Alternative Berlin

For a major city Berlin is unlike any other I’ve been to; between the tourist attractions and slightly off the tourist path beats the true heart of Berlin; an alternative side that’s found slightly below the surface. On top of this Berlin is also extremely cheap considering it’s the capital of Germany and compared to  prices of Paris, New York or London it’s in a different world.

In order to understand Berlin you have to look to its recent history and the polarization it faced during its duel occupation, symbolically and literally shown through the Berlin Wall.  Put up overnight it cut the city in half, tearing apart families, friends and lovers for 28 years; while the democratic western side flourished, the communist controlled eastern side stagnated and was stripped of all its resources. For 28 years the Berlin Wall was a guarded concrete barrier that physically and ideologically divided Berlin, when it fell in 1989 the Berlin that we know today was born.

After WWII destroyed Berlin it was built to hold a population of 8.5 million people, today there is only 3.5 million with a unemployment rate between 10 and 15%. Now you can imagine how much worse it was when the wall fell. When the wall fell millions of people had already fled and were fleeing to the western half and with the GDR no longer in control of the east there was a surplus of vacant apartment buildings. This led to a massive squatter movement, people believed that since the buildings belonged to the GDR and the GDR no longer existed, they were free to move in. These squatter homes, which I believe don’t exist in any developed capital city have been the anchor of a vibrant radical cultural and political environment, and the cornerstone of Berlin’s anti-gentrification movement; with graffiti and street art as a tool for this counterculture.

The graffiti and street Art is world class, found throughout Berlin in various formats, from tagging to monumental wall pieces they can display the quick scrawl of somebodies initials or an elaborate mural depicting current events as the artist sees them. Others are put up simply to improve the urban environment and its people. One artist a teenager put up bright colored smiling mushrooms around the city because he thought it would make people happy and you never see mushrooms in a city. Another artist put up “crying girls,” water based paint pasties that are placed in areas of rain, so the longer they’re on the wall, the more they “cry” and merge with the wall. A different one pastes pasties of people dancing and while the paint is still wet throws confetti onto them. His subjects are people he notices at concerts that are completely lost in the music, he takes their picture and then blows up the picture to paste on the wall. Personally I wouldn’t want to see myself on the side of a city building in Berlin. Street art is synonymous with Berlin as yellow cabs are with New York, without them, neither city would be the same.