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Upper Level Deck at Berlin Haupbahnhof - © Bernard Loke
Berlin Haupbahnhof, or Berlin Central Station is the largest station in Europe. It was opened on 26 May 2009, just weeks before the World Cup Finals were held in Germany. Currently, it serves the InterCityExpress, InterCity, RegionalExpress, RegionalBahn and S-Bahn trains (almost all types of train you can find in Germany).
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When I first researched on where to go and what to see in Berlin, the place East Side Gallery popped up every now and then. Because of the the name gallery, my initial thoughts are that it’s a proper gallery with paintings and artworks all housed inside a building; like what you usually find throughout Europe.
Artworks and paintings are definitely not my cup of tea. Even seeing the famed Mona Lisa painting in the Louvre did not excite me.
So I decided to give it a miss as there are other attractions in Berlin that I have to fit into my short 3 days trip there.
But the more I Googled, the more interesting the East Side Gallery seems to be.
In fact, it’s actually an open air gallery, with around 100 paintings by artists all over the world on the 1.3km stretch on the Berlin Wall.
Now, that’s something really, really interesting – Open air gallery and the Berlin Wall.
Along the 1.3km stretch of paintings on the wall, about 80% of them are badly damaged by erosion, graffiti, and vandalism.
The remaining 20% was recently restored since year 2000. And I got to know that there will be full restoration of almost all the paintings from 2008 onwards when enough funds are raised.
The First of Many Paintings - © Bernard Loke
One of My Fav Paintings - © Bernard Loke
My God Help Me, This Deadly Love to Survive - © Bernard Loke
Charlie Checkpoint - © Bernard Loke
Welcome to Berlin - © Bernard Loke
Proof That I Was Here! - © Bernard Loke
The Holocaust - © Bernard Loke
CV of The Berlin Wall - © Bernard Loke
As you can see from the above photos, most of the paintings are no long in their original state. Some of the graffiti even looked better than the original painting itself. However, I just found out that most of the paintings are restored by November 2009 and they looked really great now.
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When I was a kid, I didn’t know what was DST.
I always see the word daylight saving time printed on my old Casio digital watch. But I have no idea what it was. All I knew was that there would be time differences during the summer and such. Still I didn’t get it.
Then there was Champions League football. I would wake up in the middle of the night just to watch Man United play. I noticed how the kickoff times started to change from 2.45am to 3.45am towards the end of October. Not forgetting also the usual EPL kickoffs time from 7.45pm to 8.45pm.
I started to get a grasp of what DST is all about.
So, one day I looked up the Internet, asked Google and it replied with a simple phrase about DST.
Spring forward, fall back.
In simple terms, countries that observe DST will shift their clocks 1 hour forward during the spring so the sun appears to rise 1 hour later and sets 1 hour later thus making the day longer. And vice versa during the fall.
Therefore, I’m now 7 hours behind Malaysia.
Most of central Europe countries turned their clocks 1 hour backwards after daylight saving time has ended. I remember that DST will end sometime towards the end of October but I didn’t know it was on October. As far as my memory can recall, it’s on this coming weekend.
And when I checked again on Saturday night only did I realize that I had to turn my clock 1 hour backwards on Sunday 3.00 am to 2.00 am.
It suddenly appeared to me that winter is really coming. The sun used to set about 630pm last week. This week it’s 530pm.
The cloudy and rainy weather didn’t help either.
When I was here in December last year, the sun rose at 8.30am and set at 4.30pm.
Now, I really feel winter is coming real soon…
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I think it was almost 10 minutes that we were chatting at the river banks.
“Did I bore you off? Do you want me to continue?”
“Yeah, why not?”
“Because of the Treaty of Versailles, our country was weakened. They took away our lands and military because they were afraid we’ll be more powerful than they are. They didn’t want to lose their powers in Europe to us.”
“So there came Hitler. He was a nationalist at that time and he wanted back those lands that were given away by the Treaty or Versailles. So he gathered all his men and said to the Allied Forces; We want our lands back and if you’re not giving them back, we’ll take it!”
“He attacked and invaded Rhineland, Austria, the borders of Czechoslovakia and then Poland.”
Suddenly he stopped and started at me.
“And do you know how World War 2 started in Europe?”
I shook my head.
“It was the 1st of September of 1939 when Hitler attacked Poland. Very soon after that, Poland’s allies declared war on us. Everyone, including the UK, France, Australia, US, New Zealand, Canada and a few more countries.”
“You see, everything they wrote on the papers labeled Hitler as the bad guy. In fact, he’s a nationalist and hero in Germany, you know? He’s just taking back what was taken away from us.”
By now, it was coming to 20 minutes that we were chatting.
“Oh, I can see my friend waiting for me opposite the road. I got to go. I hope you’ve learned something and have a wonderful trip back.”
We shook hands and I thanked him for his brief history class.
This was the second time that someone was talking to me about the history of the place since I was here 2 months ago. The first was in Berchtesgaden where a 80+ year old man talked to me how happy he was to be back there since he was there during World War 2 as an American soldier.
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I was strolling along the banks of river Neckar the other day, taking some photographs of the Old Bridge while waiting for the sun to set.
“Too bad it’s under renovation, huh.”
I thought I heard someone talking to me from behind. So I turned around and there was this middle aged man smiling at me.
“Yeah. I came all way here……and it’s under renovation. What a bad timing..”
And then he pointed towards the castle sitting on top of the hill behind the bridge.
“Have you been up there before? Do you know who destroyed it?”
He was referring to the Heidelberg Castle (Heidelberg Schloss in German), the landmark of Heidelberg. It was first built as a fortress in the 12th century and then upgraded to a palace in the 15th century.
But what remains today is only it’s ruins. It was destroyed by Louis XIV and his French troops in 1689 when the war erupted.
“Do you know what they did to it”
“They stuffed the bottom of the watch tower with black gun powders and blew the hell out of it!”
Then he went on explaining the conflicts and wars between Germany and France up to the first World War.
“Heard of the Treaty of Versailles?”
I shook my head.
It seems that I’m in for a brief European history class.
“There was this leader, you know. Gustav Bauer. I think he must be crazy and went to sign this murderous treaty with the Allied Forces after World War 1″
“Because of this treaty, we have to give back East & West Prussia (today’s Poland) back to Poland, Eupen Malmedy to Belgium (near to where I am), Saarland & Danzig to the League of Nations, Alsace-Lorraine to the Frech and a few more that I couldn’t remember exactly.”
“We had to give back our colonies in Africa, Tanganyika (today’s Tanzania), Namibia, Botswana and Rwanda-Burundi.”
“And the worse thing ever was we accepted full responsibility for causing World War 1 and we have to pay out compensations to other countries for the damages!”
“You see, we were getting stronger and stronger in the early 1900′s and was about to overtake England and France as the main powers in Europe, economically and military strengths. They couldn’t let this happen as it would cause an imbalance of powers in Europe.”
“So, they put restrictions on us. They forced us to reduce our army, they reduce our lands…”
“And we went backwards..”
“Until a nationalist came and woke up the country in 1939…”
To be continued in Part 2.
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It was just minutes before lunch time. I was getting ready to walk out of the room to prepare my lunch and suddenly a email appeared on my mailbox. It was from the real estate agent.
“I thought I told you to checkout before 11am! They called me saying that all your belongings are still there. Please checkout NOW, otherwise you’ll need to pay the bill for today, yourself.”
And she attached a email from 3 weeks ago asking me to checkout before 11am, cc-ed it to my secretary.
Before I even get to pickup the phone to call her back, the secretary came in rushing into my room and asked me to go checkout the apartment right away. They won’t be paying the bills if I am charged for today’s stay. My initial plan was to checkout the apartment after work as the landlady of my new apartment is only available after 6pm.
I totally forgot that I need to be out by 11am.
There I went. I had only 1 hour. A bus ride from office to the apartment would take 20 minutes, that’s if the bus comes straight away! I was lucky that I only had to wait for 5 minutes for the bus to come.
So, in 1 hour I had to go back to my apartment, pack all my things up, checkout, then take a taxi to the new apartment, some 2km away. When I’ve finished packing, I realized that there are quite a lot to carry. A luggage bag, 2 backpacks and 5 bags of foods in all. Some of the foods were mine, some were passed to me when my colleagues left.
The heavy rain this afternoon just made things worse. Within minutes of calling them, the taxi arrived but it was parked some 100m away. And I had to carry everything to the taxi under the rain.
The new apartment was very near to the main train station, less than 200m away. There was no elevator. Again I had to carry all these bags 3 floors up. I was staying at the roof unit.
After all the packing, carrying things around while getting wet under the rain, I was greeted with my new apartment for the next 4 months.
My New Apartment!
This is How A Fully Equipped Kitchen Looks Like
Welcome to The Bedroom!
It was definitely much better than the old one.
Everything in this new unit is from IKEA. I thought to myself, “Back in Malaysia, we all want to fill our homes with IKEA furnitures, and here I have a studio apartment 100% furnished by IKEA!”
I can even see the phrase For IKEA From Whirpool on the microwave cum oven.
I definitely feel much better here. At least now I feel more at home. The previous apartment (was it even an apartment?) had the bed, toilet, kitchen and living room everything in 1 room.
Not ideal for a long stay.
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How much do you know about Berlin Wall?
Before this, all I knew about Berlin was about the Berlin Wall; a wall that ran through the heart of Berlin for 28 years and 1 day from 1961 to 1989. The Soviets occupied the East and the Allied which consists of the American, British and French controlled the West.
The only place to cross between East and West Berlin was at Charlie Checkpoint. Today it’s a famous landmark in Berlin even though there’s nothing interesting there except a guard house, and 2 men wearing Soviet and Allied uniform holding the USSR & USA flags. Photos with them costs 1e each. You can also stamp your passport with the old stamps between East/West Berlin.
Further down the road, away from Charlie Checkpoint is the Berlin Wall Museum. Part of the Berlin Wall is still standing there. I think it’s about 300m long and there are no graffiti on it, unlike those at East Side Gallery. It’s a temporary open air museum where you can read the history of Berlin and WW2 on printed boards. The actual museum is being constructed on the empty land beside it.
Walking even further down the road, you’ll reach Potsdamer Platz; the center of Berlin where everything comes together. Even though the wall is no more there except for 3-4 blocks with paitings, the scars are still clearly visible. Just look at the ground and you’ll see a long scar line running through the middle of Potsdamer Platz where the wall used to stand.
I guess most of the Berlin Wall photos that we’ve seen before are from the East Side Gallery, situated opposite the east Berlin train station. It is still standing today and it’s 1.2km long; the largest open air gallery in the world.
It used to house 106 paintings but over the years, they have now deteriorated to such a bad condition that most of them have been replaced by graffiti. I had my signature there as well. Some newer paintings were painted over the past few years and the government is now planning for restoration works on all the paintings later this year.
This is one of the newer ones, painted in 2006.
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