Kiwi in Berlin

I'm just one of the 250 (registered) New Zealanders living in Berlin. Here I try to answer pressing questions such as: What are the Germans like? What happens in Berlin on a day-to-day basis? Why is NZ so far away? What does "playing the offended sausage" mean?

Tuesday, November 02, 2004

Cold War Theme Park?

On Sunday a new Berlin Wall went up outside Checkoint Charlie in Friedrichstrasse. It’s 120 metres long, white and clean. Tourists can stare and take pictures. It doesn’t divide the city, but it is divisive in terms of the reaction to it. The government is calling it a kind of Disneyland, while others criticise the government as being afraid to acknowledge the past.
Well, Berlin is becoming full of such memorials, and while I think memorials should exist to remember the past, I think the new wall is stupid. It’s for tourists, not Germans. If people want to see the Wall, why don’t they get off their asses and go and see some of the original Wall which is still standing? Why does a new one need to be built in the middle of town?

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