My friend Pete and I are walking alongside the canal, down Paul Linke Ufer and then round the corner into the small park heading towards Schlesische Straße. It’s bitterly cold. A wind is blowing and its harsh frozen breath reminds you that Berlin is at the edge of a vast wintery continent. The snow that fell on the weekend squeaks under our feet. The canal is frozen over; a christmas tree and an old chair stand folornly on the ice, destined to float or sink when the thaw finally comes.
It’s early January, mid morning, mid week and we don’t see another living soul. The snow dampens all the sound. Berlin always feels empty; today it’s as though some terrible calamity has sucked up the entire population of the earth and the two of us, trudging through the snowy silence, are all that’s left. We tell each other winter vampire stories and it’s a relief to hit the muddy wet slush of Schlesische Strasse and to hear the traffic and see the bored Turkish shopkeepers standing in the doorways chatting with each other.
We catch the u-Bahn into Alexander Platz to meet two friends who want to visit the old Stasi prison in the north. We wait at the World Clock. The square feels bleak, even the TV Tower, a constant beacon on the Berlin skyline, is hidden from view. When the others arrive we make a run for the temporary warmth of a tram but in our hurry to escape the cold jump on the wrong one. We don’t realise our mistake till the tram terminates, in a snowy field at the north-eastern edge of Berlin.
We get off, the tram trundles away and the silence is again absolute. Around us the tower blocks of the old DDR are pastel coloured fingers surrounded by desolate icy fields; their mint green, pale pink and baby blue outlines incongruous against the frozen sky. A few old ladies walk carefully along slippery roads to the tram stop where they wait, heads huddled low into their collars, shopping bags over their arms. They wear sturdy shoes and synthetic trousers under black coats. No one speaks.
When an M5 arrives we head east. There are few shops and no pedestrians on these streets, just row after row of tower blocks and the occasional Aldi and Bäckerei. We find our stop and get off, trudging down a side street into the bitter wind to Berlin-Hohenschönhausen; a prison that was so secret it wasn’t even on the map in the time of the DDR. It was simply a greyed out square that no one asked about and everyone tried to ignore. If you arrived here you didn’t know where you were or whether you would ever be released.
Our guide shows us round the two separate blocks joined by a long corridor. In one wing are the prison cells, in the other the interrogation rooms. The cells have a bed, desk, low stool, sink and toilet. The interrogation rooms are innocuous; their grey and brown desks and chairs look like nothing so much as 60s government offices.
Guards didn’t know prisoner names and didn’t ask. They held all the power, able to deny light, sleep, food and even toilet paper at whim. During the day prisoners were not allowed to lie on the bed; at night they had to lie on their backs with their hands outside the blankets. If they moved or if they slept guards would bang on the doors, switch on the lights or come in and wake them with a shout. Sometimes in the middle of the night, sometimes during the day, they would be taken to interrogation rooms to have six and eight hour long conversations about every aspect of their lives. Sleep deprivation and complete isolation from the outside world ensured that within two weeks 90% of prisoners confessed to whatever charge their interrogators suggested.
It’s easy to see why. Just two hours walking the corridors, seeing the rooms, hearing the stories is enough to make us feel trapped and edgy and desperate for escape. Outside we breathe the cold damp air, the snow swirls down around the high rise towers and the streets are still empty and silent.
We decide we need cake and coffee to help us process what we’ve seen and catch at tram to Kastanienalle. Walking down the Prenzlauer Berg street feels like stepping into another country, another time – out of the DDR and back into the 21st century. Trendy mothers pull toddlers on sleds, children are wrapped up in so many layers that they half walk, half roll down the street like colorful miniature Michelin men. Yoga studios sit beside Tuscan restaurants, cafes and bars with candles on the tables and steamy windows entice us into the warmth and light.
Just 20 years ago this was among the poorest parts of East Berlin; today it’s an affluent, gentrified suburb where few (if any) of its previous inhabitants remain. This area, along with Mitte and Kreuzberg are the face of modern Berlin - the Berlin so many people (like me) want to visit and live in. The Wall, the Stasi, the East, belong to a different world, a different time. But today, the high silent towers just three miles away, loom large in my mind. They remain as separated from this new trendy Berlin as they ever were; this time by a wall of affluence that those who live there still can’t climb.
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