Berlin has some excellent museums (even though, like London, Paris and Rome, these museums could simply be testimonies to successful imperialist plundering). My favourite in the German capital is the old Stasi headquarters. Stasi is short for Staatssicherheit, the East German Security Service. They had a broad, all encompassing network of spies, informers, telephone tappers and mail readers. Every citizen was under surveillance and everyone was able to inform the Stasi about suspicious people. (Geez, sounds a bit like America's Patriot Act.)

The building is an innocuous structure in Lichtenburg, in the eastern suburbs of Berlin. Today, it doesn't exactly strike terror as it did during the communist era. In fact, I remember walking past the building several times while looking for the museum.

Inside, you'll find very few visitors. Indeed, on one day in October, I was alone in the whole museum and that made for a rather chilling experience. More so because I was given a coffee-tinged English printout of information (everything is in German) about the museum and its exhibits. It really felt like I wasn't meant to be there.

What's to see? There's a good collection of the, now exceedingly dated, surveillance equipment they used. This could be relabelled as Bond props of the 1960s. Tie cameras, cigarette box cameras, Ak-47s hidden in suitcases and imaginative recording devices. There's also a lot of memorabilia, busts of Lenin and such, and details about the Stasi football team Dynamo Berlin which of course, won the league and cup numerous times.

But the highlight of the museum for me is Erich Mielke's desk. Mielke was head of the Stasi from 1957-1989, and was 82 years old when booted from the position. Amazingly, he ended up going to jail after German unificiation for a murder committed in 1931. The desk, shiny in its 60s veneer, like all the other furniture, is broad and basic. It was here that East Germany's most evil man kept tabs on the country's citizens. He was Big Brother and he was watching, listening and digging through your trash. The most striking decoration on this bare desk is the white death mask of Lenin, stored in a glass case. It's the kind of morbid accoutrement only a cinematic villain could have. He was, in Australian venacular, a wierd old coot, yet he controlled this incredibly powerful ministry for 32 years. The black and white phones are a great touch too, and one can only wonder what they were connected too. I was hoping there would be a red 'Bat phone' but there wasn't.

Also impressive is the conference room, which reeks of Hollywood villainry as well. I even checked to see if the chairs were placed on trap doors that would open from a button pressed by Mielke. It was here that the heads of East German "security" outlined new programmes for spying and for flushing out political renegades. It's easy to imagine a morning meeting type atmosphere, where names were ticked off and lives ruined, all in a day's work.

So, in short, skip the Checkpoint Charlie museum which is always crammed with tourists and seems only glorify and make fun of the clever means employed by East Germans to escape. I found Charlie disappointing; the sentiment is completely wrong. But at the Stasi museum in Lichtenburg, the reality of this constrictive former regime is clear.

(My first novel, The Bicycle Teacher, is set in East Germany and the influence and reach of the Stasi is an integral part of the story.)