Walking through Divided Berlin: the city at the time of the Cold War

‘Frankfurter Ring’- Ah, this is the train we should take, I thought as we hurried across the platform. I knew it would take quite a while to reach there from Berlin Wedding, but was excited to see parts of East Berlin! How different could the city have been when it was divided into two parts?How might the people have felt during the division and how did they cross the borders if they wanted to? Were they allowed to? I was eager to find out the answers and know more about the history of the city.Berlin had amazed me from the day I had arrived, and on the first night itself, I thought to myself if there was ANY way that I could move to the city for a while! Having seen the alternative side of the city and exploring the street art already, I was pumped to delve deeper into history and architecture, and get a better picture of Berlin in the Cold War.

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I was glad to have found a walking tour about Berlin at the time of the division, and was looking forward to meeting the docent(yes, they are all PhD’s or specialists in their field!) from Context Travel at Frankfurter Allee. Oops! I realized I had gotten off at Frankfurter Ring, when I actually should have gone to Frankfurter Tor. After hurrying and scurrying, asking for directions and realizing that it would be a futile attempt to walk to the meeting point without being late, it was time to take another U-bahn. And then the Frankfurter Tor greeted us as soon as we came back up on the streets!

It was huge, and well, looked different from most of other buildings I had seen in Berlin. The Frankfurter Tor is located on the well-known Karl-Marx-Allee, and Lucia, our lovely guide, told us that this was a central area in East Berlin, when the Soviet-backed German Democratic Republic (GDR) was in power. The towers on both sides of the road indeed looked like a gateway to the eastern part of the city.

Walking along the street, I was surprised to find a similar tone of architecture throughout. High ceilings, tiled buildings, common balconies in residential buildings. This was the socialist style of architecture, or as the residential blocks have been called, “worker palaces in wedding-cake style”: tall,tiled buildings commonly seen in the Soviet Union.

This area was meant to be a model for everyone else; this is where people would come to shop more often, where apartments would be more luxurious than other places, where famous buildings such as Cafe Moskau (having  an original sized replica of the Sputnik satellite) ,the Kino International and Kosmos were located. The TV tower at Alexanderplatz is distinctly visible as you walk along.

I was under the impression that Alexanderplatz would be Berlin’s current city centre, but found out that it actually isn’t the only one. Berlin,being a huge city, has more than one important areas or squares, and Alexanderplatz could just be referred to, as one of the popular squares.

Nevertheless, I was glad to see the Nikolaisviertel near  Alexanderplatz; my friend had told me about it earlier, and that it was supposed to be the origin of the city.

After that, we took the S-Bahn and traveled to the western part of the city. Hansaviertel was the center of West Berlin, where a series of modernist buildings were constructed by several prominent international  architects after the Second World War. Creative freedom was given to the architects, and the reconstructed area was supposed to relay the message of freedom, independence and showcase a Western,capitalist society.

We walked along the Tiergarten,a huge public park , as Lucia told us more about the architecture and history of West Berlin. It is interesting to see that though Berlin has 12 districts, each district is actually self-sufficient in the sense that each has its own markets, stations, eateries,etc.

Oh, and while in that area, we saw a lot of occurrences of the number 6 everywhere! On the previous day, I had learnt about an artist who went on depicting the number 6 in street art all across the city, and this reminded me of him! I do not know if it was just the work of some kids in this area (probably,yes!), but it sure led to a further discussion about street art and artists.

Our tour ended at the Academy of Art in Hansaviertel, close to the Bellevue station.

It is difficult to say which part of the city would have been better to live in. Some people from the East liked their model and even reminisced about it later on, while some in the West might have been happy with their ideology and values. Interestingly, the Berlin Wall wasn’t there at the time of the division of the city, but came up only later,in 1961.

You can still see parts of the Wall in the city, one stretch being right near the Berlin Ost Hauptbahnhof. It is disheartening to think of the people who were shot down while trying to jump across the Wall and cross into the other part. For me, it was very interesting to visit Checkpoint Charlie (outside of the tour), as that was the official point of crossing between East and West Berlin. Of course, I had many questions, many of which I asked Lucia, and she was patient enough to listen to all of us and share her knowledge with us.

There are several walking tours available in each city, many of which are good to get an overview about the place before you start exploring it yourself. But, if you like deep travel and would like to get a detailed tour related to the history,culture or architecture of the place, you can consider checking out Context Travel. They conduct tours across Europe,Asia and America.

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Note: I was a guest on this tour but all opinions expressed are my own. Any bookings you make using the links in this post will get me a small commission that will be used for maintaining and re-designing this blog. This would be at NO extra cost to you. Thanks for your support!

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