Checkpoint Charlie

Yes, the museum at Checkpoint Charlie is a tourist magnet. No, it doesn’t make it funnier or cozier. But it IS a place where a piece of world history is tangible.

To reach that part, you first have to mingle your way through the much too narrow entrance area. If you want to see all the pictures and explanations, you need a cushion against all the other people that bump into you. Because the other tourists are in a rush-rush-rush: within an hour to the next part of their programme…

In the modern part of the museum you have much more space. There you can find the remains of many creative, successful and unsuccessful attempts to flee the GDR. It’s all not so serene and impressive as the Mauer monument on the Bernauer Strasse, but more informative and complete. So you can explain at home that Checkpoint Charlie wasn’t the place where spies were exchanged, as many people seem to think: that happened at the edge of town, on the Glienicker Brücke towards Potsdam.