Hunting down Homeland in Berlin
So I was just in Berlin - lucky as I am, I got to go for work, to cover the European Athletics Championships, and then tagged some holidays on the end.
I was joking with some HL pals about the fact the Berlin tourist industry lacks a Homeland tour - we thought there’d be a market for a “peer through this glass, looking grief-stricken, while your friend lies twitching on the other side” stop-off, and a souvenir shop selling “Cinder block and cable tie” sets.
It didn’t take too long before I started tripping over some of the big locations as I went about the city - first Hauptbahnhof -
Where I took the escalators but nobody thrust a phone in my hand and asked me to contact Saul, much to my regret -
and then there was Straße des 17 Juni with the Victory Column at the end -
I’d not really intended to look for any other spots, especially as I’ve not watched s5 for ages so wasn’t sure I’d recognise much. But I was curious enough to have a look online to see what there was, and found this brilliant article.
Turned out I’d already been in and out of Hackescher Markt Bahnhof a few times, where Laura met Numan to pick up the memory stick of hacked files (I think?!) so the next time I went through, I snapped it -
And just around the corner was the During foundation, but meh, it was just a fancy office block so I won’t bore you with that one. This were only a block from the river, which set me wondering, and wandering - and sure enough, two minutes’ walk away is what I now think of as Dar Sandwich Park, where our perforated hero went and met his handler to tell him he’d accidentally fallen in with a bunch of the CIA’s most wanted. Here it is then -
still looking much the same, tho missing the park benches, which I’m guessing HL brought along themselves - there were just a couple of cheap looking plank & metal benches. Wider view then -
I had a lie down on the grass where they’d had their talk, to rest my tourist-weary feet, and imagined I was listening in to a plot to foil international terrorism against the rattle of the S-Bahn.
A short walk south along the riverside and you reach Imma Jump In The River Now, I’ve Really Had Enough of This Shit Quay -
And now, in daylight, minus a hot spy with a hole in his middle -
I would never have known it was there without the article, as it’s basically under the bridge with no direct pedestrian access, but photographable and pretty unchanged.
Then I was trying to work out whether the next span of the bridge was Fuck It, Maybe I Just Climb In This Dumpster That Might Work Archway - here it is then...
I wasn’t sure it was the same spot, but when I looked carefully at the wall at the end, you could still just see the faint remains of the ‘e’ in the graffiti that Quinn staggered by.
So that pretty much confirmed it. Good graffiti-ing, Berliners.
I really enjoying spotting a few familiar places in between my touristing, was newly-amazed at the way location scouts/directors/actors manage to weave together different locations into a smooth whole. And I still had lots of time left over for being a normal sightsee-er and completely falling in love with the rest of Berlin, which is just the most wonderful city - go visit if you can.
And if you’re not into Berlin, I’ve just resumed ficcing over on Archive of Our Own, continuing my alternate happy ending for Quinn, where he goes off to find Julia and help her raise young Johnny…
