof |
I set off to explore the town but since I had been here a couple of times before I was not too inspired to see anything in particular. I had read about the graffiti and mural art in an area by the Ost Bahnhof, so I decided to head that way. Walking didn’t feel too attractive to me so I rented another scooter.
Berlin is really good at accommodating bicycles and scooters. There are many cycle lanes and cycle paths and the city is just full of cyclists. You have to be careful as a tourist if you are not accustomed to silent bicycles speeding by you. They have separate paths which I kept confusing with footpaths only to find that a bicycle has the right of way and could indeed take you out. The real nice thing though is that for the most part the bicyclists follow the rules of the road and stop at stop signs and keep to their paths. If only that were the case in the USA.
To get over to the Ost Bahnhof, I could more or less follow the banks of the River Spree all the way. It is a scenic and interesting route too, taking me past the Parliament buildings and the Reichstag and on towards Museum Island. On the northern tip of Museum Island is the Bode Museum. I didn’t go in but I did admire the wonderful building.
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| The Bode Museum |
I crossed over to the north side of the Spree and continued along through the main roads to the East Side Gallery. The East Side Gallery is a section of the Berlin Wall on Muhlenstrasse where artists were invited to decorate sections of the East side of the Wall. That was back in 1990; 30 years ago now. The border between the East and the West was actually the River Spree itself so this part of the wall was rather small and to my eyes easily scalable. However you would have to have first made it across the Spree and no doubt there were plenty of guard towers. Since the original artwork was done there has been significant deterioration from plain old weathering to graffiti and vandalism. There have been attempts to restore and preserve the works (not without controversy) and for the most part it is now in reasonable condition (except for the graffiti tagging).
I particularly liked the red jacketed wall jumper, the Detour to the Japanese Sector, the Andrei Sacharov portrait and of course the Brezhnev - Honecker Kiss.
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By this time I had been using my scooter for an hour and apparently after 60 minutes they terminate the rental, at least they do if it is stationary and locked as mine was at the time. I continued on for a while on foot, crossing over to the south side of the Spree and back towards the center on Kopenicker Strasse. I was not really in the mood for walking so I rented another scooter for the journey back. They are relatively easy to find in this city - they are scattered everywhere. I followed the south side of the Spree back to the Hauptbahnhof and my hotel.
I had a quick lunch in a nearby restaurant and then decided to rent a bicycle for the afternoon’s explorations. The scooters, while fun, were getting to be quite expensive. My morning’s travels amounted to 25 euros. I rented a bicycle from the hotel for the entire afternoon for just 8 euros.
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| The Brandenburg Gate |
I wasn’t sure where to go in the afternoon but I had read about the old Tempelhof Airport in the south of the city and I thought that would make a nice trip. I traversed across the city seeing many of the sights on the way - the Reichstag, the Brandenburg Gate, Under den Linden, Potsdamerplatz, Alexanderplatz. I was getting the hang of this cycling and scootering by now, and feeling quite comfortable riding in traffic.
The Tempelhof Airport buildings are immense - it was once among the top 12 largest buildings in the world. While the airport did exist earlier, much of the airport was built during the 1930s as part of Hitler’s and Albert Speer’s plan for the new Germany and it was in this pre WWII period that the airport grew. Of course it’s real claim to fame for me was the role it played in the Soviet blockade of Berlin in the post war era. There was a tremendous amount of traffic coming in and out of the airport during this period to supply food and other resources to the inhabitants of West Berlin.
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| Tempelhof Airport Hangars |
There is an arc of huge hangar buildings, now mostly not in use but they are certainly impressive. I do believe that you can do tours in more normal times but alas all I could do was ride around the exterior. I did get to go into one section that was opened as a sports center with tennis courts, basketball courts, etc. and that got me out to the runway area. There is an old USAF plane parked in front of the terminal - a C-47 perhaps as that was the primary plane used in the airlift. They were called "raisin bombers" as the pilots and crew often dropped sweets as they came into land for the children who would wait by the airport fence.
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| Tempelhof Airport |
After seeing all I could, I headed back northwards to the hotel passing all the landmarks again. This time I detoured past Checkpoint Charlie which was remarkably quiet in this Coronavirus world. Just down the street from the Checkpoint was Traby World, where you can arrange to be driven around town in a Trabant, that iconic East German car.
In the evening I had a lovely Italian meal in a restaurant near the station and then retired to my room to ready myself for the early morning bus to the airport. Even at 5:00 in the morning the buses were running every 10 minutes to the Tegel airport and what is more, the ride was free. Whether that was a normal situation or just because of Coronavirus I do not know. My flight left a few minutes late and I was in London an hour or so later. From there it was on to San Francisco and home.
There are more photos here.
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