Another reply to one of Simon's Comments, which can be found at the bottom of this page: link, but to recap, Simon noted: "And what a great shot of old Berlin, or at least Berlin before – well we all know what happened there. My dearest buddy Jim Crabtree, also of course ex-squatter, ex-Georgiana Street co-operator has set me off on another Berlin ‘noir’ trajectory, the novels of Phillip Kerr , featuring his character police detective Bernie Gunter, all set in Berlin’s ‘aura’, from 1928 onwards….".
Ahh Berlin noir. In Wings of Desire (made and seen in 1987), Wim Wenders spins a visually beautiful story of angels living and loving in Berlin before the wall came down (I took a picture of a Berlin Angel, see below). “Then we can be heroes, just for one day”; Bowie recorded Heroes (1977), the song is about love and the Wall, at Hansa Studio, West Berlin. Most of my family have pieces of the Berlin Wall in their house. I kid you not. This short story about my visit to Berlin belongs on this site (Connections With the Edge) anyway as that was the edge of the “West” for me, but the edge of the “East” From Gagarin’s Point of View (EST tune).
Cropped Berlin Angel from 1990, through bus window
I, I can remember (I remember)
Standing, by the wall (by the wall)
And the guns, shot above our heads (over our heads)
And we kissed, as though nothing could fall (nothing could fall)
And the shame, was on the other side
Oh we can beat them, for ever and ever
Then we could be Heroes, just for one day
Terri my ex was always good at organising interesting holidays. This time it was a bus trip to Poland (early 1990), with a stop off in Berlin just after the Wall had come down. After settling into the hotel, we walked from West Berlin, did Check Point Charlie, Potsdamer Platz, Brandenburg Gate (which had scaffolding up for renovation in preparation for a big party to celebrate the fall of the wall), on to cobbled East Berlin streets and lovely arches leading to court yards, fascinating back streets, and walking past that tower that looks like Sputnik on a stick.
Then we walked back to the Berlin Wall, where as you can see from the pics, they were hacking it down. There was a sense of otherworldliness. I had brought a small geology hammer to get a piece of The Wall. Ha. It is reinforced concrete with graffiti on it. So no luck there. We ended up buying pieces from a table next to The Wall as we watched guys with sledge hammers, pneumatic drills and barrows restock these tables with hacked off pieces of The Wall. That is why all members of our family ended up with a concrete piece of history! My piece of Wall is the last picture in the photo grid. Thank you Terri for organising this trip.
(Navigation tip: each pic enlarges to a better quality when you click/tap on it, you should then be able to step through the photos using arrow to the right/left of the photo. Some of them were taken through the bus window and are of poor quality.)
Enlargement of S-Bhan
