This is the Kaiser Wilhelm Gedachtniskirche, which was almost destroyed by bombs during the second world war. Roundabout it there are some new bits that were built in the nineteen-sixties and the juxtaposition of old and new makes an interesting sight. Berliners don't seem to be afraid of experimenting with new materials and designs and incorporating them into the traditional.On the way to see the church we saw this great bunch of guys belting out some funky music on horns. I made a couple of short videos of them too.
Here are a few shots from inside what's left of the old part of the church. The mosaics are amazing. Even the floor is covered and you can see a section of it on the picture below left. Next to it is the new church. The stained glass looks like hundreds of wee televisions.
The day after we visited the church, we went to Treptower Park to see the Red Army memorial. It was built over the graves of 5000 soviet soldiers who died in the battle for Berlin.
And here's a familiar face...Dedushka Lennin himself. He has almost disappeared from all the ex-soviet republics, as the new leaders impose their own version of history - usually based on rabid nationalism. Maybe the German people feel more secure about who they are and don't feel the need to construct new realities to replace old ones.
The rest of these pics are just observations made as we strolled down Wilhelmstrasse from north to south. There are a lot of fairly run down bits that still look like the East Germany I remember from Wester TV and there are also a lot of exciting new buildings going up. There's that fearless German architectural experimentation again, breaking new ground while acknowledging the traditional arts that brought us this far. And the last picture...well, it's a globe and for me it represents my aspirations and all the places I've visited and all the people I know and how I'd like to see the world living in the future...as a true global community. It also sums up quite succinctly how I felt when I left the English teaching business after many years at the chalk-face.
This little colection of old Trabants, or Moskveitches, or whatever they were was good to see. They look cute, but I'd never drive one. I had a Lada for a short while in the UK, but I ended up selling it to a couple of Russian fishermen from a factory ship off Ullapool.
About a third of the way down Wilhelmstrasse, we came to the last standing piece of the Berlin wall. It's an ugly thing and this bit bit was built over the ruins of the Gestapo headquarters. A nasty place altogether.
