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When the wall came tumbling down

From the Mail on Sunday

Can you imagine being asked along to witness the Russian revolutionaries storming the Winter Palace in St Petersburg or getting an invitation to attend the guillotining of Louis XVI?
It isn't often you get the chance to watch history in the making. So I well remember the day in November 1989 when I was asked if I wanted to join a day-trip to Berlin to see the Wall coming down.
So it was that just three days after the Wall started to crumble, about 200 of us - each having paid £100 for the privilege - gathered at an unfeasibly early hour on a Sunday morning at Luton airport. There was an extraordinary buzz of anticipation, something I've never experienced before or since.
I had been to Berlin in 1972 on an Inter-Rail trip. Instead of leaving the train at the Zoological Gardens - does this sound like the main stop to you? - I was still on board when I glanced out of the window and saw we were crossing what looked like the Berlin Wall.
It was the Berlin Wall. I nervously got off at Friedrichstrasse station in East Berlin and found myself visa-less in a terrifying Iron Curtain scene from a James Bond movie: there were even machine gun-toting border guards patrolling the roof of the station with attack dogs.
With creditable self-possession, I climbed on the first train which seemed to be going in the direction from which I'd come. I was as relieved to arrive in West Berlin as an escaping East German refugee.
Landing at Tegel airport on our 1989 day trip, we were bussed to a spot near the Reichstag and then set free to wander where we wished. As soon as I left the coach, all around the air was filled with the noise of hammering.
Right along the length of the Wall as far as the eye could see, people were chipping away at it in a mad frenzy. If this wasn't bizarre enough, at certain points East German border guards stood on top of the Wall coolly watching people destroy their border - and they could do nothing about it. ... more

How Berlin rediscovered it's cool

It's official! Even if the World Cup didn't persuade you, Germany is now cool. Or very nearly.

The proof: a weekend nightclubbing in Berlin failed to uncover a single mullet hairstyle amid the sweaty, raving, moshing masses.
Yes, it seems the Germans have embraced the third millennium and no one wants to look like the Kajagoogoo drummer any more. And that can only be a good thing for humankind.
The German capital can seem a strange mixture of concrete and charm. On the face of it, much of it quite ugly.
But it is reinventing itself this year and it's not just down to football. Berlin has daytime treats like museums and historical sites like the Brandenburg Gate. It's also keen to claim that it's a 24-hour party capital.
During the World Cup hundreds of people were playing football at midnight on the temporary five-a-side pitches put up on the Reichstag's lawn.
As the saying on the sign in front of the Humboldt University bang in the middle of Berlin says: 'Germany is a land of ideas'. Just so you get the point, a huge sculpture of books, bearing the names of such intellectual giants as Marx, Thomas Mann and Goethe on the spines, stands nearby.
The Berlin wall was quite an original idea. But it was a rare bad one, though it has spawned its own tourist mystique.
A rather better idea for instance, is Splinder and Klatt. It might sound like an accountancy firm. But way out east on the River Spree, a huge warehouse in the middle of nowhere has been converted into a restaurant seating several hundred with a DJ spinning some tunes - it's a lot more relaxing than it might sound.
You can loll about on a bed pretending you're Emperor Nero as your food is fetched and you sprawl on a mattress. The only mullet is on the menu. Or was it tuna?
And at about £12 a main course you won't pay through the nose for the privilege.
Despite the grime, the relentless lack of prettification and the sheer functionality of much of former communist east Berlin, the wit and originality take you by surprise.
The Panorama bar is reached by taxi down a rutted road. Another block of ugly concrete. It's a former electricity factory which has been converted into a 24-hour nightclub.
But inside at 6am, there are about 1,000 people hedonistically pursuing the holy grail of nightclubbing nirvana and another great idea has just paid dividends.
Elsewhere, the Badeschiff has a sandpit to dance in and a swimming pool next to a river, so take your Speedos.
Next door is Hoppetosse - not only a great name, but a great club. It's located on a boat, and has two floors, a sweaty dance floor and some lovely cakes.
At Kiki Blofeld, supposedly named after the daughter of the James Bond baddie Blofeld, you can almost dance on the water. Upstairs you are outside in a garden playing pool in the open air or sitting on grass mounds.
Downstairs, a dance floor is set up over the river. In Britain the prevalence of binge-drinking Brits would make this a no-no - teetering tipplers would surely have collapsed into the water.
But Berliners can be trusted to behave with a decorum that we Brits rarely export. There are no chundering chavs slumped in the entrance to the loos as binge drinking appears to be frowned upon.
And the dress code is downbeat - no overdressed peacocks swaggering around like they own the universe. Leave your top togs back in Blighty otherwise you'll look like Puff Daddy. Foppery is forbidden!
Berlin is already renowned for the Love Parade in July, which attracts revellers from all over the globe. But there's no need to restrict yourself to the one event if a big night out is what you after.
To outsiders, Germany has reinvented itself this year and it's not just down to football. The transformation of its international image must rank as one of tourism's latter-day minor miracles.
Stay up all night in Berlin and you'll realise why. It puts the 'tonic' in 'Teutonic'.
*Air Berlin offers London Stansted- Berlin flights from £19 one way. See www.airberlin.com for more info. B&B prices for a double room in the Mövenpick Hotel start from 119 euros. See www.moevenpick-berlin.com. For a guide to Berlin's nightlife, see www.berlinagenten.com ... more

Children just can't get over the wall

From the Daily Mail

Many moons ago (our honeymoon, to be exact) my husband and I were in Florence. It was out of season, and we were surprised to find certain statues had been removed for cleaning, classic buildings were swathed in scaffolding, and the doors of famous museums were closed, bearing only the words 'in restauro'.
So much of Florence was 'in restauro' that this became the joke of the honeymoon. And I was reminded of it this autumn, when 12-year-old Frances and I paid our first visit to Berlin. Once a seat of opulence admired by all Europe, Berlin was ruined by events of the 20th century.
The depression stunned it, the Nazis drained it of all lifeblood, the British bombed it, and the communists encircled it with barbed wire and concrete.
Now, ten years after the collapse of the Wall, Berlin is 'in restauro'. To say that this is the biggest building site in Europe may not sound like an enticement, but there's never been a more exciting time to visit.
Futuristic architecture is springing up like new shoots out of the parched earth. 'Das Neue Berlin World City', proclaim the billboards with pride. A city once synonymous with Nazi oppression and Cold War isolation has become a symbol of peace and regeneration.
Children feel the buzz of politically charged places as much as any adult. Take them to Jerusalem and they bombard you with questions about religious freedom and history. And it's the same in Berlin, where every building tells an emotional story. Museums of recent struggles and skyscrapers of the future combine to make a potent history lesson. ... more