Berlin: on-your-own options in Germany's most intriguing city

Cruise Travel, March-April, 2005 by Theodore W. Scull

Following the devastation of World War II, Berlin, once the German capital, became a divided island city within Communist-controlled East Germany. Happily, the historic city has now come into its own again. The impetus was the sudden and dramatic toppling of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, followed by the reunification of Germany. Two years later Berlin regained capital city status.

I first traveled to Berlin in the summer of 1960 and found the contrast between East Berlin and West Berlin all at once fascinating, disturbing, and saddening. The thriving American, British, and French sectors were largely rebuilt and on the move, while the dreary Eastern (Soviet) Sector still showed many scars of war. Granted there were some grandiose and many cheaply built new apartment blocks, but overall East Berlin exhibited the sluggish pace of a beaten-down town.

Returning the following year in August as the Berlin Wall was being erected, I walked its entire 27-mile length over a period of almost a week. The wall's concrete blocks were at first chest high, then rose to an average of 11 feet--later topped with barbed wire and bits of broken glass. During the next 28 years, 192 people were killed and more than 200 injured trying to escape from Communist East Berlin.

During that tense first week while sightseeing on the East Berlin side of Checkpoint Charlie, I unwittingly got arrested and was accused of being an American spy because I was allegedly taking illegal photographs of important government buildings. With no diplomatic relations then between the United States and the German Democratic Republic, and thus having no choice, I was ordered to sign a confession. That assured my release and provided the GDR with some timely propaganda to justify the wall's erection.

Thirty-six years passed before I revisited the city, and I found it so changed that I am amazed at the phenomenon of a new Berlin, no longer isolated within the Soviet zone. To visit Berlin, most cruise ships use the port of Warnemunde near Rostock, whence it's a long train trip and an even longer bus ride south to the city; but on so many different levels, it's well worth the exhausting day. For first-time visitors to Berlin, the ship's excursion will whip you around the city in a most efficient German fashion showing off the highlights in a short amount of time.

But independently minded travelers can also tour a significant section of central Berlin on foot, and by using the S-Bahn or subway/elevated, also include the postwar heart of former West Berlin. While you will see fewer sights than on a tour, you can set your own pace and venture inside varied museums, stores, hotels, churches, and cathedrals.

Berlin today ranks as one of the largest urban construction sites in the world, and monuments and structures unfinished at the time of this writing may well be open when you get there. Notwithstanding the rebuilding going on, Berlin is again Germany's political and cultural capital and is rapidly on its way to becoming a financial center just behind Frankfurt.

Perhaps the best location to begin an independent visit is Pariser Platz and the Brandenburg Gate (1789), a triumphal arch effectively serving as the entrance to the stadt mitte (city center) ranging eastward along Unter den Linden (Under the Lime Trees) to the River Spree and beyond. This section, the heart of prewar Berlin, became Soviet-occupied East Berlin in 1945, and it is readily walkable. To the west of the Brandenburg Gate, the Tiergarten, a landscaped park with lakes and woods, ranges for two miles either side of Strasse des 17 Juni, a grand boulevard leading to the center of former West Berlin along the Kurfurstendamm.

A five-minute walk northwest of the Brandenburg Gate, the Reichstag, restored in 1999, houses the Bundestag, the German Parliament. First completed in 1894, the Reichstag burned in 1933 and was further damaged by the Soviets at the end of World War II. Architect Sir Norman Foster added the glass dome that now rises from the roof above the plenary hall, a sharp contrast to the neo-Renaissance-style palace. Visitors may enter the building and climb to a platform for a panoramic view.

On German-American Day, the sixth of October, 2004, groundbreaking took place for a new American Embassy to be built on the south side of Pariser Platz. When finished in spring 2008, the low-rise structure will complete the closure of the square. The newly built British and French embassies are nearby.

Unter den Linden's wide swath leads past the city's most notable classical architecture housing some of Berlin's important cultural institutions. While the majority of the buildings look their architectural age, nearly all were heavily rebuilt in their original styles after the second World War.

The Hotel Adlon Kempinski Berlin, an entirely new Adlon built on its original site, opened on the day of my 1997 visit. But while the hotel tries hard, it can never regain the cachet of the original, as the lavish lifestyle of "Grand Hotel Berlin" no longer exists.