The Berlin Wall Trail

Last weekend I got to ride the Berliner Mauerweg, which I was told literally means the Berlin Wallway, but which we called the Berlin Wall Trail. It's not a trail in the way the the Capitol Crescent Trail is more like the American Discovery Trail, in that uses dozens of different facilities to string together a single route following - as best is possible the route of the old Berlin Wall.

In February of next year the wall will have been down for just as long as it was up - a little more than 28 years - and there isn't much of it remaining (though I think was true pretty soon after it started coming down. Where the wall once was there is often a line of double bricks in the road or sidewalk or a steal marker with the dates the wall was up and along the path orange markers that commemorate places where people died trying to escape to West Berlin. What does remain in many places is the death strip which, in one of the most striking cases of adaptive reuse I can think of, has often been turned into a lovely park through which the trail runs. It is a bit weird to ride through such beautifully landscaped parkland and think about why it is here. 

In addition to the Wall, the route takes you past Brandeburg Gate, the Holocaust Memorial, Checkpoint Charlie, the Reichstag and in Pottsdam the houses that Truman, Churchill and Stalin stayed in after the war. We also rode across the Bridge of Spies and the Oberbaumbrücke (which I recognized from "Run Lola Run"). There are also several short detours - Frederick the Greats summer palace and the Russian WWII memorial that are easy short rides away.

The trail is a 100-mile+ hodgepodge tour of ever imaginable bicycle facility from single track dirt paths to 10 meter wide bicycle highways. We rode on sidewalks, roadways, sidepaths, bike lanes, dirt paths, driveways, old patrol roads, bike trails, rail trails, rails-with-trails, etc... You name it, we rode on it - even unforgiving cobblestones. And we rode through cities, suburbs, farms, parks, woods - even a cemetery. I feel like we got to see much of Berlin that perhaps the usual tourist doesn't see.

There are more photos here. If you've only got 2 days to see Berlin (as I did) it would be hard to beat. The signage was pretty easy to follow outside the city, where it used the big signs at the top of the post, but in the densest part of the city it used small playing card-sized signs that were useless. I recommend the trail's guidebook which you can get in German or English and a GPS guide as well. We were saved many times from wrong turns or missed turns by the beeping complaints of our GPS device.

Comments

[David King]

"Berlin Wall Trail" - I propose this as the name for the micro trail of Capital Crescent as it passes by Ourisman Honda. I'll even volunteer to paint this on the trail side of the wall or create an engraved wooden sign for the little set of park benches just below.

[DE]

I didn't know about this, so thanks muchly for posting. When I was last in Berlin, this wasn't there. Did cycle along the Havel out to Potsdam though, and all around in the Grunewald. Added to the to-do list.