It’s quiet. All I can hear is the sound of wind whizzing by my ears and the ticking of my rear hub as I coast alongside a paved path into the countryside. The plush greenery and forests flitting into my peripheral imaginative and prescient from both facet of the largely asphalted path, interlaced with occasional crushed limestone, trick me into considering I’m hours away from the town.
However the truth is, I by no means left. In actuality, I’m biking alongside the scars of one of the crucial notorious, lethal paths created within the historical past of humankind. That is the Berliner Mauerweg or Berlin Wall Path – a 100-mile path that traces the stays of what was as soon as a closely fortified navy barrier that turned West Berlin right into a political island for 28 years. Now, what stays of the purpose-built wall designed to forestall individuals escaping from East Berlin to the West through the Chilly Conflict is a veritable hidden gem proper below the nostril of anybody visiting the German capital.
Even Germans themselves are sometimes unaware that the path extends nicely past the historic markers turned vacationer websites of the town centre, to create a whole 100-mile loop that anybody can cowl on two wheels. That is even if a whole lot if not hundreds often commute alongside the Mauerweg because it cuts throughout the Spree River, round Brandenburg Gate, and into the center of the town the place landmarks like Checkpoint Charlie stand as stark reminders of how far Berlin has come.
Driving the Mauerweg
I first rode alongside the Mauerweg a couple of decade in the past with Sascha Möllering, a Berlin on Bike tour information. Möllering was 15 years previous, dwelling within the leafy West Berlin suburb of Lichterfelde, when an East German bureaucrat by the title of Günter Schabowski mistakenly introduced that journey restrictions to the west can be lifted instantly. It was November 9, 1989, not fairly a yr after Erich Honecker, Common Secretary of the Socialist Unity Social gathering of Germany, confidently declared that “the Wall will nonetheless be standing in 50 and even in 100 years, if the explanations for it should not eliminated.”
Simply 1.3km of the wall stays, operating alongside Muhlenstrasse and parallel to the Spree river
(Picture credit score: Getty Photographs)
Möllering has since been a daily alongside the Mauerweg, utilizing it to get round city and to information small teams of vacationers serious about studying extra in regards to the historical past of the notorious divider.
“I’d say I’ve finished at the least 300 wall excursions through the years, every of them at the least 10 – 12 kilometres and a variety of them longer,” he says. “Plus I’ve finished the entire thing at the least 5 occasions.”
Möllering, aged 15, shortly after the wall got here down
(Picture credit score: Sascha Möllering)
I bear in mind how impressed I used to be with how seamlessly the winding path minimize by means of the city maze, blended into a motorcycle path, and transported us to the outskirts of the town the place animals, small lakes, streams, and forests are widespread sights. That remained true throughout a latest trip alongside the Mauerweg, retracing my tracks from almost a decade earlier.
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I hopped on close to Schönefeld within the southeastern nook of the town the place you could find a uncommon patch of filth path that turns into the aptly named Grenzstraße (Border Avenue) earlier than alternating between crushed limestone gravel and clean asphalt. My objective was to wrap across the metropolis, following the trail because it changed into a sort of bike freeway adjoining to the Autobahn, till I met with Jonny Whitlam at a memorial for Chris Gueffroy, the final particular person shot attempting to flee the Berlin Wall.
Whitlam, a British tour information specializing in German and Berlin historical past, explains that Gueffory was satisfied to try his escape after rumors began circulating that East Germany had dropped its shoot-to-kill orders. Plus, the Swedish Prime Minister was on the town. Absolutely they wouldn’t shoot an unarmed civilian throughout such a high-profile go to. So alongside a pal, Gueffroy made a run for it alongside the exact same path on which I’ve simply cycled.
Gueffroy’s pal managed to get throughout the wall. Sadly, Gueffroy was shot from either side by a number of border guards. One of many bullets hit him within the coronary heart and he died. On what would have been Gueffroy’s thirty fifth birthday in 2003, a memorial was erected in his honor.
“Right this moment, this all the time hits me, he would solely be in his mid-50s,” says Whitlam. “Not but even 60 years previous.”
Turning the Wall Right into a Path
Apparently, plans to rework the Berlin Wall right into a path had been already taking root months earlier than the wall began coming down. Through the summer time of 1989, Michael Cramer, a Inexperienced Social gathering consultant in Berlin’s Abgeordnetenhaus (Home of Representatives), rode 100 miles alongside an improvised path established by the Western Allies, tracing the wall’s boundary.
The path is utilized by riders of every kind
(Picture credit score: Asaf Leshem)
“I by no means may think about that some months later, the wall can be open,” the 75-year-old retired politician tells me on a sunny afternoon along with his bike leaning in opposition to a remnant of the wall-turned-memorial at Bernauer Straße.
The next yr, he took one other trip alongside the Berlin Wall. This time he adopted the previous “dying strip”—a 100- to 300-foot-wide no-man’s-land sandwiched between the wall’s japanese and western boundaries. This strip was as soon as a grim gauntlet for East Germans trying to flee, the place they encountered barbed wire, guard towers with armed troopers, alarm techniques, journey wires, and even a brutal system generally known as “Stalin’s Garden,” a patch of 12-inch metallic spikes clustered alongside the wall’s edge.
A decade later, Cramer efficiently rallied unanimous assist in Berlin’s Abgeordnetenhaus to determine the Mauerweg. The mission included clear signage and was particularly designed to be accessible and pleasant for cyclists. This earned him the nickname, “Father of the Berlin Wall Path.”
A Berlin Wall Century
Cramer led a gaggle of 250 riders alongside the trail at its opening
(Picture credit score: Michael Cramer)
The Mauerweg formally opened in 2001 after Cramer led a gaggle of 250 cyclists alongside the trail and has since change into the crown jewel of Berlin’s biking infrastructure. There are these like Asaf Leshem, an Israeli-born, twin German citizen who has been working as knowledgeable tour information in Berlin since 2010 and often cycles centuries across the Mauerweg.
Leshem first discovered in regards to the Mauerweg by means of his Chilly Conflict excursions and whereas coaching for his second marathon. He proceeded to run the Mauerweg over a number of days and adopted that up with an 80-kilometer cycle to additional his training in regards to the Mauerweg.
“The factor that caught from the primary run and trip was the unbelievable mixture of gorgeous nature with fascinating historical past,” he says. That fascination changed into a want to cycle all the path in a single day in 2018.
The crown jewel of Berlin’s biking infrastructure
“It was my first 100-mile trip,” he says. “So this time, it was additionally in regards to the sense of accomplishment.”
Leshem now cycles the Mauerweg a number of occasions a yr. He estimates that his trip final week, his second time this yr, was at the least his tenth century across the path.
“If there’s one fixed [about cycling the Mauerweg], it’s that each time is a very completely different journey!”
Pedestrians share the path with cyclists
(Picture credit score: Asaf Leshem)
‘Large unfulfilled potential’
Asaf Leshem has confronted nearly each problem whereas biking alongside the Mauerweg, from mechanicals to negotiating sections coated by eight inches of water after heavy rainfall. However that’s all par for the course, he says. “Driving 100-miles is all the time a little bit of an journey,” he says.
Leshem is skeptical of my admittedly far-fetched, utopic desires of comparable trails alongside borders within the Center East or by means of the DMZ on the Korean Peninsula. These areas, he believes, are too harmful to cycle round just like the Iron Curtain path – one other Michael Cramer mission that traces the previous border of the Japanese European communist bloc generally known as EuroVelo 13.
Then once more, he admits that nobody may’ve imagined biking the Berlin Wall for enjoyable again in 1988. And after providing his Iron Curtain Path instance, he says, “However who is aware of… individuals cycle right this moment between the ex-Yugoslavian nations.”
For Leshem, the actual lesson of the Mauerweg is that there’s a billion euro business in the course of the town that might (and may) be prolonged to different corners of Berlin.
“Half [of the industry] revolves across the matter of the Wall and the Chilly Conflict,” he says. “Nonetheless, in relation to the remainder of the Mauerweg (the western and southern elements), most of what I see each time I trip is a big unfulfilled potential for biking, training, and nature tourism.”
A beautiful anomaly
The truth that the Mauerweg exists looks as if an anomaly, unthinkable inside my lifetime. I can solely think about what my mother and father would’ve thought in 1989 in the event that they knew that not solely would their son someday stay in Berlin, however that he’d often take pleasure in operating round alongside the scars of the wall. They in all probability would’ve thought I used to be bonkers. Nevertheless it’s right here. It exists. Not solely does it exist, but it surely formally opened simply 12 years after that fateful night time on November ninth, 1989.
Data indicators lead cyclists into the path
(Picture credit score: Getty Photographs)
If rails can change into trails, why not borders? Berlin exhibits it’s potential and makes the concept of an analogous path alongside the U.S. and Mexican border, by means of the Korean DMZ, and even alongside the West Financial institution of Israel and Palestine – someday – appear rather less loopy than it would look on paper.
“Over the past 8 to 10 years, infrastructure alongside the way in which has gotten lots higher,” says Möllering, trying again on the Mauerweg’s improvement. “It’s an effective way to expertise historical past, politics, and nature in and round Berlin.”
