Walking the Wall in Berlin

Walking the Wall in Berlin
Tourists take a photo at Checkpoint Charlie, the best-known Berlin Wall crossing point between East Berlin and West Berlin during the Cold War, on July 3, 2021 in Berlin, Germany. Courtesy of Maja Hitij/Getty Images
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It was hard to picture what this place looked like just three decades ago. Now, it’s vibrant and teeming with tourists streaming up and down the sidewalks, from museum to museum and shop to shop. On this sunny afternoon, I saw few reminders of what once divided this area. Nobody would think twice about crossing the street at Zimmerstrasse—except to be sure to look both ways, as the car and truck traffic on this busy street build steadily toward rush hour.

But striding along the eastern edge of the street, informative signs make clear that, for a good long time, this, right here, was the kill zone. Over the years, the East German government (officially the German Democratic Republic, or GDR) expanded its original wall to a roughly 18-foot “security strip,” with everything from tank barriers called “hedgehogs” to electrified fences and control towers at regular intervals. On the other side, ordinary Germans could come up and touch the wall, but to approach it from the east would mean big trouble, or even death, for those who dared.

Retracing the Iron Curtain

I was in Germany’s capital of Berlin, which was once, famously, the most divided city in the world. Built hastily in 1961 and reinforced over the years, the Berlin Wall once encircled all of West Berlin, which at the time was already an island of Western freedom deep within the communist GDR. I was there to learn more of its history and see how different it is today.
Tim Johnson
Tim Johnson
Author
Toronto-based writer Tim Johnson is always traveling in search of the next great story. Having visited 140 countries across all seven continents, he’s tracked lions on foot in Botswana, dug for dinosaur bones in Mongolia, and walked among a half-million penguins on South Georgia Island. He contributes to some of North America’s largest publications, including CNN Travel, Bloomberg, and The Globe and Mail.
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