Berlin FAQ Blog

Recently I've been too busy procrastinating to even get around to blogging, but I today I awakened to news that the evil, dastardly North Korea has just tested its very own earthquake-generating machine, which reminded me I've always wanted to tell everyone about one of my favourite places in Berlin, the North Korean Embassy in the Glinkastraße.

'Tis a strange place, almost unchanged since the start of the 90s (apart from a lick of paint applied a year or two ago). Originally the embassy compound consisted of two buildings, but the main building has been rented out to capitalist running-dogs and the comrades have retreated into the former living quarters, a very dowdy-looking Plattenbau. It's surrounded by a solid metal fence and is watched over by what appear to be webcams (rather than the more martial-looking surveillance cameras one normally associates with such places). In the carpark at the back there is an ever changing collection of middle-to-high class cars of German origin, often with number plates from other cities in Germany. There is also a basketball hoop. In summer you can sometimes see the staff having a barbecue on the driveway, and if you're really lucky you can follow them around the Ullrichs supermarket on the other side of the street, where they appear to do most of their shopping.

The high point for nostalgic cold warriors is the little information box by the main gate, which contains regularly updated and lovingly detailed depictions of life in the Democratic Socialist Republic, most elements of which appear to have been designed or invented by Kim Il-Song (dead, but still President) and Nr. 1 son, Kim Jong-Il (living, making do with the title of "Dear Leader"). The picture here was taken in May, a couple of weeks after Kim Il-Song's posthumous birthday and contains scenes from the great man's life such as his 1957 visit to the Tongju Middle School in Pyoktong district, where he was "as a father to the pupils of the school".

Should you ever have the opportunity to visit Pyongyang by the way, do check out the metro. Apparently, apart from being built in a bombastically Stalinist style, the Pyongyang Metro has snapped up a lot of U-Bahn trains the BVG would otherwise have thrown away. Presumably they don't have the same problems with glass scratching as the BVG does, but I wonder what the North Korean metro workers who renovated the trains thought of all the graffiti and stuff.