Apparently the old people in Berlin have something against urban rails and underground trains and have a thing for trams and buses. I say this with a reasonable amount of certainty after having watched a bus full of really old people, a countless number of times. Today was also one such day. The laziness that I personify, I was taking a bus to a place where I could have easily walked to. But this post is neither about the commuting habits of old people in Berlin nor of my laziness in general, but instead about what I think when I see so many old people in this city.
Germany in general and Berlin in particular is brimming with history, and here when I say history I don t mean something that happened thousands of years ago but of things that happened a few decades ago. Once the capital of Prussia, then the capital of the Third Reich, then the divided city (and capital of the eastern bloc) and finally becoming the capital of unified Germany, Berlin is a gem for people who are even remotely interested in anything related to history. These old people are a living testimony to those times. So come to think of it, these people were actually there when Europe was ravaged by the second world war. Some were IN BERLIN when the red army invaded Berlin and Germany unconditionally surrendered. Some of them might even be in Berlin when Hitler committed suicide. They might just be a few blocks away from where that happened. They must remember a lot that would be valuable to historians.
Then this city was divided and there was a wall, a real actual literal wall that separated the city. and passing to the other side was, for all practical purposes, impossible. All these old people must remember how it was to have family on the other side of the wall. and then how it must have felt when the wall came down. Some must have been happy, some must have been sad but it was a historic moment and all of these would remember it.
Consider a typical Berliner (person not doughnut),who was growing up in the 30s. This person is bombarded with the 2nd World War propaganda of the time and he/she believes in all the ideals held by the third Reich( I assume here that kids generally don t know or think much and are therefore extremely vulnerable to what they are fed to them in terms of information). Sadly for this person however, Germany would lose the war in 1945. For this person it would be catastrophic because that means that whatever s/he believed was wrong and Germany would not reach the world domination that it so desires to have.. Now consider again that this person lives in the eastern bloc under the communist regime and grows up with this propaganda. At this point s/he finds it difficult to cope with this new found ideals that are being fed to him/her, but does well to inculcate them into his framework of thought. but come the collapse of the Soviet Bloc and this person again has to change everything that s/he believed in and has to adopt a new system of thinking. I can only imagine what that sort of a person would feel. For most people who truly absolutely believe in something, they never change it, I cannot imagine what it would be like to do it twice. Almost sounds impossible.
This is a person I would like to meet and talk to.
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