What a weird day!!!

Left Dresden this morning for the drive to Berlin, but thought I would visit a forbidden city called Wunsdorfm which was on the way. Once, there were 75,000 Soviets here, back when Wünsdorf was the Red Army’s largest Soviet military camp outside the Soviet Union. Trains departed daily to Moscow from this extraordinary 60,000-acre site. Now a landlocked Marie Celeste, the settlement lies still, silently remembering when hordes of Russian soldiers nested here in anticipation of any dissent from the German population or to quell any Western forces’ incursion. It was the strangest place of the whole trip. Deserted barracks, old concrete fences, statues of Lenin and Soviet signs. The place was getting overgrown with the returning bush, and it was obvious that the Germans wanted to put this memory behind them. Some of the old barracks had been converted to flats. The place has a fascinating history: The German Supreme Command moved here in the days before the invasion of Poland. The Nazis’ entire World War II campaign was guided from nearby underground communications bunkers, providing direct contact through telex to the fronts at Stalingrad, France, The Netherlands, and even Africa. The Soviets took the complex in April 1945 without a shot being fired, as the Germans had already abandoned it. Soviet Marshal Georgy Zhukov made it his headquarters and the Soviet High Command remained here until their complete withdrawal in 1994. (I also found a Soviet war cemetery nearby). Locals were moved out and the area became restricted. East Germans were not allowed near it, and it became known as Die Verbotene Stadt, the Forbidden City. Now, it’s a little piece of Russia rotting and withering away. Nearby are the famous Winkel Towers: These unique, above-ground bomb shelters were officially called Winkeltürme (Winkel Towers). The idea was that the narrow, pointed structures would be hard to target from the air, and if hit, the bomb would slide down the smooth, sloped sides without detonating. Indeed, only one Winkel Tower was ever destroyed by a direct bomb hit. They were built here to protect the Nazi Supreme command. From there is was a short drive at 100mph into Berlin. I dropped the car at Central Station (which was a nightmare), and had a 8km stroll back to my hotel in South Berlin.