But inside are about 30 artists' studios, a cafe, even a cinema. Checkpoint Charlie was a passage point in the wall where communist authorities allowed visitors from the West, under closely controlled circumstances, to enter the East. She made it out of East Berlin. A few blocks from Checkpoint Charlie, I also took a walk around the Jewish Museum, a daring zigzag concoction of metallic walls and sloping roof line that is designed to suggest a fractured Star of David. The exterior looks complete, but the museum isn't due to open until 2000.
History is never far away.
One day, walking near the Humboldt University campus, I came upon Neue Wache, an old stone building, built as a guardhouse in 1818 and used as one for about 100 years. I it was converted into a memorial to victims of that conflict. For a while under Hitler it celebrated Nazi heroes. Then, under the communists, it served as a memorial to victims of militarism and fascism. The gray stone room, starkly lighted and largely empty, includes tombs of an unknown soldier, a resistance fighter and a concentration-camp victim, along with a sculpture in black stone, Mother and her Dead Son, and flowers left by mourners.