In the morning, we had a short walk around Checkpoint Charlie. We then checked out of our hotel since Helene was going to join her work group.
For one night, I checked into a hostel. It was within walking distance of the train station I was going to tomorrow morning.
In the evening, I decided to revisit the Berlin Wall East Side Gallery. This was a 20 minutes walk from of my hostel. On the way there, I took a wrong turn. As I snaked my way around the area, all I could see were black people — talking, sitting, drinking, smoking. It was unusual to see so many black people in Berlin. The people seemed friendly, some nodding to me.
I retraced my steps and found the gallery. At first, I thought it had been vandalised with nondescript graffiti. Then someone told me I was on the wrong side of the wall!
An information board explained the history of the gallery:
Colourful paintings appeared on a wall that had previously been part of a tightly guarded border: When the Berlin Wall was opened in November 1989, the border stopped being a danger zone. In spring 1990, the GDR government authorised an art action planned at the Wall and the East Side Gallery was born. 118 artists from 21 countries painted pictures on the Wall that expressed their joy, fears, and hopes at the time. In a wide variety of styles and images, the pictures convey not only the sense of possibility but also the concern about the future that characterised 1990.
Being an artistic testimony to a unique moment and the longest remaining part of the Berlin Wall, the East Side Gallery was listed as a historical monument in 1991. But that did not ensure it was preserved intact. Parts of the Gallery were removed to allow construction along the Spree. The gaps cut into the monument are the outcome of years of negotiations between the Berlin Monument Authority and urban planners.
Possibly the most famous mural is the one usually called “My God, Help Me to Survive This Deadly Love”. It captures Leonid Brezhnev (former leader of the Soviet Union) and Erich Honecker (former leader of East Germany). It’s based on a real 1979 photograph of them greeting each other with the socialist “fraternal kiss” during the 30th anniversary celebrations of East Germany. The mural is not an exaggeration!
The mural has been imitated, including in an advert we saw.
