... in Berlin

The Adventures of the Anonymous Two in Berlin

As Harlequins were playing at Twickenham (big Stoop) on the afternoon of December 27, and we were flying to Berlin from Heathrow, it made sense to stay overnight in the vicinity of the airport.
 

Harlequins unfortunately lost the game, but we were present in the world’s largest ever crowd size for a club match.
 

Our hotel was a 15 minute drive from the airport and we needed to call the valet parking chaps when we were 20 minutes away. So we called them before we left and were duly met at the appointed place.
 

Having left the hotel before breakfast was served; we went in search of food in the airport, once we had been processed through check in and security.
 

The breakfast venue proudly advertised that it could do breakfast in 15 minutes if you were in a hurry. It seemed odd that it may take longer than 15 minutes to bring a cooked breakfast to you, and also odd – given the location – that they may have customers with all the time in the world.
 

 

Before long we were aboard the plane – where we were given breakfast. Admittedly it was only a bacon and egg bap with orange juice and lukewarm coffee. And it took longer than 15 minutes to be served. But I suppose by then we were no longer in a hurry.

 

As we had done the necessary research beforehand we knew that there was a good bus service into town from the airport, at a fraction of the cost of a taxi.  So on arrival we headed for the appropriate bus. There was a ticket machine, and even though there was an English option we were slightly beaten by it as referred to zones. We had no idea what zone we were going to – or what zone we were currently in, for that matter. So we bought tickets from the man instead and boarded the bus.
 

They use a system similar to that in Italy, whereby you have to validate the tickets before using the bus/train/metro and they are then valid for a specified period of time. We stamped the tickets in the machine on the bus, and stood in the luggage area with our suitcase for the journey into town.
 

The driver was a little bit eager on the brake pedal and at one point he managed to launch all of the luggage, all standing passengers and a good few seated passengers a few feet forward with unexpected ferocity, which was a little unnerving.
 

We passed the Brandenburg gate and went along Unter den Linden to the bus stop we needed. Keen to dump the luggage, we headed straight for the hotel, but not before taking a picture of curious site of Marienkirche (one of the oldest remaining buildings in Berlin) dwarfed by the new and outer worldly looking TV tower. We were also amused to see the green man on the pedestrian crossing lights wore a hat.
 

Husband had been using Google earth before we left to see what the hotel looked like. The pictures from various angles had been updated as different times. In one picture, there was a nice modern hotel. In another, there was a large building site. After a momentary panic, a check of the dates indicated that the hotel did exist and had not been recently razed to the ground.
 

We checked in, tried to figure out how to turn up the heating in the room, and ventured out for an explore of the local vicinity.
 

Our hotel was in Rosenthaler Strasse in the former East Berlin.  There was a cold functionality to the plain concrete buildings, many of which still bore visible pock marks from war time bullets. The weather outside was clear and bright, but with a chilling wind. We walked to Grosse Hamburger Strasse to find the stark memorial to Jewish families who had been deported. The mournful statues were small, but gaunt and their hollow eyes stared straight at you.  55,000 Jews had been deported from the building which once stood here. It had been a Jewish old people’s home, with a cemetery at the back. The Nazis used it as a detention centre for deportees and removed the cemetery, using it instead as an exercise ground.  The building has gone and the cemetery is now a garden, sombre and overshadowed by trees.

 

It was surrounded by buildings. Anyone who lived in the vicinity at the time would have had some idea of what was going on.

 

We wandered down Orienburger Strasse and saw the Neue synagogue which was a blaze of golden glory in the late afternoon winter sun. Berlin’s Jewish community is largely based in this area – given the proximity of the former old people’s home, this had always been the hub of the Jewish community. After the war, they simply came back. The synagogue was Moorish-Byzantine style, built between 1859 and 1866. A German police chief saved it from being burnt down in the 1930’s by successfully pleading that it was a national monument. It was ransacked, and finished off by an Allied bomb in 1943, lying in ruins until 1988 when restoration work began.

 

Opposite the synagogue was an un-prepossessing, almost forbidding building that appeared to be a bar. In the interests of warming up, we went in for a drink.
 

The contrast inside was incredible – it felt like a student underground bar, ochre coloured walls, trestle tables and imaginative artwork. We asked for a couple of beers, and the waitress said she would bring us a menu as there were over 120.

 

We worked our way through a couple of bottles each, including one rather amusingly called Duff beer and took the opportunity to have some warming food – which included an extremely delicious potato soup and chicken stew.
 

Warm and replete, we put back on our many layers of clothing and emerged again into the chilly evening air.
 

There were frequent, unexpected large open spaces in the city. It had clearly been bombed to bits in the war and never fully recovered while part of the Eastern bloc, and post 1989 regeneration seemed slow. The fact that the synagogue had lain in a state of ruins for so many years – neither built nor removed – was testament to the lack of investment and interest from the post war Eastern GDR.
 

There was now some evidence of extensive regeneration being underway in a haphazard way – and the more commercial streets had obviously made significant progression since the wall fell. But the over-riding feeling was of a fledgling city rather than a place which has stood here since the 13^th century.  Away from the main streets there was a communist feel and a distinct impression that they hadn’t really grasped capitalism as there was minimal signage and advertising outside the various shops and restaurants – nothing to entice you in or even let you know that the businesses existed.
 

Further down the road we saw what appeared to be a derelict and heavily graphitised building. But there seemed to be people going in and out of it, and so we went in.

A staircase gently climbed around the edge of a central atrium. There was graffiti everywhere.

Through broken windows from the stairs we could see into a makeshift campsite below, tents and dim lights from fires. On each floor of the building artists had set themselves up with studios and exhibitions. It was the art of a troubled nation – hard hitting, aggressive, oppressive.  This was Galerie Tacheles. The building had originally been a Jewish owned department store, but was in financial ruin before the First World War. Permanently under threat of demolition, it persists and survives. Like so much of Berlin, and it’s people.

 

Again feeling the need to warm up, we went in search of a bar and found a fantastic venue just off Friedrichstrasse. The menu rather fabulously referred to ‘a spoonful of warm’ and pudding came under the heading of ‘something more’. We had dinner of pork, apple and boiled potatoes. This appeared to be the staple diet of Berlin – it might be dressed up in slightly different ways, but the underlying ingredients would involve these three items. My warm alcoholic drink afterwards also had bits of apple floating in it.
 

We walked down to Unter den Linden (which takes its name from the avenue of linden trees). The wide road had a central pedestrian areas with linden trees on either side. Each tree had been adorned with lights along its trunk and branches, so that the street looked like an avenue of glowing trees, running all the way down to the Brandenburg gate. It was an amazing sight, and a sharp contrast to other areas of the city. The guide book assured us that was nice to stroll down, but less so into the teeth of a biting easterly wind in mid winter. Before the wall came down, this was the road to nowhere, becoming a dead end at Brandenburg gate.

 

We passed a small tent selling gluwein, and indulged in a mug each. They have a system whereby you pay a deposit for the mug, which is returned when you bring the mug back. For a moment we considered whether the mugs were interesting enough to keep – but decided against it.
 

We walked back to the hotel through the eerily empty and dimly lit museum island, past the dark and imposing Berliner Dom. The Dom had been floodlit but this only served to make its grimy stonework even more ghostly. Just off the main road, it was silent and traffic free. There was minimal street lighting and only the sound of our feet click clacking along the road. Occasionally another person would scurry past or there would be the sudden whoosh of a bicycle.
 

Back at the hotel the room was still freezing. Our attempt with the air conditioning hadn’t had much effect.
 

The following day, after a hearty breakfast at the hotel we set off for a long walk around the city. It was cloudy and cold. We walked along the river Smee, with the biting wind in our faces and an ever present threat of rain from the sky – which did momentarily come to fruition.
 

At Friedrichstrasse station there were more statues in memory of deported families, bronze children standing with unnecessary suitcases in hand, looking calm but frightened. It was a quiet acknowledgement of what horrors the city had once seen.
 

Our walk more or less followed the line of the wall. We went along the river towards the Reichstag. Atop the Reichstag was the Sir Norman Foster glass dome, and we could see people walking around inside it. I was surprised by the huge space in front of it, a large, empty, bleak, semi grassed area.

 

Across the river, in what had formerly been the East, were large, modern office buildings. This part of the river had been the site of a filmed escape attempt on 21 August 1988 when 2 men and 2 women broke past the border guards and dived into the river. The river belonged to the East, so Westerners could only stand on the banks and watch, helplessly, as GDR guards pursued them. All 4 made it to the West.
 

Not far from the Reichstag was a small, understated memorial to those who had died trying to cross the border. A sign there indicated that the red government had frequently attempted to remove this memorial. It wasn’t clear which government they were referring to.

 

A little further on was the Brandenburg gate, surrounded by a stage and fun fair set up for the New Years eve celebrations. Previously the western entrance into the city, it is the only survivor of 18 gates that used to surround the city. On the Eastern side of the gate, in Parisier Platz men dressed up as Russian and US soldiers posed with tourists in front of the gate in acknowledgement of the liberty these forces brought – and temporarily skimming over the details of the mistreatment of Berliners at the hands of the Russian forces as well as the subsequent communist oppression from the East. Darth Vada also posed in front of the gate with tourists, but I was less clear about how he fitted in with Berlin history, or indeed whether he represented the force of good or evil. From the tourist office at Brandenburg gate we bought a fridge magnet with a piece of concrete on it that suggested it was part of the former Wall.

 

Parisier Platz had once been framed by baroque town palaces which were destroyed in the Second World War. What was left was pulled down by the GDR to keep a clear space near the wall. Now the area was again filled with buildings. The American embassy was based here as well as a number of large hotels.

 

Just beyond the Brandenburg gate was the memorial for the murdered Jews of Europe (inaugurated in 2005) - a huge undulating area covered with 2711 grey concrete blocks of varying heights, ordered into rows. We walked among blocks 2 to 3 feet high, and then suddenly would be plunged into a forest of blocks towering 20 foot high, where it was very easy to lose each other. It was unclear what the blocks were intended to represent and if anything they inspired a sense of fun and encouraged games of hide and seek, rather than making you think about what had happened in our recent history. 

The American architect had intended to create a maze of reflection. It was an acknowledgement of the awkward past, but other than existing, the memorial was barely referenced. No obvious signs indicated what it was. Apparently there was an underground information centre – but there were no clear directions or encouragement to this.  It came across as a sheepish, slightly embarrassed memorial. But it made good use of huge expanse of wasteland that had recently existed here. This area had once been a shoot to kill zone next to the wall, lined with barbed wire and overlooked by zealous border patrol guards in watchtowers.

 

It was hard to know the reason for siting the holocaust memorial where it stood, and whether there was any intention for this to be next to the site of Hitler’s bunker and his eventual suicide. Again, the awkward embarrassment of the city meant that the presence of the bunker was not advertised at all. We only knew of it because it was marked on our guide maps. Now there were relatively modern looking office buildings on either side of the road, constructed recently on the post war waste land that had existed near the wall.

 

There was some acknowledgement of this part of the history of Berlin. A small display of photographs from the watchtowers ran along part of the street, showing the area where we now stood – in the middle of the former death strip, which was then a huge expanse of empty nothingness. Looking around, it was hard to believe. Now there were offices, hotels, and a road – along which a line of trabants was driving. Admittedly the current buildings seemed haphazard, out of place and erratically planned. It was as though building work had been undertaken quickly in a desire to fill this space with something and blot out the memory of what had once been there.
 

East Berliners hadn’t seen the wall until it came down. There was a further wall and various lines of defence over the east in an attempt to keep people as far away from the border as possible. West Berliners, by contrast, could go right up to the wall – and covered it with graffiti. As the wall was constructed one or two metres into the Eastern side, border guards would go out at night to paint over the graffiti – and still be within their side of the border. Eventually they gave up, unable to keep pace with the West’s outburst of feelings.
 

Near Potsdamer Platz was a small triangle of land – the Lenne triangle - that technically belonged to the East, but lay outside the Wall. It was the site of an amusing altercation between youths and police. The youths erected a commune and every time there was a scrap, they would run to the triangle where the West Berlin police could not follow them. An exchange of territory was agreed in March 1988 at which point 900 police moved in. Over 200 squatters escaped arrest by jumping over the Wall to the East. This was not a surprise to the GDR who had been watching events unfurl and who simply rounded them up, gave them breakfast and drove them back to West Berlin through various border crossing points.
 

At Potsdamer Platz there were a few sections of wall displayed, along with information boards. Rather than graffiti, people now stuck chewing gum to the wall, giving it a curious multi-coloured textured look.

 

When the wall came down protestors had sat on the Potsdamer Platz part, keen that part of the wall should remain as a reminder and memorial, rather than being completely obliterated. Their feelings were overruled and there are very few places where you can see the wall. You can walk around much of its former site, and not even know that it had been there.

 

Potsdamer Platz is one such place. Before the wall, it had been a busy hub of Berlin life. Once the wall was built, it became a huge expanse of nothingness, with the forlorn station looking odd and out of place all on its own in the middle. The station itself was closed. Like a number of stations in East Berlin, trains from the West ran through them but didn’t stop. The stations were patrolled by guards to avoid escape attempts, and seemed to have stood still in time, with the posters and adverts put up in the 1960’s still visible.
 

Berlin’s challenge to become the unofficial capital of Europe began at Potsdamer Platz in 1993 with a building project on a larger scale than London’s Docklands. In strong contrast to the surrounding area, this plan saw construction by Sony and Daimler-Benz, transforming it from a barren piece of no man’s land to a shiny new commercial district.

 

The large, impressive steel and glass Sony Centre building dominates the Platz. In need of warmth and food, we went inside, in search of lunch. To start we had goulash soup and soup with liver dumplings, which really taste very livery indeed. We shared sausages and sauerkraut and for pudding I went for the almost obligatory apple strudel while Husband went for germknodel (yeast dumpling). It showed up looking like a huge steam pudding, covered in custard and jam and was remarkably delicious.

 

After lunch we wandered around the market in the Platz, and bought furry hats that had flaps for keeping your ears warm. The wind was still cold and beneath our feet you could feel the rumble of the underground.
 

To the south east of Potsdamer Platz are the remaining fragments of the ruined entrance arches of Anhalter Bahnhof terminus, once one of Berlin’s busiest stations. Where the railway lines had once been there were now tennis courts. Next to the station was a board with details of the deportees that had been taken to extermination camps from this station – times, dates, and numbers of people.

 

The ruin stood forlornly in otherwise unused land, part car park, part pedestrianised gravel area. Despite the massive redevelopment boom seen in Berlin (£103billion invested up until 2005, along with the removal of 6 million tonnes of excavated earth and 200,000 tonnes of rubble and debris) there were still significant numbers of large open, unused spaces which seemed odd in a modern day European capital city. It brought into sharp focus how long it took for a city to bounce back.
 

We headed back towards Stresemannstrasse where the Third Reich headquarters of the Gestapo, SS and Nazi security services once stood. This was now where a remaining 100m of Wall remained alongside the Topography of the Terrors exhibition.

 

There are only a few surviving parts of the wall that kept the city divided the city for nearly 30 years. It had been put up, quickly, efficiently and unexpectedly on the night of 12 August 1961.

A concrete wall soon replaced the temporary barricades, and over time East Berliners were moved further and further back from the border, while large open clear zones, overseen by lookout posts, were installed. Anyone in these zones would be shot. 190 people lost their lives trying to escape.

 

A little further along was checkpoint Charlie. Nothing original remained. Even the sign warning you that you were leaving (or entering) the American sector was a replica. The site was now horribly commercialised and again had Germans dressed as US soldiers posing with members of the public for photos. A line of unnoticeable cobbles marked the site of the former Wall and hoardings around checkpoint building sites had photos of feet, walking over this cobbled line. The message seemed to be that now crossing this line was easy, unchallenged and almost unnoticed. It was a quiet, but powerful message that freedom to travel is taken for granted now.
 

With the light fading, and temperature dropping, we headed back up towards Unter den Linden, and happened across cobbled Gendarmenmarkt, adorned by a theatre and twin cathedrals. This was the site of a fabulous Christmas market and we warmed ourselves with gluwein and rum. As well as the various outside food, drink and goods stalls, there was a large (and heated) indoor area which provided an excellent option for warming up between wandering. We managed to get a seat in the indoor bar area and enjoy the evening, with a good view of the stage and varied range of entertainment.

 

The shops inside the tented area had a fabulous array of unique and original items, which included designer handbags, photographs and pottery. I mention these things specifically as we bought something from each of these stalls.
 

The atmosphere was fabulous, and seeing that they were selling tickets for New Year’s Eve, we had no hesitation in buying a couple. Our end of year arrangements were now sorted.
 

We made our way back towards the hotel via Bebelplatz. This had been the site of the Nazi book burning in the 1930’s, but it was partly closed off for building or restoration work, and it was too dark to see much.
 

I was now starting to feel the effects of gluwein. Not only was I a fraction drunk, but had a need to pee that could not be prevented. So I crouched down between cars in the quiet, dimly lit museum island. One person walked past in the distance, but I largely think that I got away with it.
 

Having dumped the day’s purchases in the cold hotel room we went out for dinner. As it had been a long day of walking, we wanted something close by and stumbled across a small, busy Asian restaurant. The menu worked on a tapas style basis and the food was sensationally good. We had noticed that Berlin has a lot of Asian style cuisine, but no Indian restaurants at all. We never did establish why.
 

When we woke up the following morning I looked outside and it was snowing. Husband grabbed the camera take a picture in case it stopped – at that point we noticed the window was open. And possibly had been open the whole time. This might explain the coolness in our room.
 

We had decided to venture West that day, and walked through the gently falling snow to Friedrichstrasse station. This had once been on the border and the Wall ran between two platforms. Visitors from the West were disorientated by the maze of corridors and customs channels. Now it was just an ordinary station which gave no clues to its former oppressive, closely monitored past.

We forgot to validate our train tickets, which obviously was bad. But as we weren’t caught out it did at least mean that we could use the tickets on a later journey.
 

West Berlin felt different. The sense of former division was less clear and the architectural styles differed. Having also suffered significant bomb damage in the war, it the buildings were primarily modern, post war structures. And it was hugely commercial. Neon lights, designer shops, massive hotels. Berlin really does have a Hotel California. We did happen across an Olbrisch handbag shop – which was a mistake as I left with two beautiful not inexpensive bags.
 

We paused for a coffee in a atmospheric coffee shop before visiting the erotic museum. The museum contained an extensive range of artwork as well as a surprisingly tasteful display of various dildos, Asian fertility charms and sexual sculptures. One series of Japanese drawings – a nation that has produced some very graphic pictures – a man and woman indulged in various crazy forms or sexual contact. In one picture the man sat there looking in a bereft way at the penis lying on the ground in front of him having been snapped off. There was a massage film which we watched for a while – and which appeared to excite Husband.
 

We took a train back towards the Zoo and walked through the Tiergarten towards the East. There appeared to be some sort of incident as a significant number of policemen and police cars had gathered, but we couldn’t ascertain what had happened. We continued our walk among the trees and lakes of the park which had formerly been a royal hunting ground. A road runs through the middle of park, to Brandenburg gate. Part way along this road, in the middle of a roundabout is  the Schloss Bellevue.

It had previously stood in front of the Reichstag, which would have made more sense of the extensive area of nothing which now surrounded the government building. We went through the underpass to the tower and joined the queue to climb it. As the light was fading, we decided to go straight up and come back to look at the museum later. It was a quick, and exhausting climb and we emerged out of the top, into rain. We could see a across the city, and the huge screens further along the road which were getting ready for the new year celebrations.

 

We climbed back down and after perusing the museum, headed towards Brandenburg Gate. The road was already closed in advance of the forthcoming celebrations, bands were practising and laser lights were shining from the gate and the Ferris wheel next to it. We bought sausage and gluwein and ambled on, through the crowds which thickened the nearer we got to the Gate. Occasionally we appeared on the large TV screens as camera men practised their skills and zoomed right in on certain areas. Passing a cluster of portaloos, and feeling the need, we made use of the facilities. They were unisex inasmuch as they contained a loo as well as a urinal. In the one that Husband went into, someone had had a crap in the urinal. This didn’t bode well for the state they would be in once New Year celebrations got into full swing! In case anyone hadn’t known what the portaloos were for, helpfully the ladies  and gents symbols on the outside were of people standing cross legged, clearly in need of a pee.

 

We went for dinner in a fantastic restaurant in the arches underneath Friedrichstrasse station and could hear the rumble of trains above our heads all evening. It was a wonderfully dark, busy and atmospheric place, with a coach suspended from the ceiling. Dinner for me consisted of pork, without apple, and potatoes. Husband had a huge meat fest of bacon, gammon, pork, chicken and steak. Apple reappeared for dessert which consisted of apple slices baked in beer dough.
 

The following morning we went to museum island. All the museums charged for entry and as we couldn’t necessarily devote appropriate time in them to validate the fee, we decided against visiting them.

Berliner Dom also charged. Rather annoyingly we saw that there had been a Bach concert in there the previous evening, which would most likely have been an interesting experience – as well as a way of seeing inside the cathedral.

 

I had wanted to see Bebelplatz by day, and on our way there we past the Neue Wache. It had been a World War 1 memorial and became the GDR’s monument to the victims of fascism and militarism. In GDR times there had been an hourly change of goose stepping guard. Now it housed an enlarged version of Kather Kollwitz’s sculpture of a mother with her dead son. Like the Pantheon in Rome, the domed roof was open to the sky at the top. Beneath that opening, in the large, single room, was the sculpture. And nothing else. Displayed like that gave it huge emotional impact.

 

We went on to Bebelplatz and looked through the glass viewing panels on the ground outside the university library to the symbolic empty book shelves beneath. Rather ironically, there was now a second hand bookstall set up in the square.

 

Our intention was to head towards Nikolaiviertel. We went into Ste Hedwig’s cathedral on the way which was a curious round church, having a different shape on the inside to how it appeared on the outside. In the centre of the church were steps going down to a rounded lower level. We then visited a large red brick church which was being used to display a large range of statues.
 

The Nikolai quarter was small and traffic free. Its narrow, winding cobbled streets were lined with boutiques, cafes and bars. This medieval quarter, however, had been entirely rebuilt in a surprising piece of GDR initiative to restore character to an area that had been flattened in 1944.

One of the buildings faithfully reconstructed is the Zum Nussbaum 16^th century tavern – where we enjoyed a couple of drinks. Most of the other buildings are constructed from the prefabricated concrete blocks that went into most GDR buildings. Initially the area looks old and quaintly medieval, but on closer inspection, the concrete structure is clearly visible.

 

The twin spired Nikolaikirche had been restored rather than rebuilt. The only genuinely old building is the Knoblauchhaus – or garlic house. Completed in 1759 it miraculously survived World War II. We foraged for lunch and decided on an underground restaurant on the edge of the quarter, where I finally went for stuffed giant cabbage. And they weren’t joking.  It was huge, stuffed with some form of mince.
 

Having lunched, we made for the Hanf museum, or hemp museum, which tells the history of hemp cultivation. Our intention had been to visit the café where you could try hemp cakes. Unfortunately it had shut early as it was New Year’s Eve.
 

Beyond the replica medieval district is the Stadmauer – the remnants of the medieval wall that had encircled the city, Berlin' s other, less controversial, wall.

On our way there we passed the large red bricked Alte Stadthaus (old town hall) and neo baroque exterior of the Stadtgericht (court house). This was also now closed so we were unable to go inside and see the art nouveau staircases that weave their way through the centre of the building.
 

We wandered through Franziskaner Klosterkirche, a red brick ruined Franciscan abbey church. It was a scene of tranquillity, surrounded by greenery and birdsong, a 13^th ruin in the shadow of the modern TV tower. It had been blown up by an allied forces landmine in 1945.

 

Next to the 13^th century Berlin wall was Zur Letzten Instanz, apparently Berlin’s oldest pub with the building dating from 1621. We went inside – it didn’t seem old. Either inside or out. We didn’t even bother to stop for a beer.
 

We decided to head back to the hotel and ready ourselves for the evening out. We crossed over the huge, slightly overgrown concrete wasteland opposite Rotes Rathaus, towards Marienkirche.

People were playing in the empty fountains and a party atmosphere was growing. It was around 4 o’clock in the afternoon. The light was starting to fade and fireworks were already being set off. There was now a regular background sound of explosions.
 

Marienkirche is the oldest parish church in Berlin, the nave dating from around 1270. Only the front part of the church is original, with the back part being a later edition in the 1700’s. In the medieval part was the faint Dance of Death frieze.

 

At the hotel I went to the loo before we went out where the giant cabbage exploded out of me, and then, wrapped up warmly, we set off for Gendarmenmarkt.
 

The evening there was fabulous. We ambled around the multitude of stalls and watched the entertainment on the stage – but anything which involved words was beyond us as we had no idea what they were saying. We feasted on an array of flavours – roasted nuts, freshly baked pizza from a wood burning oven, sausages, and of course gallons of gluwein.

 

Whenever the cold became too much we went into the large marquee to wander the shops and warm up. The bar in there was now becoming full and there were no seats available. The clear plastic roof allowed a view of the sky and the fireworks that were being set off around the city. The steady stream of fireworks hadn’t stopped since that afternoon.

 

As midnight approached we counted down from 10 in German – hesitantly, and supped on a glass of champagne as our firework display began. It was a lengthy, stunning, amazing demonstration of fireworks and I can no other displays that have been so impressive – helped by the fact that all around, other fireworks were going off. The sky was filled with colour and bangs, followed by the distinctive smell of gunpowder. In England, Big Ben signals the start of new year celebrations. Here, each party decides for itself when the appointed hour arose. So firework displays started up at regular intervals over a 10-15 minute period.
 

Unlike in the UK, midnight signals the start of the party and not the end. Also, there is no ridiculous Auld Lang Syne sing song. There was a ho ho ho song though – the ho ho ho part being the only bit we could join in with gusto as the rest was in German. So once the champagne was drunk, the songs sung and the fireworks spent, we returned to the bar to continue our evening.
 

At 3am we decided to call it day – after all we needed to be up reasonably early the following morning to get our flight home. In theory it was already reasonably early the following morning!
 

Having been safely ensconced in our crowd controlled market area, we now witnessed the carnage that had taken place in the streets. The city was clouded in a firework induced fog. Fireworks were still being set off. Unter den Linden was a dual carriageway road which had not been closed. Yet the road was filled with bottles, glasses, rocket sticks and soggy paper from paper bombs. Cars now driving along would try to dodge these but occasionally hit stray bottles as they passed. Every part of the road and pavement was covered in debris.
 

 

Everywhere was deemed an ok place to have a party, anywhere that there was a bit of room. Be it the road or pavement corners. Setting of rockets in crowds of people was of no issue or concern.  It made our party seem very sedate, and rendered UK celebrations dull and controlled.  I couldn’t ever imagine this kind of partying in the UK being allowed.
 

 

The following morning, we packed up and headed off to the bus stop – where we would use our un validated tickets from a couple of days earlier. A street cleaner was sullenly going through the thankless task of trying to clear up from the previous night. He shuffled along the pavement, smashing any bottles that weren’t already broken. We did wonder whether it would have been easier just to pick them up rather than giving himself a lot of broken glass to sweep. He would do this for a bit, then wander 10 metres along the pavement, and randomly start this process again. By the time the bus came, he hadn’t noticeably cleared anything at all.
 

Despite being new  year’s day, there was a regular and punctual bus service which carried us off to the airport, along with large number of other airport destined individuals – all of us sitting there in post party solitude as the bus wend its way through the never ending debris.

NOTES

The above is a true story. Some of the information about places visited is sourced from a variety of guide books. The author maintains rights over all other content.