Berlin Diaries: The German People
Unexpected views and unattended baggage at the heart of Germany
I’m standing on top of the Reichstag, and I’m staring at a bag. Not at the city of Berlin, which, as cities tend to do when you’re looking down on them, sprawls in front of me, but at a bag. I’m staring at a bag because it’s unattended and has been for some time.
My girlfriend spots it, “is that bag unattended?”
“I think so.”
“Right.”
“Don’t tell anyone, they’ll throw us out and it was bloody hard to get in here.”
We don’t tell anyone, not a fellow tourist nor a staff member, because Germany’s national parliament building really is hard to get into. As it should be, I suppose, but they needn’t be so officious about it.
You have to book online, which isn’t so unusual, I accept. But when you successfully get a spot they send you a letter. Through email, obviously, they don’t send a messenger boy round to your hotel, but still, a letter. I associate receiving letters with parking fines and mortifyingly high energy bills, not getting into TripAdvisor top ten attractions.
My letter from the German government contains good news, I got a slot, which is more of an accomplishment than you might think. A few days prior to this visit I was on a tour with a local guide who told me that should I have wanted to visit the Reichstag pre-pandemic, I’d have had to plan months in advance. This time a few days has sufficed, though that’s only for the view from the dome.
Except, it isn’t. The dome is closed for cleaning. Yes, really. No, I hadn’t looked up in advance whether the dome would be closed for cleaning. I didn’t consider that you could close a dome for cleaning. While I’m not being blown up by the unattended bag, I take a moment to notice that no cleaning is currently taking place in the dome, but still, it’s closed nonetheless.
Instead, I look out at Berlin. It’s brilliant, if you like cranes. If you spent your childhood enraptured by Bob the Builder, if you liked building the train set more than driving it, you’ll love the view of Berlin. Pretty much every major city is growing, I suppose, but if you’re used to climbing a tower or staircase to a viewpoint on your city break to see a gorgeous vista of rolling hills behind a beautiful, meandering city, Berlin is likely to be a sharp slap in the face.
They’re not great at protecting the views they do have, either. My favourite building in Berlin is the cathedral. It’s one of the only buildings in the city that’s really, properly grand. Its roof with a dome of its own has discoloured into a gorgeous green.
I look in that direction and see, right next to the cathedral, the TV tower, Berlin’s tallest structure. Inaugurated in 1969 as the symbol of the might of communist East Germany, it would be fantastic to be able to see all of it, to really get the scale of the thing. But you can’t.
Plonked right in front of the tower and the cathedral is the whole 25 storeys of the International Trade Centre. Home to 135 companies, according to the leaflet I hold in my hands, as I marvel at the fact that someone, somewhere, hadn’t thought to check whether these 25 storeys of glass and steel dullness would block the view of any world-famous iconic landmarks before they were stacked on top of one another.
I turn away and instead look down on the Brandenburg Gate. It’s smaller than you think it will be. Not just from above, but even when you’re on the ground, looking up at it, you almost want to urge it to carry on growing out of the ground. If you’re going to be an iconic gate at least have the decency to be breathtakingly big, not something that could lead into your Gran’s garden.
I won’t be too harsh. It survived the war, after all, and has real scars from where bullets hit it during the fighting. But from atop the Reichstag, next to it you can see the U.S. embassy, which looks, conspicuously, just that bit bigger than it.
But I haven’t got time to unpack the geopolitical significance of that. I have to get off this roof, before that bag stops beeping.
Some housekeeping
If you’d like to discover more newsletters like mine, you can subscribe to The Sample, which curates the best newsletters and sends you those worth subscribing to. You can subscribe through this link. Doing so helps this blog get more readers so please do check it out.