I stayed at this hotel three times. Except for my first trip, when I stayed in the former West Berlin area, I stayed in the East on the other short visits.
I really appreciated the location—quiet and convenient—which allowed me to reach everywhere on foot. While I had no qualms about taking long-distance trains, strangely I rarely used local public transport—except in Munich.
That day, I lingered for a few moments in the deserted hotel lobby before leaving, thinking about how much I would miss the city.
Almost every day, on my way to my destination, I would walk along the former line of the border between East and West.
Basically, aside from the Wall and Checkpoint Charlie, which were located directly on the border, the German Chancellery, the Central Station, and the Reichstag (photos 014–020)
were in West Berlin but very close to the "no man's land" (the border).
The "Hollow Tooth" (ruin church) and Charlottenburg Palace were firmly within West Berlin, whereas almost all the other iconic landmarks were located in what was formerly East Berlin.
Berlin was not the only city divided by a physical barrier, but it remains the most famous global symbol of such a division.
What made Berlin truly unique was not just the physical wall, but the global scale of the stakes involved. It was the nerve center of the Cold War, where the world's two nuclear superpowers stood face-to-face across a mere street.
It is not my place, as a tourist, to pass judgment on wars and history, but I had never felt such a strong emotional connection to the people of a city.
No families, friends, or loved ones deserved to be separated by a wall for 28 long years, from 1961 to 1989.