Architecture

Five German men boarded my sleeper cabin on the eastern outskirts of Berlin. Clean-cut, efficiently German and very polite, they introduced themselves with the offer of a cold beer before asking if I could move to the top bunk. Seconds earlier, two of the men had argued with the train steward about whether or not they could turn the cabin into a mobile bar. Whether or not they understood his yelled Polish, my moving to the top bunk was enough to apparently license the cabin for an entire night's worth of drinking, card-playing, Germanic whooping and other forms of sleep-deprivation.

I only mention this so as to explain the reason why, ten hours later, I decided that it was perfectly sane to walk out of a train station in Krakow and head in a random direction sans map.

Obviously I had a homing beacon embedded in my chest - though I cannot determine whether it was implanted by a Soviet, industrialist or architectural historian - because the seven kilometre trek I ambled through that misty morning led me directly to the wonder that is Nowa Huta.

Back in the days of red flags marched down post-war avenues, Poland's soviet minders were embarrassed when the citizens of Krakow voted against communism. Due to the distressing proximity of WWII, the Soviets decided that a violent realignment of political opinions was not the way forward, so instead developed an idea that shares alarming similarities with the capitalist darling known as "franchising".

Villages to the east of Krakow were relocated, and a gigantic steel factory, double the size of Krakow's historic centre, was constructed. To feed this mill (Nowa Huta means "New Steel Mill"), the Soviets built a proletariat utopia between Krakow and the factory, filling it with the heroes of communist ideology: the working class.

Of course, the working class couldn't be trusted to uphold communism on their own, especially when they would be too busy toiling in the mills and bringing down bourgeois Krakow, so Soviet architects developed ways that could automate a grand, red community.

This is why Nowa Huta is arranged in a semi-circular pattern, formed by five districts that are intersected by wide avenues terminating at a glorious, central plaza. Each district is walled, with limited entrances built under the nicer apartments (home to the "more equal" citizens who policed the comings and goings of residents). Just in case anything went awry, such as an invasion, these entrances were wide enough to fit a defensive tank.

Within these walled districts could be found schools, shops and anything else required by a community. The logic was that by looking inwards, the residents would support/spy on each other, becoming a fiercely loyal unit of workers that could successfully outweigh the protests of middle-class Krakow.

Unfortunately, these grim, prison walls provided the opposite effect, and Nowa Huta became a stronghold for the anti-communist workers' solidarity union in the 1980s. To add insult to injury, the central square which once held a statue of Lenin, is now called Ronald Reagan Road.

The main gates of the factory proper stand a short tram ride away from the residential districts of Nowa Huta. Here social realist architects built imposing twin blocks for grim administration, sweeping out from the stone and steel workers' entrance like the burly arms of an overbearing mother-monster. Between their elbows, at the point where a screaming child could be suffocated, was once a glorious square with enough space to cram hundreds of thousands of workers as a demonstration of Soviet might. Though, the Soviets were not completely naive in their idealism; the floral crenelations above the administrative buildings served the dual purpose of evoking the Venetian doge's palace whilst also providing suitable cover for snipers.

And here I found myself thinking about another building, a train's journey behind me, designed by a logic that, technically, can be found on the opposite end of the political spectrum...

Spittle-lipped Minnesota Jim stood outside the former Luftwaffe headquarters in Berlin, gesticulating at the bare plaza surrounded on three sides by bullying blocks of straight, unadorned Nazi architecture.

"When a person stood here at the gate, they would find themselves being surrounded on all sides by the building, as if it were closing in to crush them. This was on purpose - it was Hitler's idea that at no time should any citizen feel equal to or, worse, above the Empire."

I wonder if the factory workers at Nowa Huta felt this when they were dwarfed by the buildings that supposedly celebrated their steel brotherhood? In hindsight, perhaps the blueprints of Nowa Huta prophesied Russia's evolution from united glory to grinding dictatorship.

Now, hopefully I won't slip a disk by twisting backwards in such an awkward way, but there is one striking example of Nazi architecture that did not opt for the gargantuan. Instead, this style sought to crush and consume its victims through its diminutive size - albeit, with many such small buildings working in concert like the villi of the intestine, thus digesting in catastrophic numbers.

I'd spoken to a lot of people about their experiences at Auschwitz-Birkenau - as tourists - before I hopped on the over-heated, 90 minute bus ride to see it for myself. Some found it appalling that fast food could be easily bought at its entrance, and there were even a few wry comments about how the shepherding of tourist hordes mimicked a more bestial practice of the past. I shared a dinner with three French boys the night before I went, and they spoke of how harrowing the experience had been - two were affected by the curated nature of the Auschwitz museum, while the third was most moved when given the freedom of imagination by the unadorned starkness of Birkenau.

For this reason, I'd already created a picture of the concentration camps in my mind, a map of my expected emotional journey. However, like my quixotic journey to Nowa Huta, I managed to stumble completely off track.

From the moment I stepped off the bus, there was a darkness stirring in my body. Each step unsettled more and more mud from the well of my stomach, pumping a noxious cloud of despair upwards where it billowed into my mind. By the time I'd reached the information desk I was unable to think properly - not out of the sadness that caused so many tourists to cry, but more from a claustrophobic buzzing in my ears. Disoriented by this, I was conveyed into the small, neat streets of barb-wired Auschwitz I.

Many of the buildings here hold exhibtions, containing pictures, documents and, what I found to be the most horrifying, piled heaps of Nazi souvenirs: smashed spectacles, shoes, clothing and hair. Every room I walked through spotted mold clusters of weeping tourists, some muttering amongst themselves or standing in painful silence around Holocaust art installations. The swarm behind my eyes made me anxious to keep moving, to stay away from their crowded corridors, and so I passed amongst them like a ghost.

I couldn't help but try and imagine what it must've been like to be incarcerated here. History has exposed the knowledge of mass murder, but back in those dark ages inmates would have had only the barest rumours to eulogise their vanished companions. It was so cold in that grey place, and I wore so many layers to quench my shivering - a deeper chill injected itself through my mind's vein when I saw the threadbare prison uniforms. Here was a place that had no other purpose but to kill anything it touched.

I walked three kilometres to the next museum, that of Auschwitz II-Birkenau. Unlike its smaller cousin, this site has no signs, no exhibtions: it shouts through the mere fact of standing as it was left. Here stood block after block of housing, once stables for 56 horses, but modified to hold upwards of 400 people apiece. Each building sported a chimney for a spine and the bulk of Birkenau, burnt by the SS, now stands as a forest of red brick obelisks as far as the bleary eye can bare to see.

From here I walked along train tracks, those infamous tributaries that terminated at the selection platforms. Along their left side were more detention blocks in a better state of repair. One of these slapped its doors at me, again and again in an effort to grab my dizzy attention. With no other signs apparent, I took this as my necessary direction and entered the forlorn building.

The floor was the first thing I noticed, buckled and torn by the earth's attempts to reject it. And then I saw the bunks, in tiers of three, for the purpose of stacking prisoners in amounts beyond what is humanely comfortable. This was too much for my head, besieged as it was by the black storm, and I spent the next hour walking aimlessly, unable to notice anything else with my eyes.

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The rules of etiquette suggest that you should never begin a letter with an apology. Maybe it has something to do with displacing the balance of power, immediately placing your reader at a step above you as the forgiver or, perhaps, because it raises the awkward social ghost of an outed faux pas.

Whatever the reason, I've never been one for etiquette beyond the words "please" and "thank you", so ... I'm sorry that it's been such a long time since I last wrote here. I've been a very busy boy and I promise never to do it again.

However, instead of picking up where I left off - on the shores of Greece - I've instead decided to leap ahead to the present day, but with a "lick and a promise" that I'll one day set back the clocks to describe my journey to Ancient Sparta as well as my brief flirtation with clowning in London.

I promise.

Lick.

And now, for something completely different: Berlin, the City of the Black Bear, and the largest city in Germany courtesy of its 3.4 million or so inhabitants. Laid like a tablecloth over flat swampland, Berlin certainly captures the essence of linen left after a very messy dinner party. Several messy dinner parties in fact, including ones that saw the partitioning of the table so as to prevent disgruntled relatives from stabbing one another with their butter knives.

In every direction you'll see grafittied walls slumping in exhausted decay against resolute Neo-classical museums, repatriated ex-Nazi megaliths, occupied Soviet apartments and electronic glass juggernauts. The streets are wide and uncrowded, moreso due to their size rather than lack of people, and are patrolled endlessly by cyclists, young parents, dogs and prostitutes wearing bumbags. Mitte, the central part of the city, is also home to swarming packs of anglophonic tourists beating their way from drink to drink on one of many different pub crawls.

It was on my third night in the city, alone and preparing for a night filled with kebabs and reading, that one such pub crawl swept me up for binge drowning, thanks to the particularly forceful rip tide known to scientists as Becky Wolfe.

After many attempts to meet up with my high school friend, Becky and I had come to the conclusion that we'd never cross paths in Europe. So, you can imagine my surprise when, kebab almost in hand, I heard the thundering boom of an "Oh my fucking god!" followed by the sudden disappearance of a small family as Becky struck through them to tackle me. My first night of solitude - the first in about a month - was quickly replaced with a tour of various bars, including a shisha cafe and an awful nightclub, and the familiar strains of an Australian accent. Thankfully, Becky's company made for a good night.

I ended up hiding out in Becky's hostel room, as my own bed was lost in the labyrinth of early morning Berlin. Unfortunately her tour demanded that they all be up and packed by 7am, regardless of hangover, so that they could bus up to Amsterdam in time for a sex show. That left me, disoriented and cold on the streets and, tragically, staring down the barrel of a day wasted in bed.

In fact, this was the fourth day in a row that I'd technically wasted in Berlin. Dumped by the lightning ICE train from Hamburg on the previous Saturday morning, I'd found a bed in a student flat on the east side of the inner city. Here I was a guest of Andy, a German, Carlos, an El Salvadorean and Shiri, an Israeli. Unlike the tourist-driven powerhouse of central Berlin, their neighbourhood of Friedrichshain was a lot more relaxed, formed out of grids of Soviet-era apartments framing ramshackle parks.

The moment I stepped through the door, I was sat down in a chair and remained almost in that exact position until I went to bed hours later.

On my second day here, Shiri and her homosexual Israeli entourage took me to a nearby flea market. Just like every other part of the city, this market physically demonstrated the patchwork nature of Berlin. Each stall was run by whichever local needed to clear out their garage that week, meaning that it was possible to find kitsch toys from the 80s alongside Nazi-stamped school books. In one corner of the market there was a stall dedicated entirely to selling traffic lights, the cause of, presumably, a series of pile-ups taking place in some other part of the city that day.

It was Shiri who first pointed out the peculiar nature of Berlin to me. Speaking from her usual spot, half buried inside the grandmother of a couch that became my bed each night, she gestured out the window with a weak wrist. "Here everything seems really heavy, not in a bad way, but it's just too easy to do nothing. Can you feel how slow time moves here? If I'm not careful, I'd never do anything at all."

Shiri came to Berlin after escaping her compulsory military service in Israel. After only a few months in the army, Shiri underwent psychological testing before being classified "Profile 21" by the Israeli government. This means that she was found to be emotionally and mentally unfit for active army service and, as in Catch-22, was the only non-fatal way she could legally leave before her appointed time.

"You can find tips on the internet," Shiri told me, "they teach you how to act like you have a certain problem, like bipolar disorder, for example. The trick is that you can't just say you're crazy - people will know that you're lying, and you can't just start throwing things around and shouting, because that's too obvious. You have to work on it for about a month, not eating as much, not being interested in anything at all, breaking down and crying whenever you can. That'll get you an interview with the counsellor, but if they ask you if you're thinking about suicide you have to say no. That's the one that a lot of people get caught out on - no one would really admit that unless they were just looking for attention."

While Shiri spent her days singing Hebrew folksongs with her friends, Andy spent a lot of his time either sleeping, drinking, chasing women or fishing for eels in the River Spree. He'd caught a massive haul the day I arrived, and proudly showed me the frozen tubes, headless and brown-grey, sitting in the freezer.

"They were alive for hours after I cut off their heads, man, just slapping away at me in the bag until I could freeze them."

Maybe it was for this reason that Shiri insisted we eat chicken for dinner that night.

But, when my second day ended with me watching the sky blemish to dark purple outside, I knew that it was time for me to leave before I too was dragged down into the mire of Berlin's timelessness.

I left it too late, because it wasn't until Tuesday night that I ventured out of my hostel to experience the fruits of Berlin's non-touristy nightlife. Somehow I'd managed to team up with a group of British kids who were intent on checking out a place called "Cookies", a very exclusive bar that only opens on Tuesday and Thursday nights. Apparently it was the place to be, because after having a polite chat with the bouncer (who proclaimed himself as "an evil German genius", while stroking an invisible, white cat), we sardined ourselves into a tight set of drab rooms filled with smoke, loud music, painfully fashionable Berliners and an assortment of hyper-testosteroned transvestites.

Property and the need to be seen was the only real draw card for this place, at least to my ears, as that loud music turned out to be nothing more than a grinding, unimaginative dirge of house beats. Even the DJ seemed to know that he was a sham, taking constant breaks so as to smoke cigarettes in the corner with his "lady" friends.

Given the disappointment of stale Cookies, I was able to wake up early the next morning and make my way to the district of Kreuzberg for a walking tour. Berlin is famous for these tours, with hundreds on offer at varying prices and tailored to match each tourist's specific desire. However, you can sometimes get exactly what you paid for, and this free walking tour turned out to be led by a hungover man whose day job involved organising stag parties for British lads in Berlin. Moreso, though the pamphlet had hinted at the word "historical", the tour descended into continuous lacklustre gesturing at trendy cafes and art galleries, followed by the words "zis place ist very popular mit locals".

So, that brings me to Thursday, finally a day - my sixth - when the clouds parted and I actually tucked into the historical, cultural wonder that is Berlin. My first port of call was a proper, paid walking tour that took me around to the various locations integral to the rise and fall of the Third Reich. Led by Jim, an easily excited history grad student from Minnesota, this tour weaved its way around the central part of Berlin, identifying the few remaining Reich buildings (such as what is now the Ministry of Finance, but in the past stood as the imposing Luftwaffe Headquarters) as well as the quiet, unadorned sites where the more notorious Nazi abodes stood. Hitler's bunker, for example, now lies beneath a car park, filled with dirt and concrete and, until the World Cup in 2006, completely unmarked so as to prevent the possibility of a Neo-nazi shrine.

Jim fed us his favourite subject with great vigour, but sometimes he became a little too zealous. A word for the wise - don't stand on the streets of Berlin, frothing at the mouth, as you continuously yell "Nazis" and "Hitler". The piercing stares of the bemused locals was enough to teach me that.

From here, I turned to the glorious wonders of the future (or at least the happier past), exploring the Reichstag's surrounding Tiergarten, the Monument to the Murdered Jews of Europe and, for a taste of something different, a museum of German film and television ensconced inside the technophilic Sony Centre. Interesting irony: the museum's TV screens are all provided by Samsung.

After spending a night in the bombed department store-cum-artistic squat-cum-trendy drinking hole Tacheles, I joined Michael, an Australian, on a walk through the grounds of Berlin Zoo.

Here I was to learn that it's not only people who are drawn down by Berlin's bear hug.

Every animal enclosure seemed to be home to creatures who'd studied copious notes on Profile 21. There was the lion who sat on his haunches, staring into space despite the bloody hunk of meat screaming out beneath his nose (it was also warned that he occasionally urinates on visitors). Another sad sight came in the form of an elephant, desperately reaching out with its trunk to grab at leaves hanging on the other side of a ditch - just too far out of its reach, unfortunately.

But, saddest of all, was the tiny polar bear caught in the grip of "stereotypical behaviour" - a condition normally found amongst caged animals in naughty circuses. For about fifteen minutes, Michael and I watched in horror as the polar bear took three steps forward, paused, and then took those same three steps backwards to pause before beginning the cycle anew. Its neighbouring bears could do little more than to look at us, as if to say "Yeah, you should see what he's writing on the walls of his cave."

A day later, fearing that I was starting to walk backwards and forwards between my hostel and the suspicious kebab shop across the road, I decided it was time to leave Berlin and its Lotos atmosphere before all sense of my self had sunk into its stained pavements for good.