Berlin… the berlin wall

I wanto see the berlin wall… and Uli, an amazing guy Uli Schumann is my host and he takes me there, Uli is a PhD, teaches european cultural history, an architect, publisher , writer and who speaks good english (a relief in germany). And know and loves India… he has a perspective on just about everything… and as we walk he tells me about the buildings… and how many og the facades were removed because they were considered bourgeois and now next to these beautifully ornamented buildings are these boring flat buildings.

We get to THE WALL.

there is a small wall…not a brick one a concrete one) and placards of where the tunnels were… souvenir shops… gardens… a small rye field…an earthern stone church of unity… Uli is not happy as he points them out… something about this is sort of saying… I dont know what this is all about….

And then something strange happens… I have taken a lot of photos… me trying to climb the wall, the eastern wall art gallery where the paintings are wierd… and when I get home, I download my camera onto my computer… usually I check to make sure everything gets downloaded okay… but it has always happened, so this once I dont check. And when I sit down to write the blog, I find that there is not a single picture of the wall that has been downloaded.

So I have no pictures.

Existence, telling me something?

Should we keep such  monuments to the horrors of history?

I begin to wonder, My parents are from Lahore, and the family had gone through partition. Not once, from my grandparents, my parents, my uncles and aunts have I heard them talk about it.  I specifically had to ask my aunt, who is now 85,… and I had to probe and prod her. Obviously not something she wanted to talk about,,, to me.

And I began to wonder, Ive never seen a memorial for partition… and I search the Internet… and find this

“It’s a total disgrace that close to two million people died and there is not a single memorial in either country for the victims of partition,” said Ali at the keynote address of the Lahore Literary Festival on Saturday.

https://tribune.com.pk/story/511816/south-asia-has-no-partition-monument-ali/

I dont think its a total disgrace…, I think its good, that I dont carry this with me all the time, nor is it something to be something drilled into me …

Being in Berlin, is strange. On the one side is all these beautiful buildings…on the other you are being constantly reminded… that there was an east side…a west side… there were these concentration camps…. there are so many guided tours of these….

Was this what Ulis discomfort was trying to communicate?

For pix of berlin wall …do check out google pix…