Our Sunday has now passed, but the thought that we abandoned the S1 without knowing how it continues to the north continues to nag at us. Monday morning then would be a fine time to return to the station attached to the former Palace of Tears ready to discover the Great North! One thing, however, is certain: the Friedrichstraße S-Bahn station remains as dark as its past.
In no time at all we find ourselves arriving at Oranienburger Straße and thus encounter a former “ghost station” i.e. one of the unused stations of former East Berlin where trains passed by without stopping. Without getting off the S-Bahn you’d never guess that everything upstairs has been completely redone. At the time of the GDR Nordbahnhof was also a ghost station like many others. Here, just as at Friedrichstraße, a number of slightly sinister artificial lights remain and the shadows cast still make you shiver, as if it still could be haunted by the ghosts of its past.
We come out of the darkness belowground and the violent sunlight gets rid of every shade at all. Next to us there’s a lot of green again, some rather large buildings, and a great big rusty bridge. Then we’re at Humboldthain and immediately thereafter Gesundbrunnen, which, you’ll recall, we already met on our trip around the Ring. A lot of lines pass through here, but the station remains anonymous somehow. Still many, many iron roads open up and many, many possibilities until arriving at Bornholmer Straße.
History has walked across this bridge as well, and here we’ll get off too. Tracks run parallel to each other and sometimes seem as if they’ll never meet, and as such, give an idea of constancy, of infinity. But the tracks of Berlin don’t always go on into infinity, sometimes they fold in upon each other, intersect, or go off in other directions. A lot the city’s history has passed by on Bornholmer Straße’s tracks without ever stopping as it too was one of the ghost stations until all of the sudden one night that same history decided to stop here and take other roads.
Today we see here buildings constructed before the Second World War, many of which have recently been repainted with pastel colors, murals, green, lots of green, and then tracks, lots of tracks, at least five separate routes to take and two tunnels with iron streets which sink into the earth and disappear…And then there is a big, gray iron bridge we realize we’ve seen a number of times on television and in history books: the Bösebrücke.
Even the inside of the old, storeless S-Bahn station is completely gray; only outside is there a bright brown.
We’re definitely still in Berlin because you can see the Fernsehturm. There are just a few new apartment buildings, but many old ones. There’s only one line across the bridge for two tram lines, which repeatedly take turns crossing. There are so many weeds growing between the tram-tracks that it’s difficult sometimes to even see the rails. We’re now at the Square of November 9, 1989, and it is one of the most striking in the entire city. In spite of its solemn name, it is not a square in the classical sense of the term. There are no buildings, fountains, or green. In fact, there’s nothing. It’s a kind of clearing before the cliff accompanied by a series of grimy steps going straight down to the tracks. There are no tourists here because it’s still very real and of little to no commercial interest. The only sign of commerce is the yellow and blue of a certain supermarket chain, that prince of German discount stores. Otherwise there are only weeds, trams, tracks, bridges and a good bit of gray wall. Yes, that wall, the historical one, the Berlin Wall. Few come to see it because it’s out-of-the-way, because it’s not painted. Or maybe tourists don’t come here, in the end, because there aren’t any soldiers to take a photo with…all the better, really, this way we can consider the wall in peace.
At one time here there were sheds set up here to control border traffic. Today instead there are photographs showing what happened the night of November 9, 1989.
The government of the German Democratic Republic, under pressure from the huge demonstrations which had been taking place over the previous months, announced new rules regarding travel to the west: you could now travel there without any obligation to return. And this rule was to go into effect immediately. The international press interpreted the announcement as an opening of the borders and many citizens of East Berlin made their way to the border to take advantage of it.
And so at 8:15 p.m. on November 9, 1989, they began to gather here at Borholmer Straße. The border guards said that, no, the right to travel to the west without having to return would not be immediately granted. At 9:15 five hundred people were waiting to receive a stamp giving them the right to leave without having to return. At 11:20 the crowd was immense and the guards began to be afraid. At 11:30 twenty thousand people crossed over the bridge into the West, fearlessly chanting “Wahnsinn!” Crazy. Crazy indeed. After forty long years the history of Berlin changed on this very bridge. Looking at this anonymous and tranquil patch of peripheral rails today it’s hard to believe.
Wahnsinn. Crazy. Only a few weeks earlier on October 7 of the same year great military parades had taken place celebrating the 40th anniversary of the founding of the German Democratic Republic. Nevertheless, dissent continued to grow: from Leipzig to Berlin there were numerous demonstrations followed by severe displays of repression. At Alexanderplatz on October 9 four hundred thousand people had gathered. For some time already history had been marching toward a kind of irreversible change, but it would be here, on this bridge, that the people would finally break the bulwarks of the regime.
And this is also the nature of tracks: a choice between two paths.
But let us get back onto the S1. Instead of curving off to the east, however, our train shall continue on until we reach Wollankstraße, at one point a stop reserved for West Berliners. At Schönholz we’re definitely outside of the city and here and there begin to notice some factories. At Wilhelmsruh there’s a metal-disposal plant, and all these pieces of silver shine beneath the sun. Shortly thereafter the countryside decorated by one-story homes begins.
Wittenau is a mix of large buildings, small houses, smokestacks, car showrooms, and woods: the universe in miniature in a suburban version. By the time we get to Waldmannlust we’re definitely in the woods. Hermsdorf is a continuation of green and houses.
At Frohnau there is a famous Buddhist oasis and, curious as we are, we’ll get off to learn a little bit more about it. The Buddha House is only one kilometer from the station and was founded at the beginning of the 20th century by the doctor and writer Paul Dahlke and, surprisingly, has managed to survive up until today. We would have believed anything but that Berlin in the 1920s was even Buddhist! Turn-of-the-(last) century Berlin was among the most lively cities on the continent and even Buddhist thought had been accepted and had discretely established itself. Today the Buddhist House is in the exact same house that its founder envisioned. We’re talking about a house at the top of a little hill, which can be reached by climbing a steep set of stairs. Meditation courses of all levels are held here as are seminars like “The Roots of Pain and Reincarnation” or “Meditation and Nutrition”…The exact address is Edelhofdamm 54, which is located at the end of this avenue is literally called Avenue of the Nobel Court and is full of splendid villas, in various styles, some austere, some more adventurous, but all in good taste. The names on the doorbells are all German names and all the houses have pitched roofs.
It is often said that Berlin isn’t really a typically German city. Here, however, it most certainly is. The only exotic note is provided by a restaurant named Adriatic but, if you think about it, even that is pretty typically German. It recalls those sun-drenched terraces of the bars and vacation homes along the Adriatic with its plastic chairs, orange tablecloths, and the lamps that illuminate the evenings in their piano-bar-esque manner, crisscrossed by the flower boxes of geraniums. Next to the restaurant there’s an alternative medicine gynecological office which, in addition to being marked with the doctor’s name, is called Aphrodite, and this too seems like the sign of a pensione in Bellaria-Igea Marina. And in the garage there’s a sea-blue Alfa Spider, it too probably coming from out of the water.
Nothing much seems to be happening here on Edelhofdamm. A few days ago the cat Lissy went missing apparently, and her owners have put up photos on every tree. They’ve also added that she likes to roam between Edelhofdamm, Markgrafen, Rüdesheimer, and Hohenheimer, which are four other rather noble streets located in this rather noble neighborhood. But what if the problem was that Lissy had grown tired of the birdsong, the quiet within the woods, and had decided to take the S1 into town to try and find a rough and ready stray cat from one of the rougher neighborhoods?
Well, let us go back to the station and have one of the best freshly pressed fruit juices in all of Berlin. Sure, it costs 4 euros, but that’s class for you. When we’re done, we’ll get on the S1 again in the direction of Oranienburg.
A landscape of green spreads out before us with bushes and fields as far as the eye can see. In spring and summer it becomes a green tunnel of leaves and the light continuously and intensely flickers across our eyes
At Hohen Neuendorf the houses are all tucked away behind shrubbery. We’ve entered into tariff zone C. At Birkenwerder the air is most definitely country-like. The rails are full of old, rusty freight trains and even the iron bridge is rusty. Here we are immersed in the woods but nevertheless the highway’s right there. All the same it’s extremely hard to believe we’re still in the German capital.
Bergsdorf is a tidy and tiny little town and there’s practically no one else left on the train. Woods, woods, and more woods, but the tree trunks are extremely slender and the blue of the sky manages to filter through. No postcard could ever reproduce such beauty.
At Lehnitz the train seems to turn into a taxi reserved for us alone. We cross over the bridge and see a lake below us dotted with anchored boats until we finally arrive at Oranienburg, a huge station and very few people. Now we’re definitely in the country. Officially, of course, we’re still in Berlin, but it’s useless saying so, no one would believe it. It’s so quiet you can’t even hear a fly. Here there are some new houses, some old houses, some apartment blocks, like in any part of the world. There’s Schulestraße (School Street) with its school; Mittel Straße (Middle Street), which runs through the middle of the town, etc. etc. There are fields to play various sports and nothing at all is out of place. The only sound comes from a radio playing music for some construction workers at a work site. The few cars which happen to circulate about the pebbles of this cool little town don’t even accelerate in order to remain quiet. Here you don’t talk, you just do. As soon as a train arrives from Berlin (empty of course) an agent begins to clean it. And even while the train is stopped, before departing again a control crew comes by to make sure that in the meantime it hasn’t become dirty. In other contexts you might define such behavior as neurotic. Here, however, it’s completely normal. The people who live here are all white, and quiet, and orderly and you get the feeling they mean to keep it that way.
Time to get back on the train to return to the capital asking ourselves what the residents of Oranienburg may think about Berlin. Into the almost empty train come a couple of ticket controllers. The few passengers all have tickets. This mania for order begins to be a bit unnerving. But within just a little more than thirty minutes we’ll be back in the city.
Translated by Alexander Booth
