WALK BERLIN’S COLD WAR ROUTE

WHERE …

The Berlin Wall Memorial, Bernauer Strasse, Berlin

WHEN …

Saturday, December 8, 2018 at 1.12pm

WHAT …

The Berlin Wall.

I’m fascinated by the Berlin Wall, and the idea of a divided Germany, so visit what’s left of the notorious 20th-century landmark every time I’m in the German capital.

This is a section of the wall standing near the Nordbahnhof underground station — one of Berlin’s former “ghost stations” — in what is now an extended outdoor memorial park.

The park stretches along several blocks of what was once no-man’s land and not only features storyboards telling Berlin Wall stories but the foundations of buildings that stood before and after the dividing fence went up.

There is also a monument to the dozens of people that died at the barrier — some trying to escape, others just in the wrong place at the wrong time — and there are bronze discs set in the footpaths along the route showing the exact location people perished.

This photo was snapped standing in what was West Germany before the wall came down in November 1989 looking into what was East Berlin with the TV Tower a visible landmark inside the Soviet sector.

The pictures below were snapped around the memorial park and show remaining sections of the Berlin Wall, iron poles standing where concrete blocks were once set to separate the population, and the monument remembering those lost between 1961 and 1989.