Berlin: Don't Mention The War...

heading back from a pub out in the suburbs this evening in a city that was 20 years ago reunited with sledgehammers and constructive demolition, i was left to navigate the U-Bahn on my own for the first time since arriving. i don't often take public transport when i travel but in Berlin it's worth it, espcially when i'm being shown around some of the less-known sights and you want to save time, so as i walked down the steps my hands went into autopilot and fished my PSD and headphones out of my TARDIS bag and brought on some noise. i'm in Germany and i'm feeling that something in German would be appropriate but i realise quickly that i cleared Rammstein off some time ago in favour of... i'm not sure anymore. it might have been In Flames... or Incubus. i mentally scan my database, and on a sudden realisation i'm digging deep into the Guitar Hero soundtrack to find Heir Kompt Alex by Die Toten Hosen (Here Comes Alex by The Dead Pants) and everything's right with the world as the train runs along towards Alexanderplatz. shortly thereafter i remember that i included some Rammstein in some compilations i'd made up years ago and i'm pretty sure i had it loud enough that Keine Lust and Engel were audible to everyone else in the station. it didn't help that i was headbanging - that tends to draw attention.

i'm staying in a mega-hostel just off Unter Den Linden, roughly 20 minutes walk into East Berlin from the Brandenburg Gate. it's a good location, across the road from Alexanderplatz which is a) a large square with a water fountain and b) a main rail hub for the city. this made it easy this morning when Matthias came to meet me and show me around. it's nifty running into other travelers you've met before when you're out in the world. it's freaky-cool catching up with someone you've not seen in years, since way back in another life. i've not seen Matthias in something like 4 years, would realistically make it 2 lives ago, and the last time we spoke we were... i wouldn't go so far as to say less than friendly, but certainly not on xmas-card lists. still, when i walked out the front door to see him snapping a quick photo of the statue across the street i recognised him instantly, and we fell back into step just like it was old times when i used to come round to his place and drink beer until far too late in the evening.

i can't stress the value of having a local guide, even if they've only been in the town for 5 weeks. Matti'd been training to do the free walking tours i've been taking in almost every city, so we headed off so he could get some practice, meandering through the central area, then bouncing from location to location to check out some stuff that isn't on the regular tourist route, like having a laugh at the Australian-themed restaurant at Potsdamerplatz, and the artisty area in Freidrichshain. i'd already gone on a mission the previous evening after arriving with Dee, Stef and Val, taking in the Book Burning Memorial (a glassed-over hole in the ground in the stop where the biggest book-burning occurred, in which you can see bookshelves with enough room for one of each of the 22,000+ books on the Nazi list of prohibited titles) and the viewing terrace on top of the Reichstag (with is totally worth checking at night), where i experienced the strangest phenomenon.

i've never been to Berlin before, but i instantly knew this building, etched into my mind's eye. i'm standing 50 metres from the front steps with a pilfered MP44 Assault Rifle wearing a Red Army uniform fighting my way across the trenches and pillboxes surrounding the front of the building, taking cover behind burning tanks. sprinting up the steps, i leap over the barbed wire to clear the soldiers behind the sandbags, take out the heavy machinegun on the platform opposite then carefully pass between the pillars on the right-hand side so that i don't take a magazine-load of bullets in the back while i clear the fortified area in front of the heavy doors under the engraved roof. all this is happening in my head while i stand there looking at the facade, and i can't help but wonder at the accuracy of some of the computer games i've been playing in the last few years. i think i died a dozen times getting up those steps when i played Call of Duty 4, and the layout of the front of this building has been etched into my memory. it's pretty ridiculous getting flashbacks from a place you've never been, but there you go.

i'm glad i met this crew - Dee's older than she looks and is more mature than most of the kids on the bus, and Val and Stef? they're just... Nice. don't drink, don't smoke, they say things like "dang" and "shoot". i'm sure they have a wild side, but i'm yet to find it. next to these two i'm a total badass, which amuses me a little... but then next to these two my mum's a total badass. certainly, they've been a nice gang to hang with.

i'd been in town for an hour or two when i realised that of everywhere i've been since Paris... and possibly including... this is the most "home-like" city i've been in. this could have something to do with everything being so modern. Australian cities are, you have to admit, ridiculously young when compared to Europe. the country's only 221 years old for fuck's sake. i've drunk in pubs older than that in most of the countries i've been to, and some of these places have seen constant, civilised habitation for over 2000 years. most of Berlin, on the other hand, is less than 60 years old, and much of East Berlin is even more recent. in WWII most of the city was bombed down the shattered stone and burning timbers, and a lot of the rest was fought over tooth and nail by the remnants of the German Army and SS while the Red Army swarmed upon the last remaining Nazi strongholds in a wave of tanks, blodshed and brutal retribution for atrocities committed from Poland to St Petersburg. fighting went house-to-house back to the bunkers around the Reichstag until around the time Hitler embraced the warm friendship of a .32 Luger round in his bunker, the remains of which i stood over for a while, by which time there was barely a building left standing that wasn't gutted by fire and artillery and half the city had to be rebuilt. spin forward to 1989 and i remember watching news footage of the people taking to the Wall with pickaxes and hammers, tearing down the practical symbol of idealism and oppression that had divided friends and loved-ones for 30 years in one of the most spectacular aftershocks of the fall of the Soviet Union. much of the old Soviet-style buildings have been rebuilt or renovated, leaving much of (the former, but i'll continue to refer to as) East Berlin remarkably new - very much contemporary to much of the recent construction in Perth or Melbourne.

it helps that, unlike many of the places i've been where large swathes of the older parts of cities have been given over to tourists, Berlin feels like the sort of place where people actually live, as opposed to, say, Amsterdam where the locals generally wouldn't be seen dead in the RLD unless they were... you know... working. i'd been in town for less than 24 hours when i realised that i desperately wanted to learn German and apply for an EU working visa, although from what Matti said, if neu-Deutsch keeps getting popular everyone'll be English soon enough anyway which personally i think is something of a shame.

what a town! what a vibe! Berlin carries itself with the effortless grace of a city that works well as a unit. the public transport's excellent (when it's working - there was "emergency maintenance" on the S-Bahn while i was there. i'd love to see it when everything's humming along properly), there's someone selling bratwurst and/or kebabs on every second street corner, or so it seems. Berlin is home to the buggest Turkish population outside of Turkey and as usual they brought their food with them. nowhere seems too busy, or too boring, and a huge proportion of the population know exactly how good they've got it because they remember what it was like before when things were Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition. pondering plans for the rest of my stay i can't shake the feeling that i'm really going to enjoy the next couple of days...