EKeen-eyed soccer fans heading to Berlin's Olympiastadion for the Euros might spot what looks like an abandoned space station topped with four huge white orbs on a hill about a mile south of the ground.
The stadium – which will host the Euro 2024 final – has perhaps a richer past than any other. Built by the Nazis for the 1936 Berlin Olympics, the great African-American sprinter Jesse Owens won four gold medals here ahead of Adolf Hitler, single-handedly debunking the Führer's myth of Aryan supremacy.
But the strange, sci-fi-looking building nearby has an even more fascinating history. Teufelsberg (Devil's Mountain) is an artificial hill eight miles west of the city center, created from 25 million cubic meters of Berlin rubble from World War II that was piled atop a military academy Nazi to form the highest point of the city. Then, at the height of the Cold War, American intelligence agencies built a hilltop listening station at Teufelsberg to intercept East German and Soviet communications. The station's towers and enormous antenna radomes – the white domes that look like giant golf balls that protected the radars – are almost comically disturbing.
I'm in Berlin with my 15 year old son, George, and we take the S-Bahn to Grunewald, then walk through the forest to Teufelsberg. After German reunification, the hill fell into ruin and today provides a strange and wonderful canvas for street artists.
We climb the Listening Station Tower to admire breathtaking views of the Berlin skyline and one of the largest street art galleries in the world, with over 400 murals by artists from around the world entire. It looks like an abandoned Dr. Strangelove set salvaged by graffiti artists. George thinks the whole place is “very cool but a little crazy.”
We're in Berlin to explore the city's exciting Cold War legacy. Like most teenagers, George must be dragged around ancient monuments, no matter how important they are (on a recent trip to Pompeii, he was officially bored for 30 minutes), but he loves exploring anywhere with a more relevant experience. modern history. (Two of our best trips were following in the footsteps of the Beatles in Liverpool and a visit to political murals and the Bloody Sunday march in Northern Ireland.)
So what better place to take a teenager than Berlin, the epicenter of 20th-century European history? In addition to kid favorites like The Wall and Checkpoint Charlie, there's plenty of “new” Cold War history to explore. And just as importantly for a teenager, it's one of the coolest cities in the world, full of great shops, markets and “hip” neighborhoods.
We arrived by train from London, and as the night sleeper arrives at Gesundbrunnen station, it is still dark, deserted and shrouded in pre-dawn haze – such a sullen welcome to the city that one feels like it's made to order. our Cold War adventure.
THE European sleeper we are (it starts in Brussels and recently expanded to Dresden and Prague) also looks like a relic of the Eastern bloc. The cars were built in the 1950s and 1960s and are full of Soviet-era “quirks”: the compartment doors don't close all the way, the heater runs at full blast all night, and the curtains appear to have rolled up previously. the wall. But the duvets are soft, the bunks comfortable and we fall asleep as the train rolls through the night from Amsterdam to Berlin. (For travelers who prefer to connect to Paris and travel in something less retro, a new Nightjet berth connecting the French and German capitals.)
On the first day we visit the Reichstag and walk through the mighty Brandenburg Gate towards the new Cold War Museum, which brings this era to life through a series of captivating virtual reality tours. The first takes us back to the pivotal moment when Berlin was literally split in two, right in the middle of Bernauer Strasse, where we find ourselves here. The story is told through the eyes and words of a terrified East German soldier; we hear him worrying about his future in a divided Germany: should he stay or leave? In a breathtaking moment, he abandons his post and jumps from east to west over the barbed wire border and into another country.
Nowhere in the city breathes history like Tempelhof Airport. Designed by the Nazis to be the world's largest airport and a showcase of power, it was never completed, but it still played a central role in World War II and the Berlin Airlift at the end If we had been here in 1948, the air would have been filled with American, French and British planes (a plane landed here every 45 seconds at times) carrying food and fuel to West Berlin after that Stalin had blocked the western outpost.
To celebrate the centenary of its opening in 1923, an elegant wooden terrace was added, providing access to the airport's original control tower and offering views of the city center. Since the airport closed in 2008, the runways have been transformed into Tempelhofer Fieldone of the largest urban parks in the world, and from the control tower we watch hundreds of cyclists, skaters, runners, dog walkers, partygoers and families enjoying picnics and barbecues.
Like the ever-changing canvas of Teufelsberg, the unfinished airport still feels like a work in progress. That's what makes Berlin so fascinating: what to do with all this living history as the city discovers where its difficult past lies in relation to its uncertain future? This is why sections of the Berlin Wall, four meters high, are still scattered throughout the center: some are preserved in exterior galleries or left as they were in 1989; other free-standing sections are now memorials or tourist attractions; we even spot one in a junkyard, waiting for a new home.
Even our hotel has a Cold War heritage: you wouldn't guess it now, but the charming Lux Eleven Aparthotel (double rooms and apartments from €106), in the vibrant Rosa-Luxemburg-Strasse in Mitte, once housed the Soviet secret services. From our window we have a breathtaking view of the famous East German television tower, reminding us that we are in the former GDR.
But East Berlin is not just about the Cold War. On Karl-Marx-Allee, the showcase boulevard built by the communists after the war, the Computerspielemuseum documents the history of arcade computer games. George joins dozens of other enthusiastic children who are discovering the shared joy of 20th century video games, including classics such as Asteroids, Space Invaders and the original Playstation.
There is even an arcade machine developed in the GDR in the mid-80s: Poly-Play contains seven different games, including a Pac-Man clone. Some of the 300 accessible games are housed in an original video arcade from the 1980s. Like the Berlin Wall, a 20th century phenomenon that is relegated to history.
