I had to rethink my Berlin Wall Challenge. Hmph. Silly calf muscle. I think it is probably getting better now but it was pretty painful for a good few days. I tried to go for a walk a couple of times but going up even the slights slope hurt. Cycling was pain free but I didn’t want to cycle, I wanted to run. But anyway, I want to complete the challenge this month because I have other plans for June!

I have counted walking and biking – not that this has got me all that far – I still have about 30km to go over the next week. But anyway, where am I? Well I think last time I had just gone past the piece of the Wall outside the Museum Treptow. I called it the first piece I passed but actually I missed a whole stretch that runs along side the lovely A113. You can see where exactly and also some good pictures on the Mauerspuren website here. Eventually the challenge route left the A113 and I must have magically jumped from the motorway across to a footpath along a canal the name of which I looked up and have forgotten again. Then, not long after that I turned right along another bit of canal. About halfway along the stretch I did along that canal, I will have passed the monument to the last victim of the Wall Chris Gueffroy. He was shot dead on the 5th February 1989 trying to cross into West Berlin. Just think about that for a second. 1989.

A little after that I will have crossed the canal and headed left. Mauerspuren tells me there are more bits of Wall to be seen and as I make my way through this residential (I think) area, there are also concrete posts to which barbed wire will have been attached. If I ventured off the main route a little I would be able to see another bit of Wall that is outside the townhall in Treptow. A little further along you can see a series of stone slabs marking the border as well as the street lighting that would have illuminated the border zone. After more bits of Wall I will have turned left and then right to find myself on Harzer Strasse, which is where I currently am with this view.

From the challenge itself you wouldn’t know about the bits of wall or other left overs from the physical border. You wouldn’t know about the monument along the canal. In fact, so far I have had one ‘postcard’ which tells me Berlin is a thriving City of 3.8 million people and gives a very superficial account of Germany being divided into East and West after World War 2. In fact you’d get a sense of the Wall and the Death strip that was nomansland as something vaguely Hollywood. The postcard talks of daring escapes. I’m not keen on the positioning and writing in this. It feels glamourised and the point sort of missed.

I also unlocked a ‘Local Spot’ which tells me that Kreuzberg has transformed itself from a cheap (read undesirable) neighbourhood in the shadow of the Berlin Wall into one of the trendiest places in Berlin. That might be true and I really don’t know enough about the different Berlin districts. It seems to miss the point of Kreuzberg as somewhere that has always had a reputation for difference, migration, art, punk and while some of the arty reputation appears to remain I wonder how gentrified it has become. Maybe one to look at when we next go to Berlin. I read somewhere (may have been Wikipedia when I was first looking for more information) that it now has the youngest population of any of the districts. I do know that the Jewish Museum is on Kreuzberg and that it is an area with a relatively high concentration of Stolpersteine – 10cm square cobble stones topped with brass plates which commemorate victims of the Nazi regime and are placed outside the last residence or workplace of the person the memorial is for.

Obviously I am going to finish the challenge but I am wondering whether real place challenges are for me. I am irritated by the lack of any real historical markers or detail on this route. And just as I found the jumps between locations discombobulating on the Cuba challenge, I am not quite sure why we are only doing 48km for this one. It suited me for the time period I wanted (even though things have now changed because of the calf niggle) but the Berlin Wall was 155km. I suppose not everyone wants to do that distance but it seems to me that it wouldn’t be too hard to highlight a section of about the length of the challenge I am doing and be explicit about the fact that it is a section and have some rationale as to why that section has been chosen. I don’t know – might just be me and my grumpy old woman ways and maybe it just really doesn’t matter, it’s just a running/walking challenge – but I am concerned about a whole load of people now thinking the Wall was 48km long and generally having a skewed view of Berlin history (newsflash, 48km wouldn’t make a big area if you had to wall all the way round it and if you just have a line, people can go round it!).

Anyway, I have also done other stuff – yesterday I did an absolutely disastrous FTP test on the bike. Functioning Threshold Pace or whatever FTP stands for. As soon as it good a little hard, I got in my head and panicked about my calf and then it all fell apart. I’ll try again next week. Today I went to the gym early and it was all good. I put some weights up even though I haven’t been for a little bit and it felt like a productive session. I halved the weight on calf raises and that was ok and the only thing I couldn’t do was the leg curl because the bar sat right on my bruised shin. I’d forgotten about that bruise until I tried that and swore. I might bike later, I might not. It’s hot. I am only blogging now because it’s something to do indoors to cool down.

Happy Bank Holiday Monday.