It’s a cliche alright, but as I stand on the banks of Berlin’s Spree River looking up at the Kanzleramtssteg, or chancellor’s bridge, a certain Simon and Garfunkel song snakes through my mind. The overpass is a contemporary slip of a thing, built between two chancellery buildings and too high to be anything other than removed from the city over which it offers what, I’m sure, is a brilliant view.
But as it’s off-limits to the public, that sense of division was clearly by design. Visible but out of reach. Maybe that symbolism was less provoking when the structure went up over a decade ago, but given the troubled waters of the nation’s political present, a bridge of more solid parts, built closer to the ground and those who walk it, might be more reassuring. And it’s not as if this were a city dry on example. Listen or read on…