Berliner Fat Tire Bike Tour: The Cold War, Nazi Architecture, the Holocaust Memorial & Tiergarten

Part 2 of this post.

July 9, 2016:
 
At our next stop, Neil explained to us some of the history of the Cold War.

I had no idea that at the end of the war, the Allied forces divided up Germany and Berlin amongst themselves. As the Soviets had arrived in Berlin first, they got first pick and they chose the Eastern side which had all the highlights. The rest of Berlin was divided by the UK, the USA, and the French. The same happened with the rest of Germany, and the result was that portions of Berlin that belonged to the non-Soviet Allies were surrounded by Eastern Germany. The US and the Soviets had agreed to work together for the sake of winning WWII, but as soon as it was over, the clash of communism and "democracy" resumed and tensions resumed between the two groups.

Allied efforts to create a federal state without Soviet approval resulted in the Berlin Blockade of West Berlin. The Soviets hoped to gain control of the whole of Berlin. The blockade lasted for a year, and during this time, the Allied air forces delivered food and supplies by airlift. They told us that during the air lift, there was a plane landing approximately once a minute. 

For many people living in East Germany, they wanted to escape the conditions and at first, all they had to do was go to West Berlin and request to become West German. This was a problem for the Soviets who were trying to prove that communism was feasible. The result was the Berlin Wall. On August 13, 1961, the Soviets constructed the first phase of the Wall which consisted of barbed wire pulled around the East section of Berlin, and the Iron Curtain of the Soviet era also began to fall along the borders of East Germany.  The Wall was built with no warning. Some people who had spent the night in East Germany or who commuted to work in another section of Berlin were now trapped or separated from their families.

Checkpoint Charlie was the third checkpoint between East Germany and West Germany, named for the NATO Alphabet (Alfa, Bravo, Charlie).

The wall went through four stages of construction and many people were killed trying to escape from East Berlin over the wall. Soviet soldiers were placed in watch towers like this one:

They were only informed of their assignment a short time before their assignment, and there were always two guards so that they couldn't assist their own families' escape. Checkpoint Charlie was nearly the site of WWIII, and the Cold War was certainly a stepping stone to the war we find ourselves in currently.

Our tour passed the most hated building in Germany. The windows on the first floor of the building are at about head height and the doorways are built extra large to intimidate those that enter it. This building was site of the Luftwaffe headquarters. During the Soviet era, they made use of the building, followed by the Communists. Now, Germans, with their dark sense of humour, say its current occupants are the worst of the three - it's occupied by the finance ministry, responsible for collecting taxes. It's a surviving example of Nazi architecture on what was one the most dangerous street in the country. It was the only Nazi building left standing by the Soviets after the denazification of Germany.

Our last stop before lunch was the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. Originally, the artist, Peter Eisenman wanted to create a labyrinth, but this idea was turned down. Instead, the site consists of 19 000 sq metres covered with 2 711 concrete slabs in a grid pattern.

Neil gave us a few minutes to explore the memorial on our own. This was the most intense interactive art experience I've had. It didn't look like much but once you walk in and start turning corners or looking down between the stones, it is extremely disconcerting. The moment that will stay with me was looking down a corridor and seeing two sets of hands reaching towards each other across one of the passages.

The timing for lunch was perfect. We all needed a pick me up after a somewhat depressing series of stops. The Tiergarten had a lovely restaurant, called Schleusenkrug, where we abandoned our bikes, placed our orders for drinks, the kitchen, or the barbecue, and settled into shaded outdoor seating. My pumpkin seed-crusted beet salad was divine, and I met some lovely people from England, including a mother and daughter who were also vegetarian and an older couple on a weekend getaway in Germany.

Each of our bikes had its own name. Initially, they told us that they were named after famous German places or people.

When I asked who or what Shaq was, Neil looked at me strangely as he said, "He's a basketball player..."I responded, "Like the one in the US?" When we finally understood each other, he explained that they had so many bikes that they couldn't all have names of German places and people, so they started assigning random names, including names of the tour guides' friends and family. I was slightly disappointed because I had been really hoping that Shaq had a German counterpart, but I still liked my choice of bike.

We were unlucky on the next leg of our tour through Tiergarten - the weather wasn't nice enough to tempt any naked people out to the naked section of the park. Neil consoled us by telling us that most of the regulars were old men.