Farewell to Berlin

After days of exploring Berlin and using the city as a starting point for smaller journeys to places such as Potsdam, Rostock and Warnemunde, my final morning arrived with the strange feeling that always accompanies the end of a trip. Berlin had become familiar enough that travelling across it no longer felt intimidating, yet it remained far too large and complicated for me to feel that I had truly finished discovering it. There was still one important place left on my list. My main destination for the day was Teufelsberg, the abandoned Cold War listening station hidden above the forests of western Berlin. Before making my way there, however, I travelled to the part of the city surrounding Zoologischer Garten, an area that had once represented the commercial and cultural heart of West Berlin.

I briefly passed the entrance to the Berlin Zoo and caught a few glimpses of the grounds from outside. I never actually entered, partly because I did not have enough time to give such a large zoo the visit it deserved. Still, seeing it felt significant. The Zoologischer Garten area has long been one of Berlin’s best-known meeting points, surrounded by busy roads, railway lines, department stores, hotels and the shopping avenues of City West. The zoo itself almost seemed to belong to a calmer world hidden behind the movement of the surrounding city. People were arriving for a full day among its paths and animal enclosures while I was only passing through, carrying the awareness that this was my final day in Berlin.

Nearby stood one of the city’s most memorable buildings: the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church. From a distance, the church looked as though part of it had been torn away and never replaced. Its damaged tower rose above the square with an uneven, shattered top, while much of the original roof and church structure was missing. During an air raid in 1943, however, it was severely damaged. The roof collapsed and the upper section of the main tower broke away. After the war, Berliners debated whether the church should be restored, demolished or replaced. Eventually, a compromise was reached. The surviving portion of the ruined tower was preserved as a memorial, while architect Egon Eiermann designed a modern church and separate bell tower beside it.

Teufelsberg does not stand in the middle of a busy neighbourhood or beside one of Berlin’s grand avenues. Reaching it required leaving the dense city behind and travelling toward Grunewald, the large forested area on Berlin’s western side. The change in atmosphere was immediate. The final part of the journey involved walking through the woods and climbing gradually uphill. The route felt more like the beginning of a countryside hike than a visit to a former intelligence facility. Birds and rustling leaves replaced traffic noise, and for a while there was little visible evidence of the city. Then, through the trees, the enormous white radar domes began to appear.

The name Teufelsberg means “Devil’s Mountain,” but despite its natural appearance, the hill is largely artificial. The story of the site began before the Cold War. During the Nazi period, construction started there on a military-technical faculty intended to form part of Adolf Hitler and Albert Speer’s proposed transformation of Berlin into the monumental capital known as Germania. The project was never completed.

After the Second World War, the unfinished structure proved too difficult to remove completely. Instead, it was buried beneath millions of cubic metres of rubble cleared from bomb-damaged Berlin. Over the following years, broken masonry, bricks and debris from the destroyed city were transported there and piled into an enormous artificial hill. Forests were eventually planted across the rubble, transforming the mound into part of the surrounding Grunewald landscape. From the outside, Teufelsberg gradually began to resemble a natural hill, but beneath its paths and trees lay the physical remains of wartime Berlin, and below those ruins, the unfinished structure from the Nazi era.

During the Cold War, West Berlin existed as a Western-controlled enclave surrounded by East Germany. From the elevated position of Teufelsberg, intelligence personnel could intercept and analyse radio and military communications coming from East Germany, Soviet forces and locations farther to the east. A major listening station was therefore constructed on the summit. Its most recognisable features were the huge geodesic radomes, the white, golf-ball-like structures designed to protect antennas and radar equipment from the weather. Standing there decades later, it was difficult to imagine the secrecy that must once have surrounded the place.

Almost every available surface had been transformed by street art. Huge murals covered entire walls, while smaller paintings, tags, stencils and abstract designs appeared in corridors, stairwells and former operational spaces. The art ranged from carefully planned compositions to rough layers of graffiti accumulated over time. Some pieces were colourful and playful. Others were dark, political or disturbing. Faces, animals, monsters and surreal figures appeared across the buildings, giving each abandoned room a different personality. The site has developed into one of Berlin’s most remarkable open-air street-art spaces. Hundreds of murals and works by artists from many countries now occupy what was once a secretive military installation. This transformation felt very like the Berlin I had witnessed the days before. Rather than being restored into a clean museum or demolished to erase its uncomfortable history, Teufelsberg had become something more chaotic. Its Cold War remains, urban decay and contemporary art existed together, without one completely replacing the others.

Teufelsberg felt like an especially appropriate place to visit on my final day because it contained so many of the qualities that had defined Berlin throughout my trip. It was historical without being preserved in a conventional way. It was damaged but still alive. It combined war, division, creativity, decay and reinvention within one location. Berlin had repeatedly shown me that its past was never far beneath the surface. The Berlin Wall, the East Side Gallery, the grand Prussian buildings, the remains of wartime destruction and the architecture of divided Berlin all existed within the modern city. At Teufelsberg, those historical layers were compressed into one hill. The place also offered a final opportunity to step away from the crowded centre. After days among stations, monuments, museums and busy streets, I ended my exploration surrounded by forest, looking back at Berlin from its western edge. Eventually, it was time to leave.

The evening light spread across the sky above Berlin, softening the buildings and giving the city a calmer appearance. After so many days of movement, it was a quiet ending. I thought about everything the journey had included: walking through the old and modern sides of Berlin, seeing the East Side Gallery, travelling to Potsdam, standing beside the Baltic Sea in Warnemünde, exploring Rostock and finally climbing into the radar domes of Teufelsberg. The trip had moved constantly between different versions of Germany: imperial, wartime, divided, reunified and contemporary. Berlin had been the point where all those histories met. I had seen a great deal, but Berlin remained unfinished in my mind for sure. There were neighbourhoods I had barely entered, museums I had not visited and streets that would tell completely different stories on another journey. Perhaps that was the most fitting way to leave.

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8 comments:

Bill August 03, 2026
It's been a marvelous series, Mersad. Also--- You're looking thinner- I wish I did! Thanks for the great posts.
rupam sarmaAugust 03, 2026
Enjoyed your travel posts. Amazing photos. Murals looks great. Loved the post. Keep sharing. Greetings.
AnonymousAugust 03, 2026
wonderful post, wonderful photos 😘
Life Images by Jill, Western AustraliaAugust 04, 2026
The wonderful thing about travel is there is always so much to discover! Happy travels. Enjoy the rest of your week, and thankyou again for the linkup.
Margaret Birding For PleasureAugust 05, 2026
it's a bit sad when one's holidays come to a close however you have great memories and photographs to look back on. There certainly is a lot of art work on the buildings. I prefer a quiet walk down tree lined avenues. Thanks for hosting and commenting. Have a great week ahead.
Linda's Relaxing LairAugust 05, 2026
Beautiful series of photos, Mersad! Thank you so much for sharing. Warm greetings to you from Montreal, Canada.