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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Travel
Gavin McOwan

Berlin by rail: a cold-war adventure

The abandoned spy station on Teufelsberg, the manmade hill to the west of Berlin’s city centre created from second world war rubble.
The abandoned spy station on Teufelsberg, the manmade hill to the west of Berlin’s city centre created from second world war rubble. Photograph: fhm/Getty Images

Eagle-eyed football fans heading to Berlin’s Olympiastadion for the Euros may spot what looks like an abandoned space station topped with four enormous white orbs on a hill a mile or so south of the ground.

The stadium – which will host the Euro 2024 final – has a more storied past than perhaps any other. Built by the Nazis for the 1936 Berlin Olympics, the great African American sprinter Jesse Owens won four gold medals here in front of a watching Adolf Hitler, single-handedly debunking the Führer’s myth of Aryan supremacy.

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