SATNAV GUIDE:TOURIST attractions come in all shapes and sizes, but they normally have one thing in common: they're there. Berlin, on the other hand, has an unusual problem: its biggest tourist attraction has been missing for almost two decades.
Every year millions of people arrive in the German capital with the same question on their lips: "Where was the wall?"
Their confusion is understandable: after the inner-city cold war border was breached in November 1989, Berliners couldn't wait to see the back of it. They grabbed hammers and chisels to knock holes in sections of it, before the government removed almost all 156km for good, grinding the concrete down for use in motorway foundations.
With just three short stretches still standing, city fathers have turned to the latest technology to re-create the wall that divided the city for 29 years before beginning a second career as an absentee tourist attraction.
The Discovery Tours Wall Guide, funded by the Berlin city government, is a specially adapted satnav unit packed full of information, images, video and even eye-witness testimony from the front lines of the cold war.
"Many tourists don't even know why there was a wall in Berlin in the first place," said Rosemarie Wirthmüller, director of the project.
The complex history of the wall is packed into a compact device that hangs around your neck. Headphones let you listen to a snappy, well-written narrative in German and English.
Points of interest pop up along the route, 15km in total, allowing you to keep moving while you savour the history.
Being a GPS device, the display shows your progress, as a yellow star, on its map as you wander the streets.
At Brandenburg Gate you can inspect images of long- vanished East German listening posts, hear Ronald Reagan tell Mikhail Gorbachev in 1987 to "tear down this wall", even see a weeping woman beg East German border guards in November 1989 to let her walk through the gate.
Using the device is a breeze: just keep walking along the red line on the map that marks the course of the wall through the city.
With rental starting at €6 an hour, the Wall Guide is an intriguing alternative to the city's many walking tours.
