I first vis­it­ed Berlin in win­ter 1990, a year after the momen­tous events that led to the fall of the Ger­man Demo­c­ra­t­ic Repub­lic. I was study­ing Ger­man lit­er­a­ture at uni­ver­si­ty and Berlin was a city I had already explored through the pages of nov­els, such as Döblin’s won­der­ful Berlin Alexan­der­platz. When I was there the Wall was still stand­ing, although it was being steadi­ly erod­ed by sou­venir hunters armed with ham­mers and chis­els, each one eager to sal­vage a con­crete piece of Cold War his­to­ry. I remem­ber how deeply strange it felt, unre­al even, to walk beside what the GDR had termed an “Antifaschis­tis­ch­er Schutzwall” (anti-Fas­cist pro­tec­tive bar­ri­er), ven­tur­ing into areas where not long ago only armed bor­der guards were allowed to walk. More than a hun­dred peo­ple were killed try­ing to escape to the West from the east­ern sec­tor.

Build­ings near the east­ern side of the Wall looked as though they had been trapped in a time warp, their black­ened façades still pock-marked with bul­let holes and shrap­nel scars from the last war.

The sign at Check­point Char­lie looked like a prop from a Cold War movie. At any moment, I expect­ed to catch sight of Har­ry Palmer hur­ry­ing past to a ren­dezvous with a Sovi­et spy in some dark Berlin alley.

When I went back at the end of the 1990s, Berlin was being trans­formed. The city had become one giant build­ing site. Pots­damer Platz was a vast, mud­dy hole in the ground and cranes stalked the city’s sky­line. The stri­dent sounds of con­struc­tion — pile-dri­vers and pneu­mat­ic drills — were the birth cries of a new unit­ed Berlin.

Revis­it­ing the city today I’m struck by how dif­fer­ent it feels. The mud, bull­doz­ers and black­ened façades have large­ly gone. The city’s mon­u­ments, like the Bran­den­burg Gate, have now been cleaned and restored. Grime scrubbed away and scars healed. The once divid­ed city has been replaced by an appar­ent­ly unit­ed and con­fi­dent cap­i­tal. There are new glass and steel edi­fices on every street, it seems. As a result the city’s past is less visible. But it’s still there. And some­times all you have to do to find it, is to look down at your feet.

Stolper­steine — stum­bling stones — com­mem­o­rate the vic­tims of Nation­al Social­ism and are placed in the pave­ment out­side their for­mer homes. There are thou­sands of these Stolper­steine in Berlin’s streets. It’s a beau­ti­ful­ly sim­ple and res­o­nan­t idea, the brain­child of artist Gunter Dem­nig. These stum­bling stones make the past vivid­ly present: it’s there beneath your feet, wait­ing to be dis­cov­ered like the lay­ers of his­to­ry that lie just under the sur­face of any ancient city.

“Irgen­wann fällt jede Mauer” — even­tu­al­ly every wall falls. That was one of the slo­gans paint­ed onto the Berlin Wall. And, indeed, most of the Wall has now gone, ground up to make grav­el for the roads that now link East and West Berlin. A struc­ture that once divid­ed peo­ple final­ly helped to bring them back togeth­er again. In today’s some­what ster­ile Pots­damer Platz, a small piece of the Wall remains, its graf­fi­ti-scrawled sur­face now embell­ished with pieces of chew­ing gum. The struc­ture that once defined this city is now almost invis­i­ble, an absent pres­ence whose for­mer course is traced through the square by a line of unob­tru­sive cob­ble­stones. Once again, his­to­ry lies beneath your feet in this city.

 

Along­side the Riv­er Spree, a longer sec­tion of the Wall remains, turned into an impromp­tu can­vas for street artists and renamed the East Side Gallery. It includes this great piece by Thier­ry Noir who, togeth­er with Christophe Bouchet, was one of the first artists to paint the west­ern side of the Wall in 1984.

Sad­ly the future is uncer­tain for at least part of what is the longest remain­ing stretch of the Wall. The land beneath it is grow­ing more valu­able by the day and devel­op­ers are gath­er­ing for the kill. A new apart­ment block and a hotel are on the draw­ing board and once again the bull­doz­ers are on the move.

In the new Berlin there is undoubt­ed­ly much that is impres­sive, such as Nor­man Fos­ter’s recon­struc­tion of the Reich­stag. The view across the city from its dome is tru­ly mem­o­rable. It was cer­tain­ly worth get­ting up ear­ly on a bright Sun­day morn­ing to see it, before too many tour groups arrived. It’s a remark­able struc­ture. But in this city haunt­ed by its past, what par­tic­u­lar­ly struck me was the graf­fi­ti made in 1945 by Sovi­et sol­diers, who scratched their names on the para­pets of the roof as they looked out across the black­ened, bombed-out ruins of a once great city.

A city is a palimpsest. Each gen­er­a­tion writes their own urban sto­ry. But some traces of the past need to be retained as we hur­ry into the future.

Daniel Libe­skind’s Jew­ish Muse­um (2001) is anoth­er pow­er­ful piece of archi­tec­ture. Instead of the uplift­ing trans­paren­cy of Fos­ter’s dome, Libe­skind’s build­ing is full of unset­tling, dis­ori­en­tat­ing spaces, such as the Holo­caust Tow­er, where the dis­tant sounds of the city echo in the dark­ness.

The Holo­caust Memo­r­i­al, designed by Peter Eisen­man (2005), was cer­tain­ly pow­er­ful but I found it also strange­ly anony­mous. A grey, name­less necrop­o­lis at the heart of the liv­ing city. Com­ing across the Stolper­steine in Berlin’s cob­bled streets was for me a far more poignant reminder of the city’s — and Ger­many’s — dark past.

While I was in Berlin I saw an exhi­bi­tion at the Perg­a­mon Muse­um about one of the ear­li­est cities — “Uruk: 5000 Jahre Megac­i­ty”. If you’re vis­it­ing Berlin before it ends in Sep­tem­ber and you’re inter­est­ed in the his­to­ry of cities, this is a must-see. They have brought togeth­er an extra­or­di­nar­i­ly rich col­lec­tion of arte­facts illus­trat­ing the life and cul­ture of the world’s first urban civ­i­liza­tion.

Like Berlin, Uruk was also famous for its wall, some 9 km long and con­struct­ed using 306,000,000 bricks. For the Sume­ri­ans who found­ed Uruk more than five thou­sand years ago, Eden was not a gar­den but a city. In their leg­ends the first city was called Eridu and it was cre­at­ed by the god Mar­duk. He want­ed to give his peo­ple a place of shel­ter, a refuge to pro­tect them from a nat­ur­al world that can be harsh and unfor­giv­ing. The Sume­ri­ans did not long for some myth­ic rur­al idyll, an unob­tain­able Arca­dia. They believed the city was the place where all their dreams would be realised. And Uruk became one of the largest of their cities — although, with respect to the organ­is­ers of the exhi­bi­tion, not quite a “megac­i­ty”.

The exhi­bi­tion is superb though. This 4000-year-old clay plaque of a winged god­dess (pos­si­bly Ishtar) struck me as being espe­cial­ly beau­ti­ful.

Berlin has cer­tain­ly changed since I first vis­it­ed. That’s not sur­pris­ing. Change is an essen­tial part of urban life. Old struc­tures must make way for new ones. But there is a pow­er­ful con­ti­nu­ity, too, in cities. That con­ti­nu­ity has at its heart the human sto­ry of desires and dreams, a sto­ry that stretch­es back to Uruk and beyond. Amidst the glass and steel and opti­mism of today’s cities, we need reminders, like the Stolper­steine, of those human sto­ries.

After a few days in Berlin, I caught the ICE train down south to Munich, where I lived in the ear­ly 1990s. It’s a beau­ti­ful city, but of course very dif­fer­ent from Berlin, both then and now. Apart from the Dirndls and Leder­ho­sen, it’s always been a more afflu­ent and expen­sive city. For for­eign­ers like me, the dialect is also far more dif­fi­cult to under­stand. One of my first ports of call in Munich was the Oly­dorf, or the 1972 Olympic Vil­lage, where I used to live.

It’s been ren­o­vat­ed recent­ly which I hope means that today’s stu­dent occu­pants no longer have to put up with cock­roach­es in the apart­ments and pigeons occu­py­ing the bal­conies. (Even­tu­al­ly I became quite skilled at dis­patch­ing cock­roach­es with a rolled up copy of the Süd­deutsche Zeitung.) Some things do change — and for the bet­ter.

But I was relieved to see that oth­er things had­n’t changed. My favourite café-bar in Munich was Drug­store, oppo­site Wedekind­platz in Schwabing. It was found­ed in the swing­ing six­ties and is still going strong. It’s the friend­liest bar any­where. And they serve great food. What more can you ask for? Well, per­haps anoth­er beer…

In fact, in Munich many things were just as I remem­bered them. The Englis­ch­er Garten, which opened in 1791, is still one of the most beau­ti­ful urban parks I know.

The Vik­tu­alien­markt still offers a mouth-water­ing selec­tion of the most per­fect food on the plan­et.

And, of course, a Weizen remains the best beer on this world or any oth­er.

But some things have changed in Munich. The city is expand­ing, as is clear from the extend­ed U‑Bahn lines. The city’s art gal­leries have been attract­ing inter­na­tion­al vis­i­tors since 1830 when the Glyp­tothek opened. New gal­leries have opened since I was there, includ­ing the Pinakothek der Mod­erne and the beau­ti­ful­ly designed Muse­um Brand­horst. The Lenbach­haus, one of my favourite art gal­leries (I love its Blaue Reit­er col­lec­tion), has also been expand­ed and is now even bet­ter than before.

If you go to the Lenbachhaus, don’t miss Rudolf Schlichter’s bril­liant por­trait of Bertolt Brecht. Although in most peo­ple’s minds, Brecht is asso­ci­at­ed with Berlin — both before and after the war (he is buried in the Dorotheen Ceme­tery in what was East Berlin) — he was born and grew up in Augs­burg, not far from Munich. He also lived in Munich in the 1920s.

Walk­ing around Munich today and trav­el­ling on its excel­lent pub­lic trans­port sys­tem, I was pleased to see that the city that used to pride itself on being the “Welt­stadt mit Herz” — the world city with heart — is now far more diverse than it once was. The world has come to Munich. Despite its con­ser­vatism and love of tra­di­tion, Munich is now tru­ly a glob­al city.

It was great to revis­it Berlin and Munich. They are very dif­fer­ent cities. But both are dynam­ic, excit­ing places with long his­to­ries and promis­ing futures — cities where any­thing can hap­pen. A sign I saw in the won­der­ful Pren­zlauer Berg dis­trict of Berlin put it per­fect­ly: If you can dream it, you can do it.

And that’s true now in vibrant cities like Berlin or Munich, just as it once was in Uruk.

You can see all the pho­tos in this post, as well as more from Berlin and Munich, on my Flickr page in high­er qual­i­ty than my site allows (there’s a set for Berlin and Munich). I hope this post and the images encour­age you to vis­it some of the places for your­self.

If you do, here are a few rec­om­men­da­tions of cafés and restau­rants.

In Berlin: Restora­tion 1900, a great local bar-restau­rant in Pren­zlauer Berg. For a spe­cial occa­sion Alpen­stueck is worth trying. The Fri­day Turk­ish mar­ket off Kot­tbusser Strasse is amaz­ing. If you’re look­ing for fresh food, this is the place to go. Near here at Paul-Lincke-Ufer 42, Cau is a friend­ly bar with a won­der­ful­ly sun­ny ter­race beside the canal. If you’re in Mitte, Café Oliv is worth a vis­it.

In Munich: wie schon gesagt, Drugstore. One of my oth­er favourite bar-restau­rants is Atzinger near the uni­ver­si­ty — a relaxed place, that serves huge por­tions and great beer. If you’re around Frauen­hofer­strasse, Das Kranz is a great lit­tle restau­rant. For superb Viet­namese food look no fur­ther than Cyclo in There­sien­strasse. And for a deli­cious veg­e­tar­i­an menu, go to Prinz Myshkin not far from Marien­platz. If you like beer gar­dens, head for the Chi­ne­sis­ch­er Turm in the Englis­ch­er Garten. An amaz­ing set­ting to enjoy a beer. Viel Spass!