Marie Elisabeth Lüders House. Berlin, April 2024
I’m in Berlin for a few days on business.
This time I decided to explore the city on foot in the evening and during the day after the meeting.
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I have to admit that I know a lot less about Berlin than, for example, NYC or Paris.
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Before the fall of the Wall – when the city and Germany were still divided – Berlin lay like an island in what was then the German Democratic Republic.
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I was there a few times during those years and can remember adventurous journeys on the so-called transit routes in my old, rickety cars that I drove as a student, in the constant fear of breaking down in the “zone”.
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The friends and students I visited there in the 1980s lived in an old multi-story apartment building in the backyard. The shared toilet was at the end of the hallway. There was only one sink in the living room.
The wall was in sight. Rents were generally cheap back then and many creative people and social dropouts lived in Berlin at the time. Berlin was its own universe.
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In 1989 the wall came down. Since 1990, Berlin has been the capital of the Federal Republic of Germany again. Seat of government since 1999.
Since then, Berlin has changed completely, as I was surprised to discover during this stay.
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In the last few years I’ve only been to the fashion fairs in Berlin and lived in the former western part of the city near Kurfürstendamm.
Since there was usually very little time during these stays, I just took a taxi to look at the many construction sites, new and renovated buildings and, if there was still time, visited some of the famous museums.I
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