All the mixed feelings!
However, I have TXL pending. The day after arriving in Berlin, we took a Walking Tour of the city. IMHO, walking tours are one of the best ways to explore the city, as I have found in the several cities we walked with a tour guide. My special favorite was Singapore, but that will have to wait, because it's so easy to get distracted!
The tour guide of the Berlin walking tour had an album of photographs with him. While we may not have gone to Berlin TXL aka Berlin Tegal airport, as part of the city's story, our guide showed us a black and white photo of groups of women standing amidst rubbles of brick. It was most intriguing.
It seems after WW1, with the men all occupied in the war, the women took over a lot of the works that were usually done by men. There was a shortage of 'man'ual labor as many men had died or were wounded.
This photo told the story of how TXL was built. The guide told us, the airport was built with bricks gathered from buildings damaged and/ or destroyed during the war. As per our tour guide, TXL was also designed by and built by mostly women, and was completed in 30 days. Or three months if the below sources are taken into account. However, there is very little other or detailed information on the Internet to corroborate the story of the women's endevor- just a rare mention of the women's efforts, that too on a US site:
"..A third, new airlift terminal facility was desperately needed. A site was selected at Tegel in the French Sector. Construction began Aug. 5, 1948, and was finished Nov. 5, 1948. This involved the construction of a 5,500-foot runway, 6,020 feet of taxiway, 4,400 feet of access road, 2,750 feet of access railroad and over one million square feet of apron area used for unloading operations and aircraft parking. 17,000 German civilians, mostly women, primarily using hand tools and working in three shifts, were responsible for this accomplishment. The greater part of the runway and taxiways were constructed using shattered brick debris from the destroyed buildings of Berlin, then paved over with asphalt ... asphalt, which had been flown into Berlin using 10,000 55-gallon drums!"
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TXL or Berelin Tegal was the airport we had arrived at. I fell in love with the design, and have seen something similar at only one other airport in Europe. Can't remember which.
As soon as we exited the plane, and walked out of the doors and through the vestibule, we came to an enclosure with conveyer belts, where the luggage from our flight was available for pick up. There were similar enclosures at all the other gates, adjoining each other, and between these enclosures which were lined up like rooms outside of the gates, was a cabin like enclosure for the customs officials.
So each flight that landed at TXL, was met at the gate by Customs and Immigration/ border control, and also had their baggage available right outside upon exiting the aircraft via vestibule. After getting our passports stamped and collecting our bags, we exited and went straight out. It was such a practical design, no drama of walking a mile to get to the gates. Only a woman's mind can think like that. It wasn't a posh building, just practical, not overly large, no high ceilings, and painted an inconspicuous pale color. There was a certain coziness and simplicity, which I found enchanting, and fell in love with this style of Airport Arrivals- a homecoming kind of style is how I felt in my senses.
It was very sad and disappointing when I found out that TXL was 'decommissioned' and closed. I think they've constructed something else in its place, but I have no intent or interest to find out what got is. The fact that women had built it as part of reconstructing the country after the war, made it hallowed ground for me.
I wish I had taken pictures of the arrivals area. However, I did take a photo of myself just as we came out, with the letters TXL, and even used it as my Profile photo for a very long time. Berlin Tegal had special significance for me, which I cannot honestly understand why, why was it like deja Vu, even as we drove through the city, a fair distance to Pankow.
The history of the place is evident all over the city, as you see THE Line everywhere, created as a reminder, marking the boundary where the Berlin Wall stood. It cuts through doors of a shopping centre, crosses a street and an angle, diagonally moves and criss crosses the whole city. As important as the Branden burg Gate, but living underfoot, and easy to miss, unless a tourist is curious enough to question it.
Of course the part of the Wall is still there, or was in 2014, near the historic Checkpoint Charlie, where you stand with the American checkpoint on one side, and Russian controlled territory (East Berlin/ Germany) on the other. And how the wall came down is another story in itself. Americans, saviors of the world. Ronald Regan achieved it with a simple sentence, "Mr Gorbachov, tear down this wall!"
I remember My Gorbachov well, and his lovely wife. Can't recall the famous word that defined his Presidency, as he set about to bring change and Russia opened up to the Western world.
The children, culture vultures and chronic travelers that they are, showed me two movies which dealt with the effects of the division of Germany. "Good bye, Lenin" was about a son's love for his mother. The other movie, "The Lives of Others" exposed the workings of the Stasi and was quite chilling for my taste, but an important film about the Police State and what it does to the lives of ordinary people.
At that time, initially I had loved Berlin. It is a city, like Glasgow with a certain 'soul' like but reserved vibrancy. The multicultural population, including Indians dominate the liveliness, and eclectic wares of the Markets.
However, when visiting the Concrete blocks of the Museum of the murdered Jews of Europe, I could feel an eeriness and the pall of death in the air. People walked in between them, like walking a straightforward maze, but I couldn't do it. It was too much to handle and I thought if this is also associated with Berlin, then, perhaps it wasn't close to perfect as my heart seemed to tell me, not with this festering wound, not likely to heal for decades, maybe even a century.
The city and the country itself has tried to move on, but that guilt lingers in Berliners, actually almost all German people, sadly as it is not the fault of this generation. I think that is why they go overboard with their immigration and refugee policy. Berlin is trying to make right the wrongs of the Nazis, trying move on and forward.
The Mall of Berlin is one of the city's shopping and entertainment highlights. We had found a very nice Vietnamese Restaurant in the Food Court there, and when on occasion we were in the area, we ate there.
There were Turkish shops and grocery stores in Pankow as well, so we also ate locally. A bakery was also nearby.
I'm not sure I want to go to Berlin again any time soon. Especially, knowing Berlin Teagal is not where we arrive.
However, we had gone to Berlin for the Christmas markets. Nine major ones, and visited every one of them. They are indeed the Best of the German Markets. Here is where I saw Salmon being smoked on large planks set up like a Teepee, with a fire burning away, the flames licking at the cold air, and reaching out higher and higher.
Indeed, Berlin has earned its reputation for hosting the largest and Brest Christmas Markets. I would go back for that, and maybe can fall in love with the city of the Berlin Buddy Bear all over again.
Veenu Banga
12:25 am
12/ 8-9/ 2024.
Continued from here: https://veenubanga.blogspot.com/2024/12/what-shall-i-say-today.html
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