Travel: What remains, Berlin

When the Berlin Wall came down in 1989 parts of it remained up as a monument to the dangers of state control. On these remnants of the Berlin Wall are a series of constantly changing murals and street art which makes a statement about the current political state of the world. Some of them simply are designed to look beautiful and provide pleasure to the eye while other murals have a distinct political bent to them. I loved visiting the Berlin Wall while I was there and checking out the latest pieces. It’s a photogenic and iconic piece of history.

In some ways it’s like putting lipstick on a pig, making something that once represented division and communism changed into an art monument. This is great though in my opinion, it means that new meanings can come out of it.

I think in these troubled times when fuckwits like Donald Trump want to build up walls, we have to remember the lessons of history and how walls were once heroically destroyed and what that moment meant for the world. Only when walls come down do to civilisations grow and prosper, never when they are erected.