Karaoke in Mauerpark, top; and ‘My God, Help Me To Survive This Deadly Love’, a painting on the Berlin Wall, by Dmitri Vrubel
H, summer in Berlin. The bread is denser, the butter is whiter, the two-ply softer. Cars give way to cyclists and residents hold impromptu raves in the metro station. Education is free and so is transport, unless you get caught.
“Who is working here?” you may ask yourself, as everyone saunters around in Birkenstocks. Boutique stores inform you via handwritten notes that their owners are on holiday: “See you in September!” That busker may be working but he looks to be having a swell time. The most beautiful of lakes is but a morning cycle ride away, if you can get going before 10am. Berlin time is seductive and deceptive. There is cheap, organic gelato everywhere. Someone is making art. Someone is dancing beside it. Welcome to one of Germany’s thriftiest states.
Berlin is Germany’s largest city, with a population of 3,5 million. Yet, with all its people and goings-on, there is still space for quiet; within a gallery, underneath the trees of a park, or behind a hay roll in the middle field of Tempelhof, a disused airfield left over from the 1948 Berlin Blockade. It is, unlike so many capitals, spacious.
At first glance, the city is not what one may expect from Deutschland. It is clean, no doubt, but far from sterile. A born-andbred local is hard to find, as the city pulses with imports, expats and foreigners. A fusion of ages, cultures and spaces makes for colour and noise — the obligatory siren of a far-off ambulance and the smells of authentic food: Greek, Vietnamese and the ever-present doner kebab.
The scars of war are present, but rather than patched over or demolished, they have been integrated into the landscape and the architecture to become part of the city’s new life. This life seems a comfortable one, yet comfort has not equalled passivity. Politics is thrown about on the street, with constant visual and verbal support for pro-abortionists and asylum seekers, as well as protests against gentrification. The latter is a special theme for residents, who wish to keep their districts, cultures and cheap rents protected from politicians, public institutions and the almighty landlord.
We may concur that Berlin’s artistic reputation, like its beer, is no farce. Art is the only legitimate reason to spend a summer in a capital without a beach and this is a cultural capital of note: 170-plus museums and well over 400 art galleries.
Beyond hosting some of the finest art and historical artefacts, many of the buildings on Berlin’s renowned Museum Island are architectural masterpieces in their own right. The Neues Museum, hosting Egyptian art and classical antiquities, is phenomenally beautiful and incredibly well lit, echoing the time and space of its relics, and fostering respect for its pieces.
The most celebrated museum of them all, the Pergamon, hosts an enormous reconstruction of the eighth gate to the inner city of Babylon, the Ishtar Gate, using original bricks from the early 20th century excavation.
The mass of historical information is astounding. The rich collections of classical painting found at the Old National Gallery and the Gemäldegalerie both deserve a second visit — a particularly roguish Rembrandt waits for you in the latter — and the contemporary art collection at the New National Gallery is extensive, impressive and speaks volumes on human nature.
Even if one decided to forgo all gallery spaces, culture is inescapable. Art spills onto sidewalks, drifts into parks and covers underground passes.
Berlin hosts the largest outdoor gallery in the world. The East Side Gallery is a 1.3km section of the Berlin Wall, showcasing 109 artworks of as many artists, commissioned by the government in 1990 to serve as a commemoration. The most famous is certainly My God, Help Me To Survive This Deadly Love by Dmitri Vrubel, depicting a kiss between Leonid Brezhnev and Erich Honecker, the General secretary of the Socialist Unity Party up until the fall of the wall. In form and principle, st spatially un city for stre with clear in What Berlin neighbourho decorated w working-cla
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