Berlin From Below

There are certainly more comfortable ways of spending the night. It's cold, dark, damp and drafty down here. The goofy yellow helmets they make you put on just don't fit properly and the coffee is lousy. But if you're looking for a take on Berlin from a somewhat unusual perspective, if you want a "deeper" experience so-to-speak, then try the night shift on the Tunnel-Tour-Berlin.

No, these aren't ancient Christian catacombs like in Rome or medieval mining tunnels like in Paris. Berlin's underground mysteries are from a past that is still quite near to us and make it, in my view, all the more fascinating a system to explore. A diesel locomotive pulls you and 149 other like-minded spelunkers like you in three open wagons along 35 kilometers of the Berlin U-Bahn tunnel system. The trip takes about two hours and your tour guide offers a lot of interesting insights into the unusual construction methods deployed and the overall history of the system. These excursions (one at 20:00, one at 23:00) take place every second Friday between April and October and cost 40 Euros per person. Have a closer look at www.bvg.de or contact u-bahn-cabriotour@bvg.de. You can also call at Tel. 030 256 25 25 6.

And should that not be enough of the dark nether world for you, The Berlin Underworld Association (no, they're not the Russian mafia), Berliner Unterwelten e.V, offers several organized tours of other interesting subterranean sites themselves. Focusing on the history of Berlin's underworld, this organization seeks out largely "uncharted" territory usually never accessible to the public and has managed to attract quite a bit of attention in the German media over the past few years.

Berlin's development from a little provincial village to the metropolis it has now become has brought with it a subterranean infrastructure (sewage, waterworks, gas, electricity and transportation) that offers an abundance of exploration opportunities. The Berlin Underworld Association is mainly interested in the cryptic spaces at its headquarters below Berlin's Gesundbrunnen U-Bahn station, but they also love touring other subterranean haunts like air raid shelters, caverns, abandoned railway tunnels, derelict brewery cellars and even a pneumatic dispatch system. Obviously, there is also a huge selection of bunkers here in Berlin to choose from. One example is the Anti-Aircraft Flak tower in the Humboldthain park. Here you have the chance to explore two of the original seven floors of what was, and technically still is, Berlin's largest bunker complex. Hundreds of tons of material have been removed to allow entry to what has also now become a winter home for bats. Dress warmly and don't come if you are afraid of heights.

Another fascinating bunker system is to be found underneath the Tempelhof Airport. At the time of its completion in 1941, Tempelhof was the largest building in the world (even today, only the Pentagon is larger). Hitler made sure that it also had one of the largest underground systems imaginable to match it. Dozens of tunnels exist here, several of them are over five kilometres in length. Some of these larger underground structures were big enough to produce Focke-Wulf aircraft during the war. Many of these areas have remained unexplored since then, too.

And speaking of Hitler, don't even bother asking about touring the so-called "Führerbunker". It was almost completely demolished during the Cold War and there are just a few small fragments of floor and wall left.

The Berlin Underworld Association offers regular tours to most of these locations during the weekend and on Mondays, but if you notify them in advance, custom group tours can be arranged at other times you might wish. And if you can't get enough of this kind of stuff, feel free to contact them and, for a nominal fee, you can receive the periodical "Shadow Worlds" (Schattenwelt), their quarterly publication.
Stop by for a look at www.berliner-unterwelten.de.

And don't think that this is an exclusive list of all the shadowy sites there are to see here. There will certainly be more to come. German historians are excruciatingly good at uncovering their past, both figuratively and literally. They haven't shown any signs of slowing down yet, either. The digging just never seems to end in this city.