BERLIN: Mauer (wall) Power

The East Side Gallery is one of the biggest tourist magnets in the formerly divided city. This is what the west side of the wall looked like — then and now.

The wall graffiti goes on for blocks …

and blocks.

This artist shines in a different medium.

Tourists own the sidewalks in front of the graffiti.

And they’re pretty good about yielding to each other’s desire for a clear shot of the wall.

Sakharov. In a dissident’s medium, dissidents are honored. Especially a dissident Soviet scientist.

The graffiti seems pretty good to this untrained eye.

Even the east (back) side of the wall gets the treatment.

Probably the most famous segment of the Wall. Dmitri Vrubel created the painting in 1990, reproducing a photograph of Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev and East German leader Erich Honecker in a fraternal embrace in 1979.