History On Wheels

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DAY 277: Berlin might have been a less overwhelming place to tour around in the 1980s because back then only the sights of West Berlin were open to American tourists like myself.  But after the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, marking the end of the Cold War between the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R., the east side of the wall was open, making “New Berlin” a bigger and much more overwhelming place of historical sights to tour around.

Taking Sara’s enthusiastic recommendation, Cindy and I decided to join up with Fat Tire Bike Tours, owned and operated by a young American ex-pat named Wolf Schroen who, after seeing the movie Office Space, quit his American software job, moved to Germany and got into the bike tour business.  I met him and his barrage of wisecracks at the Fat Tire Bike Tour meeting place under the TV tower at Alexanderplatz before he passed the floor over to an equally funny personality:  Nicole, a former cowgirl from Arizona-turned-my bike tour guide for the day.  There were only eleven of us that day—more might have been present if it wasn’t drizzling—but Nicole put the sunshine into our tour with her own barrage of light-hearted wisecracks, poking fun at all the sights on our tour.  Not only that, but each of our beach cruiser bicycles had a little extra “sunshine” mounted on front:  a squeaky toy in the shape of a cartoony animal head.

“If a pedestrian is in your way, just wave and say, ‘Guten tag,’” Nicole said.  “Or give your little squeaky toy a squeeze and watch as you put a little happiness into the lives of Berliners.” Nicole also had the habit of using her squeaky toy to “torture” little dogs on the street, but making squeaky noises over and over until they turned around and looked.

While Nicole rode a special golden tour guide bicycle cruiser, I rode a bicycle with coaster brakes named “Rusty.” Along with the other ten young clients—nine young Americans and one Mexican woman—I followed the trail of Nicole, squeezing my squeaky toy at will.  From Alexanderplatz and its TV Tower—the former East German tower constructed to show those on the other side of the wall that East Germany did have technological progress (even though it was constructed by Swedes)—we rode around in our groovy beach cruisers, stopping at sites on the way for Nicole’s often hilarious historical commentary:


Despite the drizzle, we pedaled on with the free disposable ponchos Fat Tire provided to the Babelplatz, former site of the Nazi book burning rallies where Nazis burned the “subversive” books of (Jewish) authors like Henrich Heineand Sigmund Freud (and where Indiana Jones got his father’s grail diary autographed by Hitler in The Last Crusade).  Nicole pointed out the interesting and creepy foreshadowing fact that Heine, over a hundred years before the Nazis burned his books and commenced the Holocaust, had once written “Nur dort wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man am Ende auch Menschen.” ("Wherever books are burned, ultimately people are burned as well.")

Germany is sensitive about its turbulent and persecuting Nazi past, and the Babelplatz is just one place in which they wish to bury their former horrors—the plaza was undergoing construction to make way for a new underground parking garage.  This attempt to forget the past was also evident in the site of Hitler’s bunker, where an expensive condo complex now stands.  In fact, if not pointed out, one wouldn’t know that Hitler’s bunker stood beneath him/her.  That was the point of course, so that the area wouldn’t become a Neo-Nazi shrine.  The only thing remaining of the bunker were two sealed access doors in the ground—although those attempting to enter would only face a wall of cement, as the first chamber had been sealed off already.

AMONGST THE OTHER PEOPLE IN THE GROUP other than Cindy and Nicole were John and Mike, two of four brothers from Maryland backpacking around Europe (the other two were in Amsterdam), another Mike from Michigan and Tantra from San Francisco who Nicole dubbed “Butt Babe,” when she volunteered to stay in the back of the group to keep the back end head count.  Butt Babe and I swapped cameras for photos of our respective selves at Checkpoint Charlie—the former entry/exit point of the former Berlin Wall where American and Russian soldiers inspected and questioned those passing through—and a soon-to-be-demolished, graffiti-painted remaining portion of the Berlin Wall, where the entire group, inspired by the graffiti, posed as the Fat Tire Posse of the day.

However, the Berlin Wall wasn’t always pretty pictures and wannabe gangstas; during its hey day of the Cold War, it was your life if you tried to escape from the east into the west illegally—a solider in the “Death Tower” would open fire and leave you for dead.

“GIVE YOURSELVES A HAND, you should be proud of yourselves.  You’ve just done what every army wanted to do back then, and that’s pass through Brandenburg Gate,” Nicole said after we rode through the gate built by Wilhelm II during the age of Prussia and served as a symbol of the division of east and west during the Cold War.  “And directly behind us is the Hotel Adlon, which also has some historical significance.  That’s the balcony window that Michael Jackson dangled his baby from.” It was evident to me that Berlin’s history would continually be written, even in the tabloids.

From the site of the atrocities not from the Nazis but from the King of Pop, we zipped through the forest-like Tiergarten, Berlin’s big central park, where the rain started to pick up.  The coming downpour didn’t bother us that much, for we knew our next destination would be worth the trip:  a biergarten for a beer and lunch break.

“What’s the local beer here?” Chicago Mike asked Nicole.

“There’s Berliner Red, which is sort of a raspberry beer and there’s Berliner Green, which is kind of hard to describe, but the name translates to ‘Master of the Forest.’ It’s the Conan beer.”

“Well, here we are in the forest,” I said.  “So I might as well be the master.” Cindy and I ordered a couple of Berliner Greens and wondered just how the Master of the Forest beer would be.  Chicago Mike pointed out that with Germany’s strict beer making laws, it’d be something formidable.  However, when the drinks came we discovered the “Conan” beer was the girliest beer of them all, served with a straw—literally green, it tasted more like a sour apple Jolly Rancher candy than beer. 

“I guess I was wrong about the beer laws.”

THE RAIN STARTED CLEARING UP by the time we left the biergarten (with a little buzz of course), giving us clearer skies to see the Siegessäaule, or Victory Column, the symbol of Prussia’s victory over France in 1870, and cruise by the Spree River to the Reichstag, the building of the various German governing parties through the decades.  By 4 p.m. we rode back to the Fat Tire office at Alexanderplatz, when the clouds finally cleared for a blue skied sunny rest-of-the-day—after our tour.  Most of the tour group went their own ways, but Nicole pulled me aside for a moment as a normal person, like she did a couple of time on tour.  She was a much different person “off camera” when she wasn’t performing as an offbeat bicycle tour guide. 

“You won’t believe how many people don’t get that David Hasselhoff joke.  It’s sad; I guess I’m showing my age,” she said.  “Sometimes we get a bunch of guys right out of high school and they look at me like ‘Who?’”

“Don’t worry, I get it.” (I was one of the few that chuckled at the former Michael Knight wisecrack.)

Perhaps it was my understanding of the humor of David Hasselhoff references that caused Nicole to ask me if I wanted to work at Fat Tire when I was done traveling.  They were pretty understaffed as it was—it was just her, Wolf and another guy named Mike—and they were looking to expand around February 2005, about the time The Global Trip 2 would end.  It was something to think about in a day in the future, but not yet—the day hadn’t ended just yet.

AFTER SEEING SOME OF THE SIGHTS AGAIN on foot in a different light (sunlight)—including Brandenburg Gate (picture above) and the site of the upcoming Memorial of Murdered Jews—I joined Fat Tire on a nighttime pub-crawl, which was run by tour affiliate New Berlin, also run by an American ex-pat.  Tantra (a.k.a. “Butt Babe") and Cindy, whom I had asked to go where no shows, but that was okay because Maryland John and Mike came out, along with what seemed to be thirty students from the University of Toronto, all in Berlin for a summer study abroad session.  It was a night of heifeweizens in bars, clubs and pubs—none of the “Master of the Forest” nonsense anymore—and shots of New Berlin’s homemade cocktail while walking the streets.  (No problem with that; drinking in public is legal in Berlin.  It’s not uncommon to see a guy downing a cold one on the Metro train or a cop drinking on while on duty.)

“What’s up Toronto!!” was one of the things I remember saying that night, toasting a table of young Torontonians.  However, there was a period of the night I don’t quite remember, a period that I misplaced my glasses—talk about a city trying to bury old memories.  Luckily I had time-stamped photos of my little digital spy camera, which helped me track them down the next morning.  The cleaning woman at the Oscar Wilde Pub had found them and shined them up for me nicely.  She was an older German woman that I didn’t speak much English—it was all hand signals and body language through the window—but I’m sure she was still old enough to understand the humorous nature of David Hasselhoff—or to even to have loved him in the 1980s.


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This blog entry about the events of Thursday, July 22, 2004 was originally posted on July 29, 2004 on the blog, "The Global Trip 2004: Sixteen Months Around The World (Or Until Money Runs Out, Whichever Comes First)," hosted by BootsnAll.com. It is one of over 500 entries that chronicled a trip around the world from October 2003 to March 2005, encompassing travel through thirty-seven countries in North America, South America, Africa, Europe, and Asia. It was this blog that "started it all," where Erik evolved and honed his style of travel blogging. (It starts to come into focus around the time he arrives in Africa.)

Praised and recommended by USA Today, RickSteves.com, and readers of BootsnAll and Lonely Planet's Thorn Tree, The Global Trip blog was selected by the editors of PC Magazine for the "Top 100 Sites You Didn't Know You Couldn't Live Without" (in the travel category) in 2005.





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