Berlin 8 - Goodbye, Lenin

We had already had a peek across the wall and into the former East Berlin earlier in the trip, when we had walked around the posh bits like the Hakesche Hofe (courtyards done in a Art Nouveau style)

and the New Synagogue.

We'd even spotted a buxom German woman who was a walking bratwurst grill, so the former Communist side of town couldn't be all bad, we thought.

Time now for the full-on Stasiland experience, starting with the hideous concrete wasteland that is Alexanderplatz. Surrounded by stark high-rises, its sole decorative features include a fountain surrounded by boozing ne'er-do-wells

and the rather fabulous World Clock which allowed us to check the current time in Mexico Stadt. One of the tower blocks on the square is now a Park Inn Hotel and most of the square is surrounded by shops, including one called New Yorker (specialising in clothes for the non-discerning Turkish gigolo).

All this is overlooked by a massive TV tower.

We searched high and low for our Fraulein Bratwurst, but had to settle for a low rent fish-n-chips style place. You've heard of fish fingers? This place served what I can only describe as fish thumbs.

A tram from here took us deeper into East Berlin. We made the trip in order to stroll back towards Alexanderplatz along Karl Marx Allee, the city's centrepiece of Stalinist architecture. In the GDR days this was the boulevard along which lines of tanks and ranks of soldiers would have marched on May Day in a display of Communist might.

By chance, on the day of our visit it was May Day, but these days it's the Kreuzberg neighbourhood which attracts thousands of radicals, vegans, anarchists and ex-Methodists for a day of drink-fuelled demonstrations. Despite being packed, the tram was peaceful, like the left-wing teens were on their way to a concert and not a borderline riot.

The avenue is impressive because of its symmetry: perfectly matched blocks in the stepped-back 'wedding cake' style facing one another for about a mile.

Plodding along though past identical tower blocks does become tiresome after a point, so we were glad to see the sign for Cafe Sibylle.

When it opened originally in the 1950s, the establishment had the generic name Milchtrinkhalle ('milk drink hall'). These days it feels like a living history museum that does cold drinks on the side. Locals have donated memoriabilia from the GDR days and there's even some old kitchen appliances and furniture so you can get a taste of what it might have been like living along what was then called Stalin Allee.

 

 The wallpaper alone is worth a visit.

Some of the people sat around us looked old enough to have had Communist ice cream in this very spot.

So what better way to end our trip to Berlin than with a Marxist milkshake?? Auf wiedersehen, au revoir, so long!