Though today we speak of the “Berlin Wall”, there were actually 2 walls. To escape to the West, you had to first scale the wall on the Eastern side, and then scale another wall placed just before the Western territory. The only problem is that in the middle of the walls was a no-mans land of guard towers with orders to shoot to kill, automatic machine guns, guard dogs, tanks, spikes, landmines and tripwires. When the “wall” came down, there were sections that did not get removed. One of the most famous of those sections is located on Mühlenstraße in Friedrichshain and is now the East Side Gallery.

Berlin is one of my favourite places for its killer combination of art and history and the East Side Gallery showcases some of the World’s best street art. This work “Danke Andrej Sacharov”, by Dmitri Vrubel of Russia, depicts the Russian physicist and father of the Soviet nuclear arms program who was also an anti-Soviet dissident and prominent human rights activist. I spent ages with my camera documenting the artworks of the Gallery but it was tricky to get a shot without a bunch of tourists posing for cheesy pictures or coming to look at the image close-up. This time however, a man inexplicably took a good look inside Sacharov’s ear and I thought it bizarre enough an act to preserve in perpetuity. On the other side of this wall was the death strip, then another wall and then the River Spree. Across the river was the West. The death strip is now a pleasant riverside park and there are a number of beach bars where it’s nice to sit with a beer in the afternoon sun. How times change.

Camera: Canon EOS 350D DIGITAL
ISO: 200
Aperture: ƒ/7.1
Focal Length: 18.00 mm
Shutter Speed: 1/100 second