Berlin Diptych: Part One

Demian Hobby
Summer 2008
Berlin

A city destroyed, rebuilt, quartered, destroyed and rebuilt again in under a century is bound to have innumerable number of sites that you won’t find in the ‘off the beaten track’ section of your Lonely Planet guide book. An urban sprawl of modern and post-modern architecture, bullet strewn buildings, bombed out warehouses, squats, underground bunkers, disused utility tunnels and an underground party scene that rivals any other: this is Berlin.

We’re sitting under a hot sun on a makeshift beach on the eastern banks of the Spree River. A colourful bar sells tropical cocktails filled with enough unmeasured amounts of liquor to kill a small animal. Chaos A.D., as he calls himself, is sucking back a concoction complete with a kick of some kind of honey-flavoured drug juice from the Absinthe shop he calls the ‘Borat of Berlin’. I nod and pretend to know what he means.

A.D. runs Alternative Berlin, a company funded by donations that takes people on a variety of tours, from day walking trips around the most famous graffiti sites and squats to late night urban exploration adventures uncovering the history of the subterranean world that lies under the surface of a city destroyed and rebuilt over. “I came up with the idea to give people an alternative to the usual tourist trappings that other companies provide” explains A.D. “On one of our day walking tours, or the twilight urban exploration tours, you will see places that you would not see on any commercial tour.”

Urban exploration in Berlin has become increasingly popular since the wall came down in 1990, with many of the buildings once occupied by the Soviets now empty and deteriorating. Some explored locations, such as Nazi war bunkers and abandoned factories that were later used as war facilities, still contain their interiors and furnishings that are now abandoned relics of the past.

Unlike the commercial history tours or bus tours of the city, independent companies like Alternative Berlin and The Berlin Underworld now take people into the forgotten worlds of the cityscape. “Some of the tours we take do involve the past, they do involve history- like our urban exploration tours which involve us visiting some of these places and seeing what is really below the city, above the city and on the outer rims of the city that you would normally never find” says A.D.

We can see the remnants of the Berlin wall from where we are sitting, a thick concrete barrier that is now covered in graffiti and murals painted by artists from around the world. A jumble of buildings and abandoned blocks surrounding our allotment of sand are nowadays inhabited by party revellers and bars that become late night raves in the summer months.

A.D. has just landed his daytime walking tour at his drop off point and looks weary. Where are we going? I ask, sipping the last of a Caipirinha. “We’re going across the river to a place called Kopi and then we’re going to check out the abandoned glass factory” he says pointing at a disarray of rectangular buildings behind a mass of green foliage and tall trees on the west bank of the river.

Kopi is a four storey apartment building next to what was called ‘the death strip’ during the Berlin wall period when the DDR ruthlessly prevented people from the East crossing into Western Berlin. When the wall came down in 1990, most of this ‘no mans land’ became inhabited by Eastern Berliners, squatters and opportunists. A group of anarchists and punks moved into Kopi making it into a permanent residence as well as a venue for live touring and local bands.

A similar mass residence of artists in Berlin is Tacheles, which was seized by the group Künstlerinitative Tacheles in 1990. Originally opened as a shopping mall in 1908 the building was used by the Nazis, and later by the GDR. Though much of it has been demolished and damaged by the wars it now houses a vibrant community of artists. Tacheles is planned to be demolished later this year despite a petition against the action boasting several hundred thousand signatures.

Crossing back from Kopi, we jump a fence into the grounds of a factory. The buildings are an off-coloured grey, with a symmetrical wide block in its middle. We head for the bank of the river where we can see the tropical bar serving their lethal cocktails on the other side. The high windows to the machine rooms are smashed, so we clamber up the wall and climb through them. The light from the windows illuminates an industrial machine in the centre of the room like one of those ones you see in those Industrial Revolution period films. Only this one doesn’t have a team of greased up men shoveling coal - instead the whole room is covered in a layer of orange dust that raises a thick cloud at each step. We head away from the light into the main room, where a giant wooden wheel is lodged in the floor. Our torches light up a raised control room overlooking the wheel and the other iron machines that tower around us.

While most buildings like these are waiting to be demolished and commercially redeveloped, hundreds of people in Berlin and around Europe explore and contribute pictures of abandoned locations to urban exploration forums, where people communicate their hobby online. “I’m fascinated by these locations and the visual beauty of the architecture” says A.D. “The fact that places like this still exist. And you wonder who actually owns them. What are they? Sometimes I’ll find a place, just spying it from the train lines or just walking around, and I get this desire to get in there - to find out exactly what’s in there. [There's] the danger factor too, the risk of injury, and also the risk of being apprehended.”

A.D. leads the way through a tunnel downstairs which leads to a basement where the bottom of the wheel can be seen. The tour is brief, as A.D. heads off to host a Saturday night pub crawl entitled the 666 Anti-Pub Crawl. I’m left with a map and instructions to get into another abandoned factory later used by the Soviets in the East.

Several hours later I find the building amongst several others in a block of wasteland further down the river. I climb into a black hole at the back of the building and once inside climb a square stairwell that leads to the roof. Six storeys high and staring out at a panoramic view of Berlin with its lights blazing and pockets of blackness amongst its city sprawl, I feel like a tourist that has finally made it ‘off the beaten track’.