Berlin — Mitte

I took a bus tour of Berlin today and then hopped off at Checkpoint Charlie. It’s a strange historical site. One couple was in line to take their Christmas card photo. Others were buying communist memorabilia. There’s a memorial nearby which solemnly tells the story of hundreds who died trying to escape to freedom. A block away there’s an escape room to attract tourists. An escape room. One of the preserved sections of the wall had the word “madness” in graffiti that someone had written on the East Berlin side long ago. Imagine being liberated from the Nazi regime and then to find yourself on the communist side of that wall. One elderly man was speaking to a group of tourists. “We hated the wall in Berlin. It separated us from our friends and family. To us it was like a prison wall.” He looked like he would have been high school age when the wall went up. It must be so hard for him to explain how important this was to people who barely remember the Cold War. I thought back to when I was teaching European geography in 1989. One student asked why West and East Germany were both colored in pink on the globe even though they were separate countries. My explanation was that our globes were 20 years old. They were from a time when people believed Germany might reunite so the map makers must have been hopeful it would one day happen, but chances of that happening seemed very slim. A month later the wall came down, and within a year Germany was reunified. I remember that student bringing me a clipping from the paper the day it was announced that East and West Germany were now one. He happily reported that he had told his parents, “Mr. Pisa’s globe was right!”Read more