East Side Gallery: the painted Wall and the river
The longest surviving stretch of Wall, the double-deck brick bridge, and the old railway yard turned culture ground. This is a Claude-drafted route awaiting the editor's walk.

1. Berlin Ostbahnhof
Start at the old East's main station. Head for the river; the Wall begins almost immediately along Mühlenstraße.

2. East Side Gallery
1.3 kilometres of the Wall left standing along the Spree, painted by artists in 1990. Walk the whole length — past Dmitri Vrubel's Brezhnev-Honecker kiss and Birgit Kinder's Trabant breaking through. Handle it as what it is: the back of a death strip, now a canvas. The crowds thin the further east you go.

3. Oberbaumbrücke
The double-deck brick bridge — U-Bahn on top, road and pavement below, neo-Gothic towers at each end. It carried the border crossing between East and West; now it just carries you from *Friedrichshain* to *Kreuzberg* and back. Walk out to the middle for the river.

4. Spree riverside path
Double back along the north bank. Club terraces, a strip of sand, the water doing the work. On a warm afternoon this is where the city sits down.

5. RAW-Gelände
The old railway-repair yard — *Reichsbahnausbesserungswerk*, mercifully shortened to RAW — now a scuffed ground of clubs, street art, a Sunday flea market and a climbing wall in a bunker. Raw in both senses. Wander; there's no single route through it.

6. Warschauer Straße
The end, on the bridge over the tracks. U-Bahn, S-Bahn, tram — and one last look back at the towers of the *Oberbaumbrücke*.

East Side Gallery: the painted Wall and the river