Airline passenger news and views

August 1961 was the date when East Germany laid the first bricks of a wall that would divide Berlin - and the whole world - for nearly 30 years.

The communist-socialist German Democratic Republic (GDR) argued that the wall was built to keep the decadent, immoral capitalist westerners out, rather than to lock the easterners in.

However, that was not going to be the case. Over 28 years the wall expanded from a simple  structure into an impermeable installation consisting of an inner wall, an outer wall, and a death strip in the middle.

The wall finally fell in September 1989, when the Hungarian government opened the border for East German refugees wanting to flee to the west. The tide was unstoppable and the rest is history. On 9 November 1989 the borders were definitively opened and, within a year, the two Germanies  became  an united country again.

Today, 40 years after the wall was built, many will be disappointed about the Berlin Wall as a tourist attraction. There are only a few sections of the former Berlin Wall and some watch towers left, although on most streets the former course of the wall is marked by a row of paving stones.

For all of those who have Cold War nostalgia or, simply, interest in history, these are a few places to check out:

Alexanderplatz: the  GDR's interpretation of a modern city centre still conserves the Television Tower, or Fernsehturm, visible from almost every location in the city. At a height of 368 metres, the tower is the third-tallest building in Europe. It was built in the late 1960s as a symbol of the modernity of communist East Germany. There are even two pre-war buildings in the square, the Berolinahaus and the Alexanderhaus, both designed by Peter Behrens in the early 1930's.

East Side Gallery: the longest remaining section of the wall, a kilometre of concrete that runs between Ostbahnhof and Warschauer Strasse displaying contemporary art murals on each section of the wall.

Memorial of German Separation: a memorial to those who suffered under communism. It is carefully protected from tourist hammers and local grafitti artists and is probably one of the best places to view the wall as it used to be.

House at Checkpoint Charlie: the most tourist orientated of them all, the museum shows a quite impartial view of the Cold War era and glorifies the victory of capitalism over communism with melodramatic descriptions of escapes over the Wall.

A great way to visit these sights and more is by bicycle on one of the bike tours run by local guides starting from Alexanderplatz.

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