New York has the Empire State Building, Paris has the Eiffel Tower, and Berlin has the Fernsehturm, a television tower built in 1969 in Alexanderplatz in the former East Berlin. And just as the Empire State Building and the Eiffel Tower have become icons and ultimately shorthand for their respective cities, it's hard to find a Berlin postcard, souvenir, or other bit of city-inspired graphic design that doesn't somehow feature this landmark and navigational aid.
The design of the Fernsehtrum is simple enough—depending upon your proclivity, either a disco ball or a golf ball impaled by a long narrow spike. And although I actually didn't ride the elevator up and take a tour of the tower, in my mind the structure nonetheless remains very connected to my visit. Not only was the tower dramatically viewable from our hotel room window, but seemingly every time we turned a corner or crossed a street, a new view of the tower presented itself, and I took a moment to photograph it.
One interesting bit of trivia to note about the Fernsehturm is that the mirrored windows of the ball create a cross when struck by the sun. (See the photos attached to this review.) Given that the tower was built behind the Wall in the athesistic East Germany, this peculiar feature became known as the "Pope's Revenge."