Olympiastadion
We disembark from the night train from Budapest at Berlin-Charlottenburg, and knowing that our accommodation at the Westlife Apart Hotel on Heerstraße is just a few hundred metres from the stadium that housed the 1936 Olympics, manage to find our way onto the U-Bahn via Wilmersdorfer Straße on the light blue U7 line and Bismarck-straße on the red U2 line to Olympia-Stadion. It’s only later on that we realise we could have simply changed platforms at Berlin-Charlottenburg, and travelled directly to Olympiastadion on the Spandau bound S-Bahn service.
You live and you learn. We don’t.
Obviously neither of us, nor our parents to boot, were yet born in 1936, but seeing the iconic structure – an almighty concrete modernist behemoth counterpointed with neoclassical notions of theatre and amphitheatre conjures up a venue that screeches imperialism and strength – in real life with its pair of tall slender rectangular columns symmetrically situated about the venue entrance with the Olympic Rings strung between them might easily whisk you back in time to scenes of ugly paramilitary displays of order, power, and supremacy.
But thanks to Jesse Owens, we all know how that turned out.
The stadium is, without question, in some respects a monument to the past, but a visit inside (€11 per person for the most basic entry) reveals that it is as well a modern, functional 76,000 capacity sporting arena, home (since 1963, and we weren’t born then either) to Hertha Berlin and also host from time to time of top tier football matches including the FIFA Men’s World Cup Final in 2006 and matches for the FIFA Women’s World Cup in 2011. The football field is contained within a bright blue athletics track, on (a part of) which Usain Bolt set a new world record for the men’s 100 metres in 2009.
Taking cues from Messrs. Owens, and Bolt, we used our time wisely in Berlin. I did a couple of circuits of the stadium outer, which seemed largely devoted to football, with heaps of soccer families turning up hoping their little Jörgen might turn out to be the next (Hamburg legend) Uwe Seeler, and did manage to set a couple of segment times on Jesse Owens Way. Kerrie went on step beyond, and turned over a couple of laps on the unoccupied athletics track. No-one from Hertha Berlin seemed to mind.
