Berlin is an intimidating city

I clung on to my backpack in the semi-crowded metro. All my senses were on high alert. I noticed all the signs, heard all the unintelligible announcements, smelled the unfamiliar air around me and felt the nervousness in my gut. My anxiety, I told myself, was justified — it was the first time I was travelling alone in Europe.

And Berlin does a good job of intimidating you at first sight. As I swam through the enormous sea of people across the Brandenburger Tor metro subway, I wasn’t prepared for the grandeur that awaited me. It was not only the sight of the massive Brandenburger Tor (what they call, ‘the gateway to Berlin’) but also the crowds, the lights, the colours, the traffic, the noise — the complete package — that overwhelmed me.

One morsel at a time
It reminded me of a warning my German friend had issued before I set out for the journey, “Don’t take too much of Berlin at one go. One morsel at a time. Keep in mind, one at a time!” I decided to take his advice, and it wasn’t long before my sense of being intimidated turned into love.

Little discoveries about the city — at every corner, with every coffee and every walk — made it more and more familiar and friendlier.

Spending time by the river Spree, which cuts the city into two, featured on my things-to-do list every day. As I sat on the banks, idly contemplating the wavelets on the river pass by, thoughts turned poetic, sounds turned musical and sights turned scenic.

“I am in Berlin because of art,” said a German artist I chanced upon on a bridge along the river. She was sketching a pleasant autumn afternoon on her easel.

“No place in the world inspires the artist in me as much as Berlin,” she told me. “I walk around the art galleries here dreaming of my work being exhibited one day. That would be the best kind of recognition.” It’s probably why hundreds of painters, singers, musicians, poets and writers come to Berlin — to be a part of the popular cultural hub. The East Side Gallery, with its innumerable graffiti, is a wonderful manifestation of the city’s tribute to artists and their freedom. 

I experienced ‘true’ Berlin amongst Berliners, who drew me into deep, intriguing conversations at the various cafes I’d stop by in the afternoons. One such encounter with a student from Hamburg reinforced the awe that Berlin inspires.

“I am here to find a job,” he said. “I don’t mind doing dishes in a restaurant, bar-tending, being a waiter — anything. I have wanted to live in Berlin since I was a child. I had heard stories about this city from my granddad, of the time when Berlin was closed to the rest of the world, and how it all changed when people woke up one day!” he said. “Berlin makes me believe that change is possible and that’s what makes it the city of my dreams.” 

Of course, it is quite understandable that this metropolis that has been at the centre of world history would be a frontrunner to be any youngster’s city of dreams. For, huge portions of the Berlin Wall still remain, reminding every visitor of the struggles of the recent past that culminated in a fairy-tale ending of unity and liberation. 

The Nazi shame
But what made Berlin special for me wasn’t its charm alone, but the traces of its disturbing past that abound all across the city. A past that most Germans today wish was erased from the collective memory of the world.

Given the shame it elicits, one would expect that much of Nazi history would be shoved under a giant carpet, never to be retrieved again. But I was surprised to find it being prominently displayed, though with palpable shame, through artefacts like the Holocaust memorial (which is spread over nearly five acres) right in the centre of the city.

While a part of me wanted to look away from the glumness of it all, another wanted to face this aspect of humanity. It took me three days before I could convince myself that I wanted to visit Sachsenhausen, the Nazi concentration camp (now a museum) on the outskirts of Berlin.  

At the end of my visit to Sachsenhausen, I realised that no amount of explanations can make this inhuman chapter in history humanly comprehensible. How could anyone have justified such cruelty? How could an entire generation of a nation have been so blinded? These questions haunted me throughout my visit. I took the metro from Sachsenhausen back to Berlin.

By the end of the half-hour journey, I had chatted up a couple of Berliners, written a memoir, and listened to two sets of street performers. Such is Berlin. It pushes you into the darkest recesses of history and pulls you out of it with equal vigour, so that what remains with you is an ambiguous experience, but an experience that stays with you.