Month: June 2024

We can be Heroes – Bowie in Berlin

07 – 10 June 2024 – Berlin

I think it’s more than fair to say that I love music and have done since I was a teenager. My taste has always verged towards the esoteric and while I think you can safely say that ‘esoteric’ is one of many apt descriptions for David Bowie, the man and the legend, it can’t always be used to describe his music. Which is a long way of getting round to saying I’m not really a huge Bowie fan. I like some of his music, especially the older ‘classic’ stuff and I particularly liked ‘Dark Star’ his final album, the music of the 80s, 90s, 2000s, yeah most of that I can leave behind. Saying that, the world is a less interesting place without him.

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Amongst my social group I am the outlier, my friends love Bowie and a ‘Bowie Tour’ was very much on the Berlin itinerary. An organised commercial tour was out of our price range so as friends of ours had done their own self-guided Bowie related tour, it seemed like the right thing for us to do as well. Given the internet is such a wonderful source of all things I found a few ideas and planned what turned out to be quite a long, but interesting walk. In my view walking is the best way to see somewhere, if there is a plan or not.

David Bowie lived in Berlin from 1977 to 1979 and wrote and recorded, what in my view is his best record, ‘Low’, the first of what is known as the Berlin Trilogy. The second, and much better known album is ‘Heroes’ and the final, though not recorded in Berlin is ‘Lodger’. Bowie and Iggy Pop came to Berlin to escape the coke-ridden excess of Los Angeles, start afresh in a new city. A city that had been developing its own musical identity, an identity not founded on US and UK rock music, grounded in the avant-garde, jazz and the eclectic electronic sounds of the synthesiser. 

It was a busy time for Bowie, as well as developing his own material he is also co-wrote songs and played on Iggy Pop’s LP ‘The Idiot’, co-authoring the track ‘China Girl’; which Bowie turned into his own global hit in 1983. It’s a song I hated at the time (and still do) and was a core reason I lost interest in his music for the next 40 years…

Our tour started at the Berlin Wall Memorial, which of course didn’t exist in 1977 as the wall between east and west Berlin was still dividing the city.

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Is ‘Heroes’ Bowies most well known song? I can’t think of anything better known. It contains a direct reference to the wall, so making the classic Bowie track our starting point was a no brainer, plus it was not that far from our hotel.

David Bowie – ‘Heroes’

I, I can remember (I remember)
Standing, by the wall (by the wall)
And the guns, shot above our heads (over our heads)
And we kissed, as though nothing could fall (nothing could fall)
And the shame, was on the other side
Oh we can beat them, for ever and ever
Then we could be Heroes, just for one day.

Bowie and Pop apparently frequently crossed from West Berlin where they lived to visit Brasserie Ganymed a couple of kilometres on the other side of the wall on the Eastern, communist, side of the city.

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Ganymed is (still, and I love this about Berlin, so many of the small things like cafes from the 70s still exist) located next to Bertold Brecht’s Berliner Ensemble theatre whom both Bowie and Pop were interested in. Bowie recorded the EP ‘In Bertold Brecht’s Baal’ in 1982 to coincide with his performance in a relatively poorly received BBC production of Brecht’s play of the same name. We stopped in for breakfast and a quick look around the interior, which I suspect hasn’t changed much since the 70s; or probably the 30s….

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Our next stop was the Reichstag, the German parliament building. In 1987 Bowie played a concert in front of the Reichstag which was right on the border with East Berlin, with the stage speakers pointing over the wall to the east, where decedent western rock was effectively banned. Access to the Reichstag was effectively banned for us in 2024 as the entire area has been closed while a ‘fan zone’ is built for the pending Euro 2024 football tournament that starts soon after we leave.

It also blocked me from getting close to this building, and it’s lovely concrete circle which was on my list of ‘possible modern buildings to see that weren’t too far off the beaten track’.

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Our next stop was Hansa Studios, Berlin’s best known musical landmark; a working recording studio since the early 1960s. This is where Bowie recorded Low and Heroes with innovative German producer Conny Plank, and also where quite a few of the records in my collection were also recorded. It’s an iconic studio.

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We stopped for lunch in nearby Potsdamer Platz, where I had the much desired, and very enjoyable Berlin lunch staple – curry wurst and a beer. 

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Potsdamer Platz was referenced in one of Bowie’s last hit songs, the stunning, sad and beautiful ‘Where are we now’. Released in 2013, almost 50 years after the first single, it’s one of my favourite of his songs and probably the one that will remain in my head.

“Had to get the train
From Potsdamer Platz
You never knew that
That I could do that
Just walking the dead”

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We’d walked a fair few kilometres by now so caught a train over to the far side of the Tiergarten to Zoo Station (title of a U2 LP) and walked to the fabulous Paris Cafe, another Bowie haunt and a lovely art filled bar. It felt like a good place to stop for a drink… It was early afternoon when we arrived and I imagine this place has many night time stories to tell if you lived here.

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Out final stop, and another train ride away, was the apartment where Bowie lived while he was in Berlin, and a shrine to his memory. 155 Hauptstrasse.

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The night before we left London I’d been out with some friends and when I said I was coming to Berlin and was going to do some Bowie stuff, Rob said I should check out the album ‘Cafe Exil; new adventures in European Music’ , an imaginary jukebox in the Cafe Exil, which was another Bowie Berlin hangout. I become mildly obsessed with the record (and that cover!) while I was away and pretty much listened to it the whole trip; and I subsequently bought the record.

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We loved Berlin and are already planning a return in September to see more of this fabulous city and check out Cafe Exil and hoping for a good jukebox…

Next stop Stockholm

Teufelsberg

07 – 10 June 2024 – Berlin

The cold war was a period of real tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. It started in 1947, two years after the end of the Second World War and lasted until 1991 when the Soviet Union collapsed. It was, on occasion, a tense time with the potential for nuclear doomsday a constant dangling threat. It was rarely top of mind, but it was always there, lurking like some malevolent nightmarish beast.

Thankfully, it never became a ‘hot war’ with actual shots, or worse, nuclear missiles being fired between the key protagonists. However, there were plenty of hot wars fought, mainly across the developing world, ably and eagerly supported by the main cold war protagonists. All through that cold war period these proxy wars were fought across Asia, Africa and Central America with devastating results for the local populations. You could say these proxy wars have never stopped and you can easily point to most current conflicts and see the dark fingerprints of both America and Russia and their allies on the weapons being used.

Germany was a key front line in the cold war, at least from a political and espionage perspective and with West Berlin sitting right inside East Germany it was a key centre for spying and eavesdropping. For an innocent teenager in the 1970s it was also the scene for some of my favourite novels.

Teufelsberg was a key part of American cold war intelligence gathering  as it was listening post targeting radio signals coming out of the east, though, since 2016 it’s been open to the public as a fantastic indoor/outdoor street art gallery.

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Teufelsberg is not a natural hill, it is a man-made 80 meter high pile of rubble. The rubble came from the western side of the almost totally bombed out city of Berlin and under the rubble pile lies an incomplete Nazi era technical college. The initial efforts to destroy the building by explosives were so ineffectual that the West Berlin authorities decided to bury it instead and in 1950 construction of the mound took place. As you walk up the hill exposed bricks and other building rubble can be seen poking out of the ground through the undergrowth.

Construction of the American listening post finished in 1963 and US National Security Agency took over the site. With unification of Germany in 1990 the station was no longer needed and it was abandoned. Numerous options were considered for the site but nothing was financial viable and though it remains privately owned it has been allowed to fall into managed neglect and is a home for local and international street artists; including some, like Hera with the big painting and Otto Schade with the finger, being well known on the streets of London when I was photographing street art ten years ago.

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Teufeslberg is set in the middle of the Grunewalk Park it’s a nice 30 minute walk from the train station. The park seemed to be quite popular on the Sunday we visited and Teufelsberg itself was busier than I expected. There was a great view over Berlin from the top.

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I’m so glad we managed to get there as it was high on my list of things to see in Berlin; mainly because it’s unique!

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Stasiland

07 – 10 June 2024 – Berlin

I’ve a fascination with Berlin, and for a number of disconnected reasons it is one of my favourite cities. Its allure is a mystical combination of its 20th century history, spy novels, edgy music, graffiti, art and because I visited in 1987 when things were vastly different and have a happy memory of that time. No other city has all the things that Berlin has, though a lot of that allure is probably fantasy. I’m happy to say the fantasy remains unbroken and after spending three days there I love the city even more.

My view of Berlin is tainted by me being English and of a certain age. I was born in London in 1962, 17 years after the end of the Second World War and a year since ‘The Wall’ started to more formally divide East and West Berlin. In 1979, 17 years further on, my family had migrated to New Zealand and I was listening to punk rock and had a naïve teenage interest in politics. An interest that was primarily informed by the music I listened to and the views of those artists, views gleaned from the most famous of UK weekly music papers, the NME and Melody Maker; albeit three months after they were published in the UK.

Thanks to my parents I was, and remain, an avid reader and as a teen consumed loads of spy novels and non-fiction, so was well versed in the Cold War and the Berlin Wall and the privations forced on people by the Stasi, the secret police, of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) or as it was more widely known, East Germany.

In some ways I find it quite astounding that I lived through the collapse of the USSR and the democratisation of so many countries that were consumed by that distorted communist ideology. History is something that you read about in dusty old books or are taught in schools by teachers who probably have as much interest in the detail as the students. History is not something that happens around you, and yet it did. The Berlin Wall came down in 1989 and in 1990 East and West Germany unified to be become one country again. This was a monumental geopolitical event and Europe was made fundamentally different, and better for it. In some ways it feels like it has largely been forgotten and here in the UK we seem more interested in the war itself rather than what happened in the decades after.

In preparation for this holiday I read Stasiland: Stories from behind the Berlin Wall, by Anna Funder. It was published in 2002 and is a collection of interviews and discussions Anna, an Australian, had with people who lived in East Germany while she was living in Berlin in the 90s, not long after the wall came down. She interviewed both those who were subjected to the machinations of the state and by those who worked for the state’s secret police, the Stasi. It is an excellent modern history and comes highly recommended; especially now with the rise of the populist right across Europe and the rest of the world. There are lessons we shouldn’t allow to be forgotten.

We are staying just off Alexanderplatz and prior to the collapse of the GDR our hotel was one of many Berlin offices of the Stasi. As a ‘secret’ location it wouldn’t have been shown on any street maps and it’s weird to think that this building that was built in the 19th century didn’t officially exist for 45 years of the 20th, and it was a key government building for a country that no longer exists. The magnificent Telecom Tower is in Alexanderplatz and was an easy reference point when trying to work out where we were as we wandered about.

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You can’t escape the Berlin Wall in the centre of Berlin and I was surprised how much of it remains, scattered in small pieces around the central city, some as formal memorials, and some I suspect are just there and serve no real purpose other than to attract tourists like me and remind everyone who comes in contact of what has been and what could come if people don’t stay informed and vigilant. You only have to go back four years to hear ‘Build the Wall’ cries from many in that supposed ‘home of democracy’, America.

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Germany was divided into two at the end of the Second World War by the allied nations; UK, USA, France and Russia. It was divided along internal state boundaries with the east under control of Russia and the western states shared between the others. As Berlin was the German capital, though solidly inside the east it was also divided in a similar fashion, but across local council boundaries. This lead to streets being cut in half and families separated. Until 1961 it was still possible to move between east and west to visit family or for some to go to work.

However, on the night of August 13 1961 the East German authorities, much to the surprise of the west, erected a barbed wire ring around West Berlin and the next day began the construction of a wall that cut the western half of city off from the east. The wall expanded over time and remained in place until November 9 1989. Many thousands of people succeeded in escaping the east to the west including some of the troops who were supposed to be preventing escape, like Konrad Schumann, captured in this stunning photo by Peter Leibing. Though Konrad managed to escape his story is tragic and he is as much a victim of this terrible thing as those who were tortured or killed for escaping by the Stasi.

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On our first morning in Berlin we took an underground tour (no photos allowed) where our superb guide told us of the many ways that East Germans, particularly Berliners tried to escape the East. The tour was focused on the various underground approaches taken, via the underground train network, or the sewers and by self dug tunnels under the border.

Prior to the war and the subsequent division of the city Berlin had extensive underground and over ground train system. When the city was divided the authorities re-routed some trains to avoid crossing borders, or where that was not possible, by closing stations and having the trains run through. These stations became known as ghost stations and dangerous as they were they were used for a short time to facilitate escape. Nord Bahnhoff was one of those stations, reopening again in 1990.

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More than 70 attempts were made to hand dig tunnels under the wall, though only 19 were successful, many were given away to the Stasi by neighbours of friends of the tunnel diggers. The Stasi had a vast network of forced or unforced informers and it sounds like it was difficult to really trust anyone, even if you knew them well. Over 300 people managed to escape via those 19 tunnels before they were inevitably betrayed. This is a mock up of one of the tunnels; the construction and escape would have been terrifying.

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There were numerous legal crossing points from east to the west, though it was difficult for those who wanted to make that journey. It was easier to cross west to east and back again, which I did for a day in 1987, using the famous Checkpoint Charlie on Friedrichstrasse. Now a popular tourist attraction.

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We also visited the Stasi Museum which is located in one of the buildings in a vast (and slightly brutalist) complex of buildings that made up the Stasi headquarters. As it became probable that the hard line communist state was on the verge of collapse East Berliners essentially stormed the Stasi headquarters, thankfully unopposed by the armed police inside, to ensure the huge collection of records of the organisation weren’t destroyed by the state. Records that detailed to a very intimate detail the lives of ordinary East German citizens.

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The museum was fascinating and the executive floor was left as it was found in 1990 – a homage to the classic brown and beige mid-70s design that has become quite fashionable again. 

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The images and film of the wall bring breached and climbed and hammered and partied on on that famous night in November 1989 will remain firmly fixed in history and in my mind and I enjoyed seeing the constant reminders of it throughout the small part of the city we explored. When I return I want to explore sections of the wall between West Berlin and the parts of East Germany that were not in East Berlin on the western side of the city. There is a walkway round the old west where the wall and the ‘death strip’ as our underground tour guide described the no-mans land between the west and east wall which sounds really interesting.

Vast sections of the west side  of western wall is covered in graffiti, some of it still the original painting from the 80s. 

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Dmitri Vrubels 1999 painting ‘My god, help me survive this deadly love’ is probably the most well known image, and difficult to photograph due to that popularity. It’s a satirical take on a photograph taken in 1979 of Leonid Brezhnev and Erich Honecker the leaders of Soviet Russia and East Germany.

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There is more Berlin to come!

Berlin to Olso, via Stockholm and Gothenburg

The night before we flew to Berlin I went to a gallery opening for a friend’s exhibition of brutalist photos and ended up staying longer and drinking a lot more beer than I expected when I left home after my day’s work. Stupidly, I went straight to bed when I got home and subsequently had a terrible sleep. As I lay in bed I thought of a great opening paragraph for this first holiday post, but of course I remembered none of it as I started typing this on my phone on the flight across the channel, then over what I think is Belgium and across former West and East Germany to Berlin.

I’ve decided to break with twelve and a half years of posting habit and not write daily posts for the ten days we are away; travelling by train from Berlin to Stockholm to Gothenburg and finally, to Oslo. Visiting three countries and completely traversing a fourth, Denmark, while we ‘slept’ on the overnight train. I will see how it all works out over the next few days. I’ve a log of photos to review and my laptop is barely coping with the much larger image sizes from the XT2 camera; which I’m very much enjoying using. It’s slow progress.

I was both excited and pensive about this trip. Excited for all the obvious reasons, but pensive as we travelled with friends and before we left home  I’d know idea how this would work. We’ve holidayed with friends on numerous occasions in the past, though this was the first time we’ve ‘travelled’ with anyone. There is a different dynamic with moving around places to that spent in a single city or town where there is room for some ‘me’ time, and I like my me time.

The trip started rather frantically, Eleanor and I had decided to use public transport, as we always do, to get to London City Airport for the flight to Berlin. In between checking that all services were running and us arriving at Leytonstone Station  10 minutes later, the entire Central Line had shut down due to signal failure. Luckily we are who we are and had left home with loads of time to spare so we decided to get the bus to Stratford where we would change to the DLR (Docklands Light Railway), as we would if we had caught the Central Line. Once on the bus and slowly under way due to heavy traffic I discovered I had left my phone at home! I jumped off at the next stop and managed to get a taxi to take me home and then on the station. Eleanor remained on the bus, sticking to the original plan and in the end I beat her to the airport. I’m happy to say we got there with plenty of time before boarding and it was the only hitch in the holiday.

Now we are back in London I can say that the holiday was a great success, there were no issues with travelling with others and the trip was mostly a complete joy and I would happily go back to Berlin, Stockholm and Oslo to see more.

This post is a quick summary of the ten days away and buys me some time to edit down a load of photos and write up my notes.

Berlin

Needless to say I totally loved Berlin (I know I love every place I visit, but this was beyond all those other loves!) We saw a lot, but barely scraped the surface of things to see and experience. A lot of the time was spent in the old ‘East’ where our lovely hotel was based and we barely had to time to visit the old ‘West’.

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Berlin is a me sort of town, it has a rich and recent history, particularly the period from the rise of fascism, through the Second World War, the cold war, the tearing down of the Wall and then unification. It also has a fantastic music history and is a liberal and relaxed city. I really felt at home there and can’t wait to go back; especially to do some brutalist building photography .

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We took an ‘underground history’ tour, which looked at some of the ingenious methods East Germans took to escape to the West. Photography was only allowed in a couple of places which was annoying but also good as I spent more time listening to the history and stories about some of those who did, or didn’t, escape.

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The Wall features a lot in the photos I took and in the history of the city.

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The Stasi (East German Secret Police) Museum. The museum is in the old Stasi headquarters. As the end of the communist East German state was becoming more and more obvious the people basically stormed the building to prevent the secret police destroying the massive number of files they had on citizens. Parts of the building are now a museum.

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The amazing Teufelsberg – a favourite part of the entire trip and probably worthy of its own post.

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David Bowie

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I had to try a curry wurst (sausage), the supposed ‘dish of Berlin’ for lunch, and I believe it is in the rules to accompany it with a cold beer. It was very nice! We also had dinner at Cookies Cream, a fantastic Michelin starred vegan restaurant and another holiday highlight.

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Stockholm

We took a 16 hour sleeper train from Berlin to Stockholm in Sweden. The train left Berlin just after 9pm and arrived in Malmo, Sweden around 7am the following day, passing through Denmark over night. We crossed ‘The Bridge’ between Copenhagen in Denmark and Malmo for those familiar with Scandi-noir TV. The sleeper carriage was right at the back of the train as far as Malmo, when further carriages were added on the end. I enjoyed standing at the back looking at the world pass rapidly by.

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The Swedish, and subsequently, the Norwegian countryside is quite beautiful, with lots of water and pine forests and we pass very few large towns, it is quite rugged and a bit dark. I can see why there are some many dark stories made in this part of the country.

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We arrived in Stockholm mid-afternoon and took a local train to our hotel in Hornstull on one of the many islands that make up the city. Like Berlin we mainly used our feet to get around, occasionally catching local trains when we got tired or in the case of Stockholm when it poured with rain – and pour it did…

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I particularly enjoyed Gamla Stan, the old town, and visited it twice, both times in the rain. Rain on cobbles down a narrow alley is one of my favourite things to photograph.

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We also visited the modern art museum which was interesting, and at times disturbing, especially the works of Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan. I won’t spoil the surprise with this piece ‘Him’ in case anyone is visiting the gallery.

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Gothenburg

Gothenburg was a town I’ve wanted to visit for a while and one I made sure was on the itinerary for this trip, but sadly/annoyingly it was my least favourite place. Maybe it was because we only had 24 hours and we stayed in a hotel right on top of the station; though the hotel was good and wasn’t the problem. I’m more used to staying in the inner suburbs rather than a city centre and being in a more relaxed environment. More on that in the Gothenburg post later.

My Gothenburg highlight was Fiskbar 17 where we went for dinner. It’s a small restaurant with only a few dishes on the menu. All four of us had the same thing, the fish of the day, which was lovely, as were the cocktails we preceded dinner with and the music that was playing the background.

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As we did in every place we visited we did a lot of walking and I took a few photos, but it wasn’t particularly photographic, or at least I wasn’t feeling it. I did find a nice brutalist building, though it looks like it’s being clad in something colourful, and there was a decent fort as well.

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Oslo

I enjoyed the four hour train ride from Gothenburg across the border into Norway, there was some stunning scenery out of the window, though I didn’t get many opportunities to take photos as the train got quite busy the closer it got to the final destination. The forests were suitably dark, and I would be quite interested in exploring a bit of the Nordic countryside.

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I really liked to Oslo, second favourite to Berlin on this trip, and like Berlin (and Stockholm I guess) we only skimmed the surface of the city. As everyone knows it’s expensive, but with the pound having a good exchange rate against the Norwegian Kroner it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. Oslo felt like a young city, a bit like Berlin and most of the people we met in hospitality were very friendly, and naturally everyone spoke very good English. It had a vibe I really liked.

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We took a 90 minute tour of the fjord which was interesting, though the highlight was meeting a NZ brother and sister who we spent the entire trip talking to. That was fun.

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The highlight of Oslo, and possibly the whole trip was Vigeland Sculpture Park. It has merited its own post later on. Vigeland was a Norwegian sculpture who designed the 212 pieces in the park. I would say as individual works they would be OK, but as whole, they are wonderful. The facial expressions are just so wonderfully human and beautiful. My absolute favourite sculpture is the second one, with the two old people. Just stunning.

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We also visited the Munch Museum, a gallery containing thousands of the works of Norway’s most well known artist – Edvard Munch. I didn’t get that close to ‘The Scream’, his most famous work, but really enjoyed the gallery.

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The weather wasn’t great in Oslo, but we did get to walk a lot and on the Sunday night we walked to one of Oslo’s hip inner suburbs, Grunerlokka and ate in a large food hall. GrunerLokka is somewhere I would like to back to; there seems to be a decent music scene in Oslo as well which I would like to check out next time.

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All too soon it was time to head to the airport for the flight back to London and the end of 10 busy and fun days. I didn’t want it to end.