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to house 106 paintings but over the years, they have now deteriorated to such a bad condition that most of them have been replaced by graffiti.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.
