It was my first visit to Berlin and I had really no idea what to expect. Would it be the Berlin of Sally Bowles of Cabaret fame, a seedy, vicious pre War Berlin spiralling slowly downhill  into the hands of the Nazis? Or perhaps Cold War Berlin, the Wall, George Smiley, a really black and white Berlin? Or maybe a young, colourful Berlin, with street art, graffiti, blaring techno music?

 

Arriving at Shoenefeld Airport, and the sign welcoming me to the Capital of Spies, it looked like it would be the Berlin of spies and suspicion.

I took the Airport Express, the easiest way to travel from the Airport to my hotel in Alexanderplatz, and then my perception of Berlin began to change. Where is everybody? Alexanderplatz is a big, empty square, bordered by a few shops familiar to the UK, C & A and Primark, but hardly any people. I walked up the wide, almost empty road to my hotel. Where is the traffic? Admittedly it was the middle of a weekday, but in London there would be hustle and bustle, hooting and shouting, cars knocking down cyclists and cyclists harassing pedestrians.

The following day, I was due to meet with the Berlin School of Photography for a workshop, looking at five iconic tourist sites through the creative eye of a camera lens. We were to meet at the site of the old traffic light in Potsdamer Platz, where I had my next surprise. There are three slabs of the Berlin Wall still in situ, with a line in the pavement showing the run of the Wall. They were much smaller and thinner than I had been expecting. And again, Potsdamer Platz was almost empty.

 

The Berlin School of Photography was founded by Bettina von  Kameke. She has spent many years living and working in London, and her English and knowledge of England was impeccable. The workshops she holds are conducted either in German or English, depending on those participating. After meeting, we went to a Café in the fairly newly constructed Sony Centre, an impressive structure of glass and shiny steel hiding behind modern buildings. After filling us with ideas, Bettina let us loose on the Sony Centre, looking for reflections and lines, patterns and people. From there we had a short walk to the Memorial to the Murdered Jewish People.

 

The memorial consists of a series of equally sized, dark grey and coffin shaped blocks of concrete. It creates an impressive series of shadows and shapes, ideal for the photographer, but still it still felt a little odd to be photographing in a memorial to mass murder. Not disrespectful, but certainly odd. I have seen some criticism of this memorial that it is not specific enough about the identity of the murderers, that the German people need to be reminded of what their forebears have done. I disagree. I do not think that Germany of today has to apologise for anything. To my mind, the power of the memorial is not that it is rooted in its past, it is a monument to the present and to the future, a reminder that, in spite of the horror of the holocaust, we still have had the death camps of Stalin, the killing fields of Cambodia, Srebrenica, the Yazidis, the Rohyingas. Ethnic cleansing is carried out by ordinary people and we are all just ordinary people.

 

From the memorial it was on to the Brandenburg Gate, and then to the Reichstag, and the extraordinary glass tower designed by Sir Norman Foster, lunch at the Bundestag and a discussion of our day. For anyone wanting to improve their photography skills while also seeing some of Berlin, Bettina’s course is a perfect day out.

 

I only had three full days in Berlin, one taken up the workshop, and one with seeing friends, so I was going to be limited to what I could see. I decided to concentrate on what was left of the Berlin Wall, and then, by way of a change, trendy Kreuzberg.

 

It is very difficult to look at what is left of the Wall and get any sense of the history behind it, and in particular the violence behind its ideology. If I visit a medieval castle in England, it is not difficult to imagine life in the castle, maybe defending the castle against attackers, but one does not get any sense of the Wall dividing a city both geographically or ideologically. The Museum at Checkpoint Charlie does have exhibits dealing with the historical context of the Wall, and interestingly goes on to show some of history’s more recent developments, such as the 9/11 attacks. I do not really see the connection, but it does serve to remind us that today’s present is tomorrow’s history.

 

The Wall alongside the Speer is now covered with Street Art and graffiti, some of it well known, even famous, others more transient. A thing of ugliness transformed into something of beauty, an ugly past becoming a colourful present and future.

 

The Museum at Bernardstrasse tries hard to give a sense of what the Wall stood for. There was some local discussion as to whether or not there should even be a memorial to the Wall. But, again, I think the answer is straightforward: these memorials are as important for the present and future as they are for the past. A Wall in Berlin seems inconceivable now, and yet we have a wall in Palestine and the ordinary people of the US seem to be in favour of one on their border.

 

The museum tells some of the stories of the people who died trying to escape across the Wall or by swimming the river Speer, of the tunnels, and also of those who were caught trying to escape. Outside stands another wall of photographs of those who died, as well as a small fragment of the Wall and boundary. There is a modern Art installation featuring a small plot of land sown with Rye, a symbol of reconciliation. Reconciliation, that is what Berlin has achieved. Its wide open streets and spaces give a sense of calm and of peace, a city at ease with itself, a city in which to live, love, to bring up a family. I saw so little of Berlin on my short trip, but what I have seen has left me hungry for more, and to explore more of Germany, the land of Beethoven and Wagner, fairy castles and grand rivers, fabulous wines and Christmas markets.