Mauerguide

" Where passed the wall? ", " where we are: in the East or on the West? ", " what looked like the no-man's-land? ". Here is a sample of the questions the most put by the tourists in the streets of Berlin. The multimedia GPS-guide proposed by the city of Berlin allows to restore a visibility in the wall and in his vestiges into the townscape. If in 1989, the wall in reinforced concrete extended itself, for the only north-south border, over 43,7 km, there are not there today more than some hundreds of meters. In the 1990s, we hurried to destroy these sections of wall which still raised themselves as an obstacle to the reunification. Today, to trace the Berlin Wall, is to trace the tracks of a ghost. Present everywhere, visible nowhere... Or almost. Not to lose the memory of this page of the history of the city, the Senate of Berlin launched in 2006 a big plan of remembrance, conservation and documentation of the wall. The start of Mauerguide, at the beginning of the month, realizes one of the points of this program which should be finished in 2011. At the East Side Gallery, the longest kept segment, we give you a screen a little bigger than a mobile phone. The well propped up earphones, here you are ready to discover what stays of this monument. Thanks to the magic of the satellite, you are transformed into a flashing cursor on a map of the city which displays on the screen. You can then decide your route by visualizing the distance which separates you from commemorative sites to be discovered. You walk along the East Side Gallery towards Warschauer Strasse. The cursor reproduces faithfully your movement. Archives images appear on the screen. In front of you this mirador to which the guide asks your attention and you visualize suddenly the no-man's-land along the Spree, the covered way, and, a little farther, Checkpoint of the Oberbaumbrücke. During the visit, we remind you that the wall was not only a matter of device. The iron curtain was also a curtain of blood : the figure of 133 deaths is there to evoke the relentlessness of the frontier officers. At the end of the route, "Mauerguide" did not only show you the history of the wall and its former plan. By giving you the opportunity to visualize the city divided from the 1960s to 1980s, it also allowed you to seize better the immense construction site of the reconstruction of Berlin.