Marx, Engels and Hostels in Berlin

Berlin between East and West

On 9 November 1989 The Berlin Wall, the symbol of communism made in concrete, came crashing down. Thousands of Easterners were finally free. Next month will be 20 years since this momentous event, with a firework display by the Reichstag on the 9th, as well as orchestral performances near the Branderburg Gate to symbolise the fall of the wall.

Berlin is these days a city that looks to the future as much as the past, and there are in fact few places left in the city where you will be reminded of the time when Berlin was separated in East and West. And if you're expecting to see wall remains, for example, you're going to be disappointed. Most of the “Anti Fascist Protection Barrier” was ripped down quickly in the early 90s, in an attempt to heal the wound from the painful seperation.

If you want to see leftovers of the Berlin Wall, you can start at the river Spree, where the largest remaining section of the wall is situated, a 1.3 km stretch that now comprises the East Side Gallery. If you like, you can book the hostel boat 'Eastern Comfort', at the river and see the Wall from window of your cabin. The other possibility to stay in the Eastern part is A&O Hostel .

From here you can go with S-Bahn train to Alexanderplatz, which in communist times was the heart of East Berlin but is now a rather tacky monument to garish advertising and fast food places. Here was the east's main department store, and by October 1989, the nightly meeting point for up to half a million protesters. The writing was, literally, on the wall. It's also home to the 365m-tall TV Tower. Built in the 1960s, it became a symbol of the DDR and was also known as the Pope's Revenge; when the sun was shining on the stainless steel dome, it formed a cross, something that neither the finest socialist paint nor communist chemicals could correct. If you want to stay close to “Alex”, book hostels Heart of Gold Hostel, BaxPax Downtown Hostel Hotel or Citystay Hostel in Berlin.

If you want to find out more about DDR go to the museum at Checkpoint Charlie mauermuseum.de and the DDR Museum ddr-museum.de. The later presents a rosy picture of life in the East. But it was not so easy to be born in DDR: the fact that saying the wrong thing in school could get your parents arrested, that thousands of items of mail were opened on a daily basis and that simply having long hair as a teenager made you 'different' and therefore liable to be questioned by the police.

For more impression on some aspects of life in east Germany go to the underground station at Magdalenenstrasse, across a carpark to a sombre-looking building that went unmarked on maps before 1989. This was the headquarters of the Stasi, the secret police, and the leader Erich Mielke. It's now a museum illustrating the political system of the former DDR and resistance to it stasimuseum.de. The sour welcome at the front desk is authentically authoritarian, and while it's somewhat difficult to understand the displays unless you can read German, it is enough to give you the creeps and allow you to imagine what it must have been like to have been held in one of its cramped, fetid cells.

Now Germany is a free country, but Berlin doesn't forget how it was to be separated in two parts, and to be isolated from rest of world. Take part of Festival of Freedom to celebrate Anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall. Since March this year the young people of Berlin have been busy taken part in the Domino Action at the Branderburg Gate: which mean they have designed a complicated domino pattern. The “Domino effect” on 9 November will demonstrate a symbolic fall of the Wall. To celebrate this event you can see an open-air concert at Pariser Platz by the Staatskapelle Berlin conducted by Daniel Barenboim. After the concert, the fall of the Berlin Wall will be symbolised by knocking over these specially designed dominos. Hundreds of thousands of people are expected to attend this extraordinary event.

Come to Berlin and discover East and West Berlin. Do you need place to stay in Berlin? HostelsClub offers you budget hotels and hostels in Berlin.