Tour 2 – From the Flak Towers to the Mounts of Debris

This afternoon at 13 o'clock I made my third and last Berliner Unterwelten tour, this time in the remains of the Flak Turm in Humboldthaim park, of which I wrote about in an earlier post.
The tour only explores a very small part of the building, which is the upper part of the northern part of the Turm.
There is another, more extensive ("Extrem") tour which explores a lot more and requires some decent climbing and flashlighting, but that tour is sold out for the rest of the year.

The tour of today explored the upper two levels, which were cleared of all the rubble and where stairs and railings have been restored or made. Some very impressive sights like deep stairwells (the building being 40 metres high, and we entering at top), enormous blocks of concrete thrown around by the force of the demolition explosions, huge concrete structures bent, moved, shifted - part of the wall actually moved outwards and is now a famous climbing wall on the outside. Lots of steel reinforcement visible as well, some rods at least 3 cm in diameter.
Loads of information about how the building was used and how it was built with many pictures. For some of the pictures on show in the tour and a lot of information (although in German), check out this article on the BU website.
Also check out the page on the Humboldthain-Extrem tour, which has some more pictures from deeper in the structure.

The guide was the same person as of the cold war bunker tour I took last week, and did a good job again, telling about the cleaning and restoration efforts in the flak tower as well.

The images are all property of Berliner Unterwelten again, as you are not allowed to take pictures inside. The last picture shows the pile of rubble which is beginning to form around the rest of the tower.

Funny detail: the tower is now a big wintersleep location for bats, so the tours are discontinued in the winter.

Tour 3 – Subways, Bunkers, Cold War

Last friday I took another Berliner Unterwelten tour, this time one about the Cold war bunkers. A very small group this time, just me and three Americans and two guides - as usual. One who does the talking (this time a 32 years old American who has UK citizenship and lives and has a child in Berlin - If I recall correctly) and another one who makes sure nobody gets accidentially locked up behind the group.

This tour was very interesting as well. First we visited a WW2 bunker which was upgraded to serve as a nuclear fallout shelter and then took a short subway ride to a "modern" bunker. Cool fact: the subway station in which we stopped, was part of the bunker. In case of an emergency, huge doors could shut off the entrances, and bunk beds would be set up on the platforms.

We then visited the rest of the bunker, which wasn't open to the train passengers, and visited the airlocks, water tanks, infirmary... We also got a lot of information on the cynical way of thinking when they were constructing these bunkers (why build bunkers for everyone? A lot of people would die however what and we don't have the money anyway) and on the situation of the u-bahn-lines in the period of the Wall (some lines starting and ending in the western part crossed the eastern part, where the stations were locked up tight and guarded. The eastern part got money for allowing the trains to pass.)

Anyway, a very interesting tour again, can't wait till next thursday when I want to do the Führung in the flak tower in humboldthain park.

The pictures are showing a passageway and the water storage. Not my pictures as visitors aren't allowed to take photos, they come from the Berliner Unterwelten website.

Berliner Unterwelten

Last wednesday I went to Gesundbrunnen station, where Berliner Unterwelten has their office and starts their tours of a small part of Berlins underground heritage. I took the Tour 1: Dark Worlds, which explores a civilian bunker complex right there under the station. Its location prevented it from being blown up in the demilitarisation of Germany after the second world war and it offers an excellent impression of how thousands of civilians spent cramped, terrified nights during the bombing of the city. Tours happen in English as well, just check the calender. The tour guide offered us (about 15-20 people) a lot of information about the how and why of the bunker, about the war itself and how Germany copes with its history (he was Danish so he could offer a neutral account). Tours are 9 euro, which is well worth it for 90 minutes.
Other tours include a visit to a cold war bunker or to the partially demolished flak tower in the park right across the streat of the gesundbrunnen station. Check out the google maps view of the Volkspark Humboldthain. It's well worth a look on the outside as well, just go to the park and climb the hill. It's a pretty impressive view and you have a nice lookout over part of the city. Looking forward to take the tour exploring the innards of that tower as well!
Oh, you wonder why they built that bunker on the side of that hill and not, lets say, on top of it? That's because the hill is part of the flak tower. After the war it was blown up, but the building was so tough they only managed to destroy part of it and besides, the northern part of the building faces the railway lines. The resulting heap of rubble was covered with soil and now it looks just like a natural hill - until you reach the northern side.

There are lots of "rubble hills" all over Berlin, so it seems. Check out this wikipedia article about Teufelsberg. Got to visit that as well :)
After googling a bit, it turns out that - who else - the guys and gals from Berliner Unterwelten would very much like to check out what's buried under the Teufelsberg.
Turns out that a lot of nazi history is buried under heaps of rubble, either of parts of the building itself or of other buildings as well. Can't really blame everyone involved, from the Allied and Russian forces demilitarizing Berlin to the shocked citizens of Berlin, wanting to bury the remains of the nazi era under layers and layers of forgetting.