East and west

Having seen the effect of post WWII capitalist Bavaria, Berlin seemed to shine with the promise of contrast. I expected to see remnants of Walled West Berlin, surrounded by a uniform post-communist East city. However, travellers I'd met had advised me that there was almost no difference now between East and West, and that apart from the line of bricks marking the road, one couldn't recognise the divide.

Even my Berlin tour guide re-iterated this. Originally Welsh, she'd lived in West Berlin for two years. She told horror stories of friends' apartments in the East with shared toilets on the landing and shower in the kitchen, but this was really the only difference she knew of. Except for Ampelman, the communist traffic light symbol, different from the standard traffic warning image. And the fact that "There's nothing in West Berlin, really. East Berlin got all the cool stuff". But apart from THAT, East and West are exactly the same, she feels.

I stayed with friends in East Berlin, in a two room apartment. With a shower in the kitchen, and a shared toilet on the landing, quite normal in Europe, really. One of the couple works casually, while the other works 25 hours a week. Some of their neighbours are surprised that they have work at all, as 1 in 4 Berliners of working age are unemployed. Both of my friends earn far less than their counterparts working on the West side of town do. They advise that the best situation one can achieve in Berlin is to work in the West and live in the East, as food and rents are more expensive in the West. An East Berlin loaf of bread costing 1euro may cost 3euro in the West. Clearly the differences between the 'Two cities' are in existence if you look for them.

The fall of the wall clearly spelled a lot of changes for the socialist East Berlin. Conditions in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) had been difficult, with under supply of goods, lack of freedom of speech, and long, demanding working hours. An exhibition at the German History Museum on life in the GDR demonstrated the constant double speak (replicated in many East German jokes about the GDR), inequality and frustrations people lived with every day. So surely now that they'd joined their rich neighbours of the West in the land of Capitalism, all would be happy, right? The exhibition ended with a series of photographs and interviews with East Berliners directly after the fall, and in present day. Most of them found themselves worse off, rather than better. Their qualifications were not valid in the new world, their jobs unstable or non-existent, and their homes no longer a certainty. Most seemed diplomatic ("I was lucky to be allowed to work at all"), but some comments really resonate; "They could have left the wall standing and allowed greater travel allowances". For many, the move into the promised land has not been as expected.

Most of my time was spent in East Berlin, which comes across as an area fast becoming gentrified; but the spirit of many communities is still very friendly, a bit bohemian, creative. Market sellers happily barter the cost of their goods, and waiters will deliver complementary fruit as a dessert. Squats and communal kitchens, located in buildings emptied when their inhabitants departed for West Berlin, are identified by the colourful and socialist graffiti adorning the outer walls.

The inner city mixes remnants of the old city, replicas of old buildings and stunning modern architecture. And while Nazism is certainly not dead in Berlin, the city is determined to remember the tragedy of the Holocaust, in the hope it will not be replicated. Several controversial memorial dot the city: one features a mother cradling a dying boy, while beneath are buried a German soldier and a Holocaust victim, illustrating that War and Racism hurts everyone. Far more blatant is the Memorial for Murdered Jews, some 2700 concrete blocks erected to mark the deaths of millions of European Jews cover a large city block. While the interpretation of the striking memorial lies solely with the viewer, its main purpose is simply to be noticeable; the starkness, and the blocks which rise until they tower above you make the memorial difficult to ignore. Surely it stands as a reminder, and warning, that those things we turn a blind eye toward can come to overwhelm, and through apathy of bystanders become too powerful to counteract. Plans to erect a similar memorial for the other victims of the Holocaust (Roma, Sinta, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, etc) are underway.

Some people say there are still two cities, maybe even two countries. Others say this is ridiculous. Yet people still live who remember the division; who are still discriminated against in wages and jobs; who still find the shift to capitalism difficult and disillusioning. Thus surely these two cities MUST still exist. And as the whole reason for the division of Berlin was the notion that "whoever rules Berlin rules Germany", then it stands to reason that Germany is yet to become truly whole again.