The Berlin Desk

We are introducing a new feature to the THatB site to coincide with the tenth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. The Berlin Desk will be web log of interesting articles about Berlin that we come across on the World Wide Web. We will try to have a new selection of links at least weekly. The first selection of links follows:

08Mar01

Berlin-Friedrichstrasse 8:53 PM - How members of an East German high school class fled East Berlin one after the other on the nightly Moscow-Paris Express train in 1964.

25Feb01

Ampelmännchen - When I travelled through eastern Germany in 1997 I was amazed by how quickly vestiges of the DDR had been removed. One thing that has been partly reconsidered is the Ampelmännchen (little Signal man). The Ampelmännchen looks like a very happy fellow. Here is a good overview article from U.S. News

Recently a friend living in Berlin sent me a copy of Das Buch vom Ampelmännchen (Thanks,Cornelia!)

16Dec99

VirtualBerlin is a CD from Century Software containing hundreds of Quicktime VR panoramas of Berlin. Their web site has a number of the panoramas on-line. You need to have Quicktime 3 or above installed on your computer (MacOS or Windows.) My favorites include:

Café Kranzler on the Ku'Damm
The Brandenburg Gate
Schloss Sans Souci

29Nov99

From The Independent:

Egon Krenz -- both sides now "Today, Egon Krenz celebrates his order to tear down the Wall. Tomorrow, he heads for prison"

The Mickey Mouse Wall

From Radio Netherlands:
East Berlin - Memories from the Twilight Zone

22Nov99

berlin in focus - Portraits of modern Berlin (1997) in English from the Berliner Morgenpost. Not the usual tourist sites.
My favorite is the Botanical Gardens. A beautiful spot. I used to live a few blocks away.

Early Snow in Berlin Early snowfall gives Berlin that winter wonderland look.

16Nov99

Man plans reconstruction of the Berlin Wall Well, not really. But the city of Berlin is considering buying back 100 meters of Wall from a man they initially paid to take it away. An interesting piece by Hannah Cleaver from the Irish Time's Berlin Letter

10Nov99

Die Mauer muß weg! - A personal remembrance of living in West Berlin surrounded by the Berlin Wall.

9Nov99

HOW BERLIN'S WALL CAME TUMBLING DOWN - The Irish Times has produced a series of reports on the collapse of the Berlin Wall

Radio Nederlands is running a series of articles on the fall of the Berlin Wall.
The Year the Wall Came Down(1)
The Year the Wall Came Down(2)
The Collapse of the Wall - How It Was

From the NY Times [ free registration required ]

Germans Are Balking at U.S. Embassy Blueprint - Germans get cranky.

2 Lives, Again Entwined, Mirror the Fate of Berlin - fascinating story of two friends separated by the Berlin Wall for decades and how it still keeps them apart.