Green spaces and traces of the Berlin Wall on a family-friendly walk to the charming village of Alt Lübars…
This relaxed walk, one of twenty created by Berlin’s Senate Department for the Environment, Transport and Climate Protection, extends around 12km from Pankow to the little village of Alt-Lübars, just before the city limits. Not only is it agreeably flat, but the route has been carefully planned to pass through as much green space as possible; history buffs may also be happy to know it passes along parts of the Mauerweg too.
A range of starting points are possible, but since the Berlin Wall Trail is a consistent of the walk (Alt-Lübars has a connection to it too), the historic Platz des 9 November next to the Bösebrücke makes an apt beginning. It was here, in front of the official border crossing, that the first breaches occurred in 1989, with people gathering at this spot within an hour of Schabowski’s gaffe.
Within three hours, so many people were demanding to be let through that the vastly outnumbered border guards had no choice but to open the gates. At least 20,000 East Berliners passed through and the photographic exhibition that marks the spot today clearly shows the compelling range of expressions on people’s faces as they streamed through: grim determination, jubilation, fear and confusion (people didn’t know at that point if they would be let back in), astonishment.
From the Platz des 9 November, the route follows the Mauerweg north, below the pretty rows of cherry trees (there’s a story behind these too) and alongside the small garden colony to the right curving left under the S Bahn bridge and then doubling back along Steegerstrasse to reach S Bahn Wollankstrasse—another station directly affected by the Wall.
The station’s striking yellow-brick architecture harks back to its original construction in 1877, when it was called Bahnhof Prinzenallee and formed part of the Nordbahn (Berlin-Stralsund Northern railway) to Neubrandenburg; hardly anyone used the trains then though, whose top speed was a leisurely 30 km per hour.
From 1961 the Berlin Wall was built on the station’s eastern side, whose entrance was sealed off—only passengers from West Berlin could use the station from that point on, as it remained part of the West Berlin S-Bahn system. But not only was the station staffed and controlled by East German railway officials, trains passing between Wollankstraße station and Friedrichstraße station were driven by an East German State railway driver who returned home to East Berlin every day.
The route passes to the right of the station, through a small park area dotted with more cherry trees and lined with houses to the right; the path in front of the houses is the former patrol road of the Wall. Soon you’ll reach the mighty Panke river, and a splendid corner of Pankow’s scenic Bürgerpark with a large playground on the right hand side, and the Pinke Panke Kinderbauenhof on the left—both great stops for small kids if you happen to have some with you.