I've been there five times in Berlin.
The first was little more than a teenager was 1991, I think at the beginning, and the city was little more than a year of new units. We arrived from Nuremberg to Berlin, along the former GDR on a semi-deserted streets, no houses on the sides and paved with cement. The city breathed a strange atmosphere. The streets of the West, where we slept, were glittering shop windows and people walking along the road in droves for Kudam ', the main street of West Berlin 80. I also saw the first prostitute in my life, mixed with the crowd, lured gl'adulti the light of day, to say the least in fact it was evening. The West, of course, do not hit me. Berlin was there any city of our parts, with the aggravating circumstance was not much. Except the memory of the Memorial Church, of which there is little left for other, against balanced by a modern church side, there was nothing that was worth a look. Only the wall was the attraction, was still standing and you could touch. When I saw him the first time, coming from Tiertgarten, with the Brandenburg Gate that revealed the East I was struck by the desolation. Berlin was a city crushed by history and sad. He looked like a naked old man who claims, with the last burst of dignity remained to, the look of the people. The East instead struck me because suddenly the story, which was materialized in front of the wall, I will catapult him. I remember we walked into the coach's Under der Linden, the avenue of lime trees, in utter desolation and abandonment, we arrived in front of the Palace of the Republic, shot down recently, opposite the Berlin Cathedral and Museum Island, a short walk Babel Platz, where the Nazis burned books. The ghosts of ideologies were still there and I would not be made fully into account.
The desolation was obviously the result of the escape of the Russians, in fact, I discovered later, during the GDR the population did not live badly if it were not for that "little" problem of restriction of personal freedom. This is demonstrated by the fact that once past the wall, November 9, 1898, many people did nothing more than to return home because the West does not know what to do and yet many people today the Eastern rivorrebbero DDR convinced that capitalism introduced a new system made only of debts and vices, they wanted the citizens of the East was freedom and to them was given only to buy, if they had the money.
My passage to the east was still fulminating for the first time in my life I saw not a beautiful city, not a series of palaces and museums, but to touch the living history that with the good-looking, often, little do, my eyes saw a non-Western country other than almost fascinating.
Ultimately I realized that even Berlin and Berliners were strange paths to a lifeblood that is not found anywhere else in Europe, where we live our lives beandoci of what we have and not have too many crickets in my head about matters such as "create" or "invent". The confirmation came years later.
I returned to Berlin in 1999, a friend of mine played piano for the first time in Berlin, and I follow the wave of memories of 1991. I found a site in the open. Always located in the west, along the Kudam '. West Berlin and West Berlin was always Kudam 'always Kudam'. Sbertuccianti palaces, many people in the street and prostitutes after nine at night. Nothing had changed. When I went to the wall instead, near Potzdammer Platz, I realized that things were changing. The symbol of the division block was gone, there remained a few strokes patchy. Der Mauer had become a tourist attraction. The new Berlin's city center was designed from the ashes of division and the area was coming under the aegis of the large capital and large projects. Renzo Piano designed a face ultra modern and futuristic. But Berlin was changing not only there, everything had to rebuild the east makeup to present the West as a place worthy of that and he did. I walked for a long time for places of reconstruction and fortunately in the company of an architect who let me explain the meaning of certain works, which I believe only what appeared to be eco-monsters. With him, I realized many things some of which were only confirmed to me later. For example, I recently received confirmation that the buildings of the Plan, at Potzdammer Platz, modeled on the old Bauhaus artists or projects that many buildings in the Friedrichstrasse, the street in '91 was only gray building with the boards on the windows were rebuilt along the lines of the buildings there were 900 at the beginning raped by the Third Reich, by bombs Russian / American and the DDR. In short, Berlin, the hangover after the reunification, was working to become once again the capital of Germany but also Europe, economic but also cultural. If Berlin in fact, during gl'anni division, had retained a taste for art, never an end in itself, but always in motion, let alone after he lost it. In '99 the modern art galleries mushrooming, facilities for the roads were already on the agenda and concerts, classical music only, were about twenty in the evening, not to mention that Berlin was and is also the capital of techno music.
Effervescence sensed in '91 became clear after eight years.
few years later, but I can not remember clearly whether it was 2002 or 2003 during a concert pianist of his Konzerthaus above, in the meantime made his career, landing with a friend, for the third time in Berlin After a heroic journey through Austria, with blizzard, and Germany. Those days were strange because we entered into contact with the environment of artists and bohemian Berlin that crazy people talking and eating scores of Indian philosophers who would get beat by his wife and girls who speak five languages as I speak Italian. I saw in those days in Berlin, a city to live. No longer the divided city, no longer the city that is reborn, but the city as it was before that overwhelm the story, with a melancholy look at his past, his feet are firmly anchored to his mind already and this looks to the future. I remember that in those days went to Kreuzberg, the district turkish / multiethnic for the first time, previously I had always remained on the margins, and saw the explosive power of multiculturalism, in vogue in London for charity and to some extent also in Paris, good or bad. Although there was a shock to me young Italian boy in the province, Italy is a province suit, see what, with slow and endless arguments, we would inevitably have happened. Berliners already knew and implement what was already here in Italy it was impossible. A key part of this dissertation in anthropology frolic through the streets of the districts of Mitte and emerging, not behave like a tourist, without photographing every corner, statue, building, behave almost as if I was a Berliner, gave me a strange happiness, as if I were sharing in the culture of the city, almost the same that I instill a bit 'of its sap, which I mentioned before, in my veins.
pass only five or six years and returned in 2008, again in Berlin with a comfortable air travel, no more trips to limit human, with a company of friends who use me (so to speak) as a tour guide. This time the accommodation is to the east in a house that seems to be the hideout of the Stasi in Prenzaluenberg. I immerse myself in classic sights of Berlin, with the rare capability of being able to review with other eyes, the museums and monuments in Berlin classics seen for the first time in sixteen years earlier. The Reichstag, Brandenburg Gate, the Pergamon, the Victory Column, try to see as much as possible but time is limited, and leave out a lot, which will integrate the following year. In those days the city seemed to me more relaxed, less tense, although the signs of reconstruction were still clearly visible. Palace of the GDR, I saw the first time in '91, now shaved to the ground were being crushed even the last remnants and reminders of this nation born from the follies of World War II confined in a small museum on the edge of the island of museums. The matter may seem sad but the people of Berlin can look forward without regrets.
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| Berlin 19-24 11 2008 |
And here we are in 2009, one of my fifth time in Berlin, Berlin younger as we age. Instead of building the DDR is a lawn and the house where I lodged Preazlauenberg in 2008 and where it was also turn is surrounded by construction sites. I earnestly hope that taking it is one of the increasingly rare examples of East Berlin Berlin palace
In the latter, for the moment visit, I get what was left unfinished in 2008 (Gemaldegallerie, Bauhaus, Jewish Museum, Wannsee) and I immerse myself in the city and also in the neighborhood where housing rediscovering the colors in Berlin thanks to the sun than in other visits had always been a bit 'large. Yes it may seem partridge but Berlin is also a city of colors. Colors on the houses, colors in the giant murals, color in clothes, cars, on the premises. The color and fancy free is the rule then that confirms what I said the "modus vivendi" Berlin eccentric and outgoing. In fact, Berlin is the city of the open air: open air markets, outdoor beer gardens, parks everywhere and people coming out and walks or rides his bike (you can buy a 50 euro at the beginning of the holiday and sell it to Market at the end of it Prenzaluenberg) seems to be in contact with a company pretelevisiva. The sun lit up a Berlin still different and more friendly than other times. If you think about it then I've never been in this city in the summer and maybe it was a mistake, I should have known that Berlin could have been changed by a single ray of sunshine.
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| Berlin 09 |
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