Big trips are in our minds but what we can do right now in Berlin – is making even small, weekend trips. Let’s play in discovering our own city like we would be far far away.
One of the magnetic, alluring and exciting places in Berlin is Teufelsberg – the Devil’s Mountain. Place which you cannot legally visit but what is more inviting for The Family Without Borders and their friends than some small borders to cross?
Teufelsberg is known as a highest mountain of Berlin. Which can be deceptive. First of all there are two same high hills in Berlin (second one is Müggelberge in the southeastern Berlin) and secondly this mountain is an artificial creation with a crazy history.
Let’s go back in time into after the Second World War times. Destroyed Berlin will be for next twenty years rebuilt. And what to do with those rubble, which takes so much space? Just imagine 800 trucks a day (!) full of rubble was coming from the city – to the north of Berlin’s Grunewald forest. At the end of this action more than ten millionth cubic meter of rubble has created this hill. Somebody has estimated that 1/3 of the Berlin rubble (which would be around 400 000 buildings) is there. The hill is higher than the highest natural mountain in Berlin.
Some sources tell that in the place all the rubble went was before a Nazi military-technical college, but obviously even not finished.
What happened afterward, when hill finally looked like a real hill? One million tress were planned and in the 1960s a small skiing center was built on the slopes of the hill.
Ski lifts were existing until the US government to remove them. Why so? Because what is now the symbol of the Teufelsberg – a funny rounded towels- was one of the largest listening stations built by The US National Security Agency and rumored to be part of the global Echelon intelligence gathering network. And the lifts were disturbing the signals.
“The Hill” was listening to Soviets, East Germany, and other Warsaw Pact nations military traffic until the fall of the Berlin Wall. The equipment was of course removed but buildings and radar domes still remain in place.
The city of Berlin for years was thinking what to do there, there were plans of building hotels and apartments but at the end of the day buildings are still standing, just a bit destroyed and vandalized, surrounded by few rows of fences with a barbed wire.
But the fence has holes, just near the ground, which can be crossed even by a small Hanna. So we decided to leave the stroller outside and have an exciting walk between the ruins. Hanna was calling the building “big ball”, which has an obvious reason. Mila was excited only about her bottle of milk.
Aha! And because we spend some time walking, we first time had a chance to use a present, which came to us by mail some days ago, from Poland. A lovely TULI’s Ergonomic Baby Carrier, in which Hanna has her first successful nap on Tom’s back. Cool stuff! Because of having her closer – she doesn’t feel as heavy as in the serious carrier.
Ok, next weekend is coming. Let’s hope it will not rain again.
Our first book is out!
We have published our first book (for now just in Polish:) about our Central America Trip.
See, read and order here »