It’s liberating to be able to walk aimlessly from West to East, and we can, and have been falling for Berlin over 35 years.
Today’s Berlin is a very different city to the one that had the attention of the world in 1989.
When a cack-handed apparatchik’s mis-step was taken as an invitation to East Germans to cross the Wall.
First, of course, they had to get over it which psychologically was towering.
And terrifying with 140 citizens from the DDR dying trying to flee to the West, either over it, through it, or under it.
Building walls
Today my German freunde will gather in London to reflect on the momentous events of November 9 and Berlin’s future.
The most visible sign of a new Berlin to the one anyone over the age if 40 grew up witnessing is the lack of that wall.i
In truth, a visitor to Berlin will have to go searching for that wall.
Something Berliners did not have the luxury of enjoying, being divided by the wall for 28 years.
This visitor, with a day to explore didn’t find it although, in truth, I haven’t the best record in that department.
Having gone round in circles trying to get to Little Havana in Miami and going off piste on the small roads to Rome.
The Berliners’ guide
Best I hadn’t let my enthusiasm get the better of me and tried finding the Wall myself, and followed the Berliners’ guides.
To Checkpoint Charlie or the East Side Gallery, the latter at 1.3kms the longest remaining section of the Wall on the Spree.
The eastern side of the wall, painted by 118 artists from 21 countries.
And the longest open-air gallery in the world.
And it is here that you will see the meme of former DDR President Erich Honecker and Leonid Brezhnev.
At the Socialist Brotherly Kiss, a mural by Dimitrji Vrubel.
Which you will see in every souvenir shop and on rows of key rings.
Along with chunks of what are claimed to be the one true wall.
In much the same way as fragments of the one true cross were pedalled on that Road to Rome.
Potsdamer Platz to be
This DIY explorer did find his Wall outside the Potsdamer Platz on his way to Albrecht-Achilles-Strasse.
The last original Wall segments at Potsdamer Platz (Stresemannstraße) were demolished 15 years ago.
Six sections have since been erected in front of the entrance area of the station Potsdamer Platz.
While just around the corner in Erna-Berger-Straße is one of Berlin’s last watchtowers.
But now covered up due to renovation work.
There will be talk and laughing and clinking of steins by my German freunde tonight in London.
Ich bin ein Berliner
Much as there was back in 1989 when Germans East and West reunited across the divide of the Wall.
And the world watched and smiled and leant support.
And we’ve been falling for Berlin over 35 years since and will for the next 35 years and beyond.