Millay Hyatt in Berlin

It was the improbable glimpse of a tyrannosaurus head peeking through the leafy green of the Plänterwald forest in what used to be East Berlin that first led us to the abandoned Spreepark. There was a fence, but we discovered a gap big enough to squeeze through, and we were in: the skeletons of roller coasters poked up from behind trees, and concession stands, their windows broken and their cardboard signs torn, littered the grounds. In one, dozens of hardened bread rolls spilled out of a box; in another, its wooden signs advertising Currywurst, pizza, pea soup and beer, unsold foil-wrapped potatoes lay on a grill. Weeds grew over the paths, yet there was a sense that the place had been abandoned not too long ago, and in a hurry, as if just moments before throngs of people had been here, filling the park with their noise and smells and the sounds of cheesy Schlager music -- and then, suddenly, something horrible and final had happened, and everyone had vanished, leaving only the vehicles of their amusement behind.
_____An inert Ferris wheel loomed in the middle of the park, next to it the tracks of a water ride rusting away into a stagnant pond. We boarded a car on the Ferris wheel, swung in it for awhile, then climbed up the steep track on the water ride and stepped into the filthy little boats full of dead leaves and festering organics. A swooping roller coaster beckoned to me, and my clothes were black by the time I’d inched my way to a perch high above the park. From there I could see the dinosaurs that had led us here in the first place; I shimmied down and we found them among the weeds where they hulked, frozen and lonely. A stegosaurus lay awkwardly on its side, and it took all four of us to heft it back onto its feet. And then it took the other three to push me up the tall, curved neck of the brachiosaurus so that I could grip its tiny head and get a Paleolithic perspective on things.
_____Near the dinosaurs we spotted a herd of swans, an unnerving mass of necks all pointing in the same direction, their sidelong gazes ever alert. Climbing into the seats on their backs, we had a smoke and wondered how many kids had fallen into the pond from these slippery, spooky creatures. A track ran along the periphery of the park and little cars shaped like potato-headed men with enormous glasses stood along it, looking comic and sad. Further in was a pirate island surrounded by bleachers, where families had watched costumed park employees fight each other with cardboard daggers and send their colleagues blindfolded down gangplanks. Squeezing past barriers onto the island, we found the forsaken props and fought each other hand to hand.
_____Now and then we would spy the heads of our fellow Berliners, strangely close to us through the trees on the other side of the fence: Old people taking their Sunday stroll, bicyclists swerving around families, the bobbing heads of joggers. Snatches of conversation wafted over to us from the living world. We climbed back through the fence and rejoined it, superior now with secret knowledge.
_____I learned later that the Spreepark, named after the city’s main river, had opened in the late sixties and had been a hugely popular holiday destination for millions of East Germans. When the wall came down, possession of the park was transferred to the newly unified city of Berlin, which sold it to a private investor. Unable to compete with the flashier recreational offerings of the West, the park was steeped in debt by 2001 and the owner ran away to Peru, taking his wife, five children, and most of the best rides with him. He had hired Polish laborers to dismantle the roller coasters and smuggle them out of the park piece by piece.
_____Lately, there’s been talk of another private investor coming to rescue the place, and reopen it with a parking garage and some updated attractions. But there’s a lot of that kind of talk in today’s Berlin, about a whole host of abandoned sites and buildings. A massive Russian military base decaying out in Oberschöneweide, French officers’ housing in Wedding, the former East German parliament building, the Palast der Republik, in the heart of Mitte – disused space after disused space throughout the city waits, crumbles, is conquered by thermodynamics, while the money goes to building sparkling new glass and steel towers along the Spree for Universal Music and MTV. The amusement park will probably continue to rust away quietly. My friends and I sometimes talk about throwing a party there, or borrowing a van and liberating one of the giant swans and turning it into a bed. But we’ll probably just leave it alone, and let the swans look on as the Spreepark succumbs to forgetfulness, like the city it used to amuse.

Millay Hyatt is getting her PhD in Comparative Literature at the University of Southern California. She lives (and researches) in Berlin.

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