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Berlin Architecture Miscellany

2011-11-13T22:06:00.001+01:00

It was a lovely bright day today, and as my Beloved is away in England at the moment, I took my bike and my camera for a cycle around Berlin.

Here are a few of my snaps (click for bigger):

Berliner Dom

Altes Museum

Alte Nationalgalerie

Schloß Charlottenburg

Gipsformerei der Staatlichen Museen

Bellevue Palace

Schloß Charlottenburg

Museumsinsel

Neues Museum

Marie-Elizabeth-Lüders-Haus

Mausoleum, Schloß Charlottenburg

Spandau St Nikolaikirche

S-Bahnhof Bornholmer Straße

And as the sun sets over the Fernsehturm, it is onto a train and back home.

Autumn Colours

2011-11-06T16:11:00.000+01:00

I love this time of the year, when the trees explode in a last-minute pyrotechnic display of colours before the monochrome months of Winter set in.

Here are some photos taken around Berlin and Liepnizsee (click for bigger):

The 1936 Summer Olympic Village

2011-10-29T11:40:00.000+01:00

The decision to hold the Summer Olympics of 1936 in Berlin had already been made by the IOC before Hitler's National Socialists came to power. However, as you might have guessed, Hitler and his thugs coshed the Olympic ideals on the head and stole the event for their own propaganda purposes. Here was surely a showcase for the physical supremacy and sporting prowess of the German race - or so the party line went. And so the games opened with the first ever Olympic torch relay from Olympia in Greece to the Berlin Olympic Village, carried by athletes chosen for their Aryan looks. Ironically, what most people remember about the 1936 games nowadays is the astounding performance by the black American track and field athlete Jesse Owens (four gold medals).

The 1936 Olympic Stadium is still very much in use - though extensively rebuilt and modernised - particularly as the home ground for Hertha Berlin football club. What is less well known is that the remains of the 130-acre Olympic Village (Olympiches Dorf) can still be seen. We made a journey out to the far Western edge of Berlin to photograph what has survived of it.

One building still intact is das Hindenburghaus, which was a Gemeinschaftshaus (or Community Centre) for the athletes and other visitors. It was named after Field Marshall, and second president of the Weimar Republic, Paul von Hindenburg, who was patron of the Berlin Olympic Games until his death in August 1934. You might also know that he had made Hitler Chancellor of Germany in January 1933, and signed the Enabling Act of March 1933 which effectively gave Hitler carte blanche to run the country all by himself.

The Hindenburg House - main entrance

The two storey building with two long wings around a courtyard used to contain training rooms, administrative space, two chapels, a large ballroom, and, in the entrance foyer, a TV room. The TV room might come as a surprise to learn about, but in fact the Berlin Olympics were the first ever televised sporting event in World History. Private TV ownership was pretty minimal at the time, but 17 other TV salons were set up around Berlin where people could go to watch broadcast events live.

The Hindenburg House

Another place where athletes could go to chill out are the swimming baths:

Outside the Swimming Baths, with 'historical footbath' (so the sign says)

They don't look like they have been used in a long while, though there are apparently plans to renovate them and have people swimming there once more.

Swimming Baths at the Olympic Village

The Sports Hall is also intact though derelict, next to a 400-metre racing track, where the athletes could train:

Sporthalle

Another large surviving building is the Speisehaus der Nationen or 'The Nations' Eating House', where at one time 40 separate seating-areas provided food for the athletes and visitors. One of the rooms has been decked out to show how it would have looked for the Italian delegation:

Italian Bistro

The building is otherwise all boarded up and in a state of decay, but with its stepped terraces and sweeping arc of concrete and steel you can appreciate how modern and innovative it must have been when it was first erected.

After the games and during the war, the Speisehaus was redeployed as a military hospital and filled with beds.

Das Speisehaus der Nationen

Around the back of the Speisehaus are a number of interestingly corroded metal doors, behind which vehicles were parked in garages:

Garage Doors at the Olympic Village

Some of the living quarters for the athletes ('Sportlerunterkunft') survive. There were originally 136 buildings like these, each given a name of a town in Germany.

Sportlerunterkunft

Athletes' Living Quarters

Each of these buildings once contained 13 bedrooms, with two athletes per room, showers and WCs, central heating, and a day room. There were always two stewards on duty in each house who spoke the native language of the athletes housed there.

Today, many of the buildings are totally derelict:

Ruined athletes' accomodation at the Olympic Village

One building that thankfully has been restored is the one where Jesse Owens lived:

The Meissen House: Jesse Owens' Accomodation

Inside you can see how it looked at the time, all very cramped and Spartan;

Jesse Owens' shared room.

We can bang on about how racist the National Socialist regime was, but it is worth remembering that he was housed here together with white athletes, and could use the same restaurant as them and go into bars and clubs in Berlin and travel on public transport unhindered. This is in contrast with back home in the USA, where there was strict segregation between black and white Americans, especially in Alabama where Owens was born and lived. The Nazis did indeed view non-Aryans as inferior species, but at least Owens wasn't Jewish or Slavic. Not that foreign visitors to the Olympic Games would have been aware of the Nazi's despicable ideas about race: prior to the event all the 'Juden Verboten' signs and anti-Bolshevik posters were removed from the city in a campign by Propaganda Minister Goebbels to show the modern, dynamic, acceptable face of National Socialism to the world.

I am reminded in part of the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics, where political and religious persecution was played down to almost non-existent in the media, and whole shanty towns were bulldozed and people evicted in order to give Beijing the appearance of a clean city. Curiously, the son of Hitler's favourite architect, Albert Speer Junior, was commissioned to design the overall access plan for the Beijing Olympic stadium. Things that make you go hmmm.

After the war, the Olympic Village grounds became part of the Soviet Sector and later East Germany. The Soviets built an enormous army barracks across the road from the Olympic Village, and housed the families of the married soldiers in rows of vast Plattenbau high-rises built amongst the remains of the athletes' huts.

Soviet High-rise Flats at the Olympic Village

These were only abandoned after reunification and the departure of Russian soldiers in the 1990's, but the buildings have quickly become ruined:

Who knows what will come of these buildings, or the remains of the Olympic Village itself. The German authorities probably find themselves in a dilemma: on the one hand, this is a historic site that deserves to be preserved, but on the other it resurrects the phantoms of a terrible time in German and World history. At the moment, the area is fenced off with barbed wire but is accessible to the public (during the Spring and Summer up until October 31st - cost 1€ entrance fee). You can even go on guided tours around the site and inside the buildings, but I doubt if you will find mention of the Olympic Village in many tourist guide books or coach tours. With so much more demanding renovation projects taking money out of Berlin's coffers, I don't think that much will be spared to do anything other than make sure the Olympic Village buildings don't become a danger to the public. But we'll see.

If you want to visit the Olympishes Dorf for yourself, then take a red RE2 out to Elstal Bahnhof, where you can get a bus (the 663) up the hill (or walk - it isn't too far) to the Eulenspiegelsiedlung. That's not the stop signed Olympishes Dorf, but the Eulenspiegel housing estate which is right next to the one and only entrance to the Olympic Village area. You will know you are at the right spot when you see the bronze statue of Till Eulenspiegel himself

Till Eulenspiegel - with owl and mirror, naturally.

Roller-skating Cow Sugar

2011-10-24T22:22:00.002+01:00

Early morning. Cup of espresso in a cafe at Gesundbrunnen. Sachet of sugar. What do you associate this scenario with? Oh yes, happy roller-skating cows of course! Wahnsinn!

Maybe Baby

2011-10-24T22:15:00.000+01:00

What would you do if you suspected you might be pregnant (German: Schwanger)? Apparently, in Germany anyway, one option would be to go to the railway station and get a pregnancy kit from the automatic dispensing machine. That's what is being advertised here in any case:

Shwanger? Then put your coins in the machine down the Bahnhof and get a pregnancy testing kit.

Now, I don't think a railway snack dispenser would be my first port of call in such a situation. Not unless I felt a bit peckish for a Twix as well. Or maybe I'd got bored waiting for a train and thought, 'I know, I think I'll just test to see if I am pregnant before the S2 to Alexanderplatz gets in.'

Interestingly, the Maybe Baby pregnancy tests are stacked just next to the BillyBoy condoms, and at 8€ a pop for the test compared to 3€ for condoms I think the Selecta people are implying it would have been better value for money to have used the Johnnies in the first place. Considering how many times I have pumped in 80 cents for a packet of Nic Nocs (crispy coated peanuts) only to have them not drop down into the dispenser, 8€ is quite a risk. Not quite the same level of risk as unprotected sex of course.

Goldelse

2011-10-23T22:26:00.000+01:00

Goldelse, atop the Siegessäule, is looking resplendent in the Autumnal sunlight today!

Goldelse

Berlin Festival of Lights 2011

2011-10-21T13:18:00.001+01:00

It's that lovely time of the year when the trees explode into a last minute display of colour before the long cold Winter sets in. It is also the time of festivals of light around the World, and particularly the one in Berlin.

Here are a few photos I took from this year's event (as usual, click for bigger):

Brandenburger Tor

The Fernsehturm

KaDeWe department store

Kurfürstendamm

Unter den Linden

Türkische Küche für Anfänger - Turkish Cuisine for Beginners

2011-10-16T23:18:00.000+01:00

One of the fantastic things about living in a foreign land is how it brings us into contact with other cultures, and I don't mean just German culture. An important part of the Berlin mix is the large number of Turkish people who have settled here, and their contribution to Berlin life is apparent in many ways. Not least of these is the accessibility to wonderful Turkish cuisine, which can be sampled anywhere from the ubiquitous 'Kebap Imbiss' (kebab snack bar) to first class restaurants serving multiple courses of Turkish delights.

I am quite adept at cooking up Indian dishes, but haven't tried much Turkish creations. So, as there is always a first time, I started simply with an adaption of a recipe for börek given to me by my Turkish colleague at work, Ümit.

Here are the ingredients I started with (click for bigger):

Ingredients for making börek

All the ingredients were bought either at the local supermarket, or for the pastry and spices a Turkish shop - of which there are many in Berlin, though maybe none in High Wycombe or Rotherham.

(Please note before I go on - I don't do exact quantities in cooking. It ain't the way I roll. Live with it.)

So, to make börek you need:

a packet of ready-made pastry, called yufka in Turkish, and Teigblätter in German, or approximately filo in English.
Some feta-type cheese. Here I've used a block of sheep's cheese - or Schafskäse in German. Whatever you do, don't use Stilton or Dairlea triangles - it won't work.
Some frozen spinach.
one medium-sized onion.
a couple of teaspoons or so (depending on taste) of freshly ground cumin seeds. Called kimyon in Turkish, and Kreuzkümmel in German.
a good amount of blue poppy seeds to sprinkle on the top, called mavi haşhaşin in Turkish, and Blaumohn in German.
A couple of egg yolks.
a bit of olive oil, salt, and pepper.

First thing to do is gently warm your frozen spinach in a pan. How much you use depends on how much you like spinach. But if you think of the size of your dish, and you are going to make two layers of it, then that's about how much you need. (Did I mention I don't do quantities?)

Now peel and finely chop an onion and heat in olive oil for a few minutes until translucent.

When the spinach has stopped looking like a green sluch-puppy and the onions are see-through but not starting to brown, take the pan with the spinach off the heat and add the onions.

Now ground up some cumin seeds and add to the mixture. Add a few twists of the pepper and salt mills as well if you want. It's a free country.

Probably about now is a good time to start the oven warmng up: you are aiming for 180 degrees C or whatever your local currency is.

Take a deep dish - I used a rectangular one - and line the bottom with grease-proof/ baking paper, or rub a bit of marge onto it. The sheets of pastry you'll be layering in your dish will probably not be the same size as your dish (it was at this point that I found out my sheets when unpacked were enormous and circular), so you will need to get the kitchen scissors out and cut it to shape. You will need eight sheets.

In a cup, beat up your egg yolks, together with a bit of olive oil (to help the mixture spread evenly) and milk (to make it go a lovely brown colour).

Start assembling your börek!:

1. Place pastry sheet 1 in the bottom of the dish, on top of the baking paper.

2. Brush the pastry all over the top side with the eggy mixture.

3. Place pastry sheet 2 on top of that.

4. Add one half of the spinach/onion mixture.

5. Place pastry sheet 3 on top of it.

6. Brush the pastry with egg.

7. Place pastry sheet 4 on top of it.

8. Now get your block of feta cheese and crumble it finely and evenly over the pastry sheet.

9. Next add sheet 5.

10. Brush it with egg. You see the pattern now?

11. Add sheet 6.

12. Now add the rest of your spinach mixture, and spread it out evenly over the pastry.

13. Next add pastry sheet 7.

14. Brush it with egg yolk mixture.

15. Add the final sheet of pastry.

16. Brush this layer as well with whatever egg mixture you have left.

17. Finally, sprinkle liberally with poppy seeds.

Now all you have to do is pop it into your over for 30 mins at 180 degreees C.

After half an hour, take it out of the oven, slice, plate up, and enjoy! Of course, if you want a more substantial meal then whilst you were letting the börek bake then you could cook some vegetables or something. Broccoli in my case, though only one of us had it. (clue: it wasn't me).

A slice of börek should look something like this (at least, mine did!):

My first attempt at making börek!

It was delicious (though not as delicious as the one Ümit gave us to sample at work!), and surprisingly filling. Lecker, lecker, lecker!

Gedenkstätte der Sozialisten and Plötzensee Prison

2011-10-09T22:41:00.001+01:00

Yesterday we ventured into deepest Lichtenberg to visit the Gedenkstätte der Sozialisten (Memorial to the Socialists) in the Friedrichsfelde Central Cemetery (Zentralfriedhof Friedrichsfelde). I don't believe it is on the top-ten wishlist of many tourists to Berlin - probably not even the top one hundred - but in its day (the Soviet DDR era) it was an important memorial to, and resting place of, anti-fascist fighters and members of the German Communist (KPD), Social Democratic (SPD), and Socialist Unity (SED) parties.

The cemetery was founded in 1881 as a normal municipal graveyard, and continues to be used as such today, but ever since the burial here in 1900 of Wilhelm Liebknecht (founder of the SPD) it became the place for prominent socialists to be buried.

Wilhelm Liebknecht's grave and monument.
Zentralfriedhof Friedrichsfelde

Wilhelm Liebknecht's son was Karl Liebknecht, who together with Rosa Luxemburg led the Marxist Spartacist League and violently opposed the formation of the Weimar Republic in the uprisings after the end of WWI. Liebknecht and Luxemburg were captured, interrogated and tortured, and then murdered by a group of paramilitary Freikorps who were intent on wiping out Communists. What remained of them after their horrible treatment (Luxemburg was shot in the head then her dead body dumped in the Landwehr canal) was buried in this cemetery in January 1919 together with other Spartacists also murdered in the Freikorps bloodbath. After this event, an impressive modern architecture "memorial to the Revolution" was designed by the architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe - later to become the director of the Bauhaus - and unveiled in the cemetery in 1926. You can only see the memorial now in archive photos, such as this one held by the Bundesarchiv, because in 1935 the Nazis destroyed it and levelled the graves.

In some respects fortunately, Lichtenberg became part of the Soviet Sector after the Second World War and the DDR built a replacement monument, ceremoniously unveiled in 1951. That is what we can see today. It consists of a central monolith carved with the words 'die Toten mahnen uns' ('the dead remind/admonish/urge us') around which is a rotunda of graves and memorials of famous socialists reburied from elsewhere in the cemetery. And so, of course, Rosa Luxemburg is there:

The central memorial stone and Rosa Luxemberg's grave

Rosa Luxemburg's gravestone, close up.

In a similar style, next to her is Karl Liebknecht's grave. Their lives and beliefs are commemorated here every second Sunday of January.

In this exhalted inner circle are the graves of socialists who perished opposing the Nazis, such as Ernst Thälmann and Rudolph Breitscheid. Indeed, the whole memorial reads a little like a street-map of any former East German town. Post-War DDR leaders are also buried alongside these heroes, including Wilhelm Pieck and Walter "Nobody has the intention of building a wall" Ulbricht.

Gedenkstätte der Sozialisten rotunda.

The outer circle is lined with the older (and wealthier) graves of fathers of the SPD. They have an individuality that the central plaques lack, and are particularly enhanced by ivy and ruby red 'Wilder Wein':

Even further from the centre are wall niches where the urns of formerly prominent politburo members (many of whom even Google hasn't heard of) are adorned with bunches of plastic flowers. That's rather sad, as you can imagine how at the time their nearest and dearest would have been so proud of them being interred here, even if on the outer periphery of the monument.

The Friedrichsfelde cemetery has other things of interest beyond the Socialist Memorial, if you like wandering around graveyards, which isn't everybody's cup of tea. Particularly poignant is the gravesite and memorial to a tragic boating accident at Treptow Hafen on 5th July 1951 when the ship Heimatland blew up with at least 28 children on board who perished. The memorial is boat-shaped, carrying the remains of 16 of the young victims into eternity.

Memorial to the Heimatland disaster 1951

One interesting area of the cemetery has a number of famous artists, writers, and performers including the marvellous artist and sculptress Käthe Kollwitz:

Käthe Kollwitz gravestone

Künstlergräber.

Another area is reserved for the burial urns of victims of Fascism and the Nazi regime. This is marked by a piece of 'sculpture' emblazoned with the red triangle given to political prisoners in the labour camps.

Gräberanlage für Opfer des Faschismus und Verfolgte des Naziregimes

The aim is to give a dignified burial for the victims of fascism and Nazism as they finally pass on, and around 900 urns occupy this area, all marked with plain granite stelae.

Graves for the victims of fascism, right up to the present day.

Before leaving the cemetery, it is perhaps worth noting the almost total absence of crosses and weeping angels and other Christian symbolisms of death. This is, after all, a 'Socialist Cemetery'.

After leaving Friedrichsfelde we travelled across to the other side of Berlin to remind ourselves of what the victims and heroes were up against in the sheer brutality of the Nazi regime. We went to Plötzensee Prison in Charlottenburg, a place of horror where many many thousands of political prisoners and conscientious objectors were illegally executed, including thousands caught up in the retribution after the failed von Stauffenberg 20 July 1944 plot to assassinate Hitler. There is little to see here, but what there is is shocking: the row of meathooks from which the murdered kicked out their last gasps of life.

Inside the execution shed at Pötzensee Prison

The wall of the execution shed has been turned into a memorial to the victims of the dictator Hitler. Note the barbed wire on the wall to the left (click for bigger) and the water tower. The prison is still in use, though obviously now in accordance with proper legal sentencing and justice.

Plötzensee memorial

The urn in the foreground contains earth from each of the former German concentration camps.

Urn filled with soil from German concentration camps.

It's English Jim, But Not As We Know it!

2011-10-01T17:00:00.000+01:00

It is always endearing to find an information board in some remote part of Germany with a little Union Jack offering a translation for British tourists. It is thoughtful of the local tourist Amt to provide this service, even though the number of Brits who make their way to these places is probably pretty negligible. The effort put out is particularly touching when the designers of the information board obviously couldn't find a competent English translator, or anyone who could do a proof-read. But still they go ahead in a spirit of welcoming visitors. This was surely the case with this information board, discovered on a cycling tour we did today from Angermünde (Uckermark) to Schwedt on the Polish border (click for bigger):

p.s. if any worker for a German tourist board would like a native English proofreader to check over their content before booking the Printers, please drop me a line. Though I might be tempted to introduce a few quaint errors just to bring a wry smile to the lips of fellow Brits.

The best translation fail ever though must surely be the Swansea road sign where 'No entry for heavy goods vehicles. Residential site only.' was translated into Welsh with the automatically e-mailed response from the translator as: 'I am not in the office at the moment. Send any work to be translated.'

WTF? OMG! LOL!

2011-10-01T14:35:00.000+01:00

Spotted in Angermünde (Uckermark):

WTF?

Actually, it is a datacoms company: Wendler Telefon- und Funktechnik. They of course also have a WTF website.

Volkspark Friedrichshain - Freddy's Grove

2011-09-25T20:30:00.000+01:00

Berlin's oldest public park, and third largest, is the Volkspark Friedrichshain. You can read all about it on the net, or better still visit it on a sunny Sunday afternoon like we did today. Here are a few photos to give you a feel for it (click for bigger).

The park was created to commemorate the centenary of the accession of Friedrich II (der Große) to the Prussian throne.

The park has a large memorial to the Polish soldiers who died in WWII, and to the German anti-fascist resistance movement. Conceived and built during DDR times, the monument now seems to be mostly a skateboard park and place to practice graffiti. Oh, and for throwing trainers tied together at (look closely).

Japanese Peace Bell. A memorial to the victims of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Sure, Milton Keynes has its concrete cows too. But are they on the roof of a snack-bar, eh?

Is it a bird? Is it a plane?
No, it is the memorial to the German members of the International Brigades that fought fascism in the Spanish Civil War.

The Insel Rügen Experience

2011-09-11T18:34:00.274+01:00

Last week we had a holiday on the enchanting island of Rügen. You can see my holiday snaps here -photos of Rügen (give it a moment to load, and then remember to click for bigger - same as with photos on this page).

Rügen is an island (with small satellite islands) just off the North Germany coast in the Baltic (Ostsee), and has an outline like a Rorschach test.

It is made up of chalk cliffs, joining spits of land with long beaches and sand-dunes, and lush green forests and farmland. It really is a spellbinding mixture of all the best bits of Cornwall, Anglesey, Brighton, and Beachy Head, though all on a smaller, more intimate, scale. I don't know why it hasn't been picked up by British holidaymakers, because it is everything you remember from childhood days by the sea and without the present-day UK reality of a wave of chip cartons, drunkenness, amusement arcades, and seedy discount shops. In fact, we didn't overhear a single English-speaking voice the whole week. Though on the other hand there wasn't the mix of folk from all countries of the world that makes e.g. Berlin so vibrant. We only saw one Turkish kebab Imbiss all week (in Putbus) and they didn't even do falafel. If you like smoked fish or matjes herring though, you were in fish heaven. Rügen is like a smörgåsbord; a buffet of small nibbles full of variety linked by a theme of the sea. Enough of the simile - we're vegetarians after all.

We hired a car for the week so that we could take our cat Cassie on holiday with us. Things didn't get off to a good start as we reversed into a car in the Herz Rental car-park, but we soon got the hang of driving on the right side of the road.

Kunstof Salsitz, Lohme, Insel Rügen

We stayed the week in an apartment at the Kunsthof Salsitz at Lohme on the edge of Nationalpark Jasmund. They didn't mind us holidaying with our cat, and indeed had one of their own. Cassie was quite impressed too, though we didn't dare let her out until later in the week. The last time she had been in a car she had ended up a thousand kilometres away in Germany so on the whole she was pretty cool about it.

The Kunsthof ('art courtyard') was most individual; it was adjoined and owned by a sculptor/artist and the apartment was appropriately quirkily designed with a crazy-marble floor and artwork on the walls. The grounds too were laid out with interesting sculptures around every corner:

One of the sculptures in the garden of the Kunsthof Salsitz, Lohme, Rügen

The Kunsthof Salsitz proved to be a great choice, ideally located for rambling along the cliff-tops and beaches and only a short walk into the village of Lohme with its small harbour and spectacular sunsets.

Sunset over Lohme harbour

Sunset over Lohme harbour II

Around the coasts of Rügen there are numerous large granite boulders in the sea or on the beach. These are called 'der Findling' in German (plural 'Findlinge'), which is also the word for 'foundling' as in 'an abandoned child'. This is appropriate because what they are, are boulders that have been carried away from their native rockbeds by glaciers, then just left behind when the glacier changes course because of an obstacle (such as the cliffs of Jasmund peninsular). Lohme has the fifth largest Findling on Rügen, and it is named the Shwanenstein or 'Swan Stone'. The reason for its name is this: Children are told a fairytale that the babies of Lohme are brought to their parents by the stork in Summer, and the swan in Winter. Up until that time they are hidden in the Schwanenstein and emerge from a crack down its side. Of course. We were also rather sceptical that there would be any swans on the Ostsee - do they live on salt-water? During the week we were proved totally wrong.

der Schwanenstein

Probably the best walk from Lohme is East along the 'Überuferweg' (upper coastal path) through the forest, with tantalising glimpses of the sea, to the Königsstuhl, a famous protruding cliff of brilliant white chalk.

We set out from Lohme along the path at 7am on the Sunday morning. The guide book hinted that in high Summer this walk would be like joining a very long queue of other searchers after the Königsstul, but this early in the morning in September we didn't see another soul.

A seat to rest on along the Überuferweg
It would be a marvellous view from here ...
if it wasn't for the trees in the way

When we arrived at the summit of the Königsstuhl we found that to get to it you had to enter the Jasmund National Park Visitors' Centre, or the 'Erlebniswelt Kreideküste' as it is called. This translates as the 'Chalk-Coast World of Experience', and admission was 6€. Luckily it wasn't open yet and we just wandered in and stood on top of the Königsstuhl viewing area. We missed out on all the interactive exhibitions and cinema that the Erlebniswelt offered, but frankly anything that has the word 'experience' in its title puts me off; if you want to experience something then actually go up to it and see the real thing, not through some hi-tech, virtual reality interface. Well, maybe the centre is amazing and a good place to visit if it is pouring down with rain, and at least it isn't a theme park like the tacky Land's End Experience in Cornwall is (or was - it might not be there anymore. Hopefully).

On the top of the Königsstuhl
At night, as a spectacle for visitors, they used to set fire to balls of brushwood
and roll them down the side of that cliff opposite. You had to make your own
entertainment in those days.

Anyway, even standing on the viewing platform you can't really experience the Königsstuhl. It is like coming out of the woods and finding that you are stood on top of the Eiffel tower - great views, but what does the tower actually look like? Well, for that you need to find the steps down to the beach below, starting in the NE corner of the visitor centre car-park. They are free to go down, but be warned that there are over 400 wooden steps and walkways zig-zagging down a forested ravine. OK for going down, but a killer if you want to climb back up. Thankfully we didn't want to retrace our steps, and continued the rest of our coastal walk at sea-level around the Jasmund peninsular to Sassnitz.

The name 'Königsstuhl' means 'the chair of kings', and the legend is that to prove themselves worthy of kingship over the tribes of Rügen, candidates had to climb the cliff from the beach to the very top. Well, here is the view from the beach of the Königsstuhl:

Der Königsstuhl from the beach

Not only is it a sheer 118m in height, but that white stuff is pure chalk that crumbles away when you try and get a hand-hold. It would be like climbing something the length of a football field that was made of slightly wet flour.

Der Königsstuhl from further down the beach

The walk around the peninsula is totally stunning. You go around one headland to discover an amazing view of white cliffs present itself, then go around that headland and discover an even more beautiful vista, and then the next, and then the next, each more breathtaking than the last. It really did bring a tear to our eyes, the views were that gorgeous. The sea itself was unbelievable, with the chalk making the waves an incredible milky turquoise.

The chalk cliffs of Jasmund Peninsular, Rügen

Chalky, milky sea around Jasmund Peninsular

More chalky Jasmund cliffs

Further chalk cliffs on the Kriedefelsen coast

Yes, more chalk cliffs.
We couldn't get enough of seeing them, they are gob-smackingly amazing.

The beach walk was relatively easy, with just the occasional tree-fall or chalk-slide blocking the way. And here's a fashion tip for goths and heavy metal fans - don't take a walk along this beach dressed in black unless you are going for the look of the Fields of the Nephilim riding into town after crossing the Nevada Rad-lands. Let me point out again that eveywhere is made of crumbly, powdery, very white chalk.

Tree fall on Jasmund beach

One thing though, at least you don't need to keep an eye out for the tide cutting you off; the tides in the Baltic are hardly noticeable. Unnoticeable also were the other people: I believe we have visited the shores of remote lochs high in the middle of the Skye Cullin Mountains that were busier. You can well understand why this coast caught the imagination of the great German Romantik painter Caspar David Friedrich.

Eventually we came to signs of people again, and the lovely harbour-town of Sassnitz where we had a cooling Bier and a meal beside the harbour.

Sassnitz Old Town

Sea-front at Sassnitz

Sassnitz Harbour

More of our Rügen holiday coming soon!

Shiver Me Timbers!

2011-09-11T14:55:00.000+01:00

Spotted at Lohme, Insel Rügen, near where we were staying on holiday.

Pirate car

'Pirat' is of course German for pirate. I cannot confirm if there was a parrot on the dashboard, but it was parked outside the Hotel Pirat. Naturally.

Schloss Meseberg - The Magic Castle

2011-09-04T21:32:00.000+01:00

On a cycle from Gransee to Neuruppin we came across a small, immaculately kept village attached to a large, bright white, Baroque château about 70km north of Berlin. This is Schloss Meseberg, built in 1739 by the old Prussic noble family of Wartensleben. It came as something of a surprise after the long bike-ride through thick forests from Gransee, and gave us another surprise when we found out what its use is today.

Entrance driveway to Schloss Meseburg, Brandeburg.

In the small but ancient church there is an enormous painting from 1588 showing Ludwig von der Gröben, his wife (born Anna von Oppen), along with their seventeen children (13 boys and 4 girls).

Family portrait of the Von der Gröben's at prayer in Meseberg church.

There are also gravestones and memorials in the nave to other notable von der Gröben's. You can tell them by the eagle's claw on the left of the shield. They were part of the nobility of Mark Brandenburg, and later Prussia and the German Empire, and indeed their descendants are amongst us today. Rather than generals or diplomats though, they are e.g. sports commentators and soap stars. Their connection to Schloss Meseberg is that the count Wartensleben who built it had gained the manor by marrying Dorothea von der Gröben who was heiress to this little packet of land.

Monument to one of the Von Gröben's.

I come to know this because the Schloss and its history was written down by Theodor Fontane in his 19th century blockbuster travelogue 'Wanderungen durch die Mark Brandenburg' ('Rambling through Mark Brandenburg'). Fontane also describes the Schloss as being 'Wie ein Zauberschloß' - trans: 'like a magic castle'.

The Schloss was later owned by the family Lessing, founders of the Vossiche Zeitung, one of the first Berliner newspapers in the eighteenth century and a liberal publication at the forefront of the German Enlightenment. Indeed, the family included the important Enlightenment poet Gotthold Ephraim Lessing.

Another view of Schloss Meseberg

After 1945 the Schloss was seized by the DDR and put to use to house, amongst other things, a kindergarten, a grocers, and the mayor's office.

After Germany's reunification the by now rather run-down and dilapidated ruins were bought by the Messerschmitt Foundation (yes, that Messerchnmitt. The one who designed and built the fighter planes) and restored at a cost of 25 million €. Since 2004 the Schloss has been leased out by the Messerschmitt Foundation to the Federal German Government at a peppercorn rent of 1€ per year over 20 years. The Government has since been using it as a guest house for important international visitors - its first guest was French President Jacques Chirac on 26th Jan 2007 - but there didn't seemed to be anyone staying when we were there.

Front door at Schloss Meseberg

The Schloss and its landscaped gardens are set beside the small, serpentine Huwenowsee sitting in a picturesque ravine. The slopes from the road down to the lake are terraced with grapevines. Delicious though they looked, we didn't lean over and pick a handful of Angela Merkel's grapes though. I don't think she would have been too pleased, and you can be sure the entire grounds are peppered with security cameras.

Grapevines by Schloss Meseberg.

Filmnight in Friedrichshain: Werner Herzog, Herz aus Glas

2011-08-20T18:30:00.006+01:00

Yesterday we went around to a friend's apartment to watch a film written, directed and produced by the esteemed German Regisseur Werner Herzog: Herz aus Glas or Heart of Glass (1976). I have only ever seen his film 'Grizzly Man' before, which is itself either an amazing subversion of the documentary genre or one big practical joke on the audience, so I didn't know what to expect. But Mark Kermode is always recommending people see Herzog's work in his podcast so that is good enough for me.

We watched the film in a typical 19th C. apartment room in Friedrichshain, deep in former East Berlin, that had high ceilings and a large ceramic stove in the corner. The film had been downloaded to a laptop and was projected onto the wall. Imax it wasn't, but this intimate screening amongst friends and with a couple of beers was perfect for the strange film we experienced.

'Heart of Glass' is set in a small, remote, Bavarian town in a time that was on the cusp between German feudalism and the Age of Enlightenment. The protagonist is a herder from the mountains named Hias, who apparently has the gift of prophecy. The town seems to depend on the skills of their glass blowers, and in particular on the ruby red glassware that they produce. So when the master glass-maker dies without revealing the secret of how to make the red coloured glass, the whole town is thrown into despair.

The tone is set at the beginning by Hias. Looking like Sam Gamgee (LOTR), he addresses the fears of a small group of townspeople huddled at the bottom of a dark, narrow ravine crossed high overhead by two mediaeval looking bridges. There was a rumour that a giant had been seen, and they were fantasising about the return of the age of giants who would ravish their crops and lay the land desolate. Hias suggests that what had actually been witnessed was the long shadow of a dwarf seen at sunset, much to the relief of the townspeople. Hias observes that what makes them most happy is that things will remain as they were.

But with the death of the master glass maker, things cannot remain as they were.

Alongside the seer Hias, the other central character is the Master of the glass factory. He is a rather effete nobleman with a touch of the Rocky Horror about him (he even has a Riff Raff type butler). He lives alone except for his servants and a senile father (with the maddest laugh in film history) in a large house, and it seems that it is his obsession with the ruby glass that is infecting his employees. He is a melancholic figure, Faustian in his quest for acquiring 'the secret' by poring through musty tomes of alchemy. Not finding his answer in science, or by turning the deceased glass maker's house upside down in case the secret had been written down, he summons Hias to use his clairvoyant talent to get the secret from beyond the grave.

The Master IS the 'heart of glass' that beats at the centre of the film and directs the actions of the townspeople. He verges on the vampiric, and tells Hias that he needs the ruby glass to hold his blood, and that the sun hurts him. It is a compelling image; a heart made of ruby red glass, and given the Master's obvious fascination with his servant girl Ludmilla ('Ludmilla may wear her hair down today'), there is an obvious analogy in that Ludmilla keeps breaking glasses.

That the Master's obsession with the ruby glass is influencing the mood of the glass-workers is vividly set into contrast with a scene of almost documentary quality; they are shown enthusiastically going about their glass-blowing with clock-work team-work and skill. One worker, for example, is shown skilfully conjuring a horse from a globule of glass. In fact they are making everything but ruby glass, and loving it. Apart from this one scene, the workers are otherwise shown in a state of torpor and despondency, the furnaces flaring but nothing being created. They seem frozen in the past, unable to move on to the next frame. One chap stares at an unplayed hand of cards, even when the rest of the tavern decide enough is enough and go to burn down the factory and the Master's house.

Ah, but I am in danger of spoiling the plot. Except, that the plot is the least important element of this film.What you have instead is a series of fragments, with dreamlike scenes cut off from the narrative flow, and actors ad-libbing their lines spontaneously. Supposedly Herzog had all the actors hypnotised, and they certainly seem to be under the influence of something. Laudanum perhaps. In fact it is almost as if Herzog wanted to lull the audience into slumber, to suddenly jerk awake and wonder if they had dreamed the last segment or really seen it; to invent the film themselves from their individual dreamscapes.

Hias's prophecies start out pretty specific to the near future, but eventually become Nostradamic in their scope, apparently predicting the world wars of the twentieth century and in particular the rise of a Great Master who would ruin them all. He ends up babbling the prophecies out in a stream of consciousness, and up until then you would have thought he was the sanest character in the film. Some of his pronouncements are actually very similar to a historically real-life seer, der Mühlhiasl, who lived in Bavaria in the 18th Century. Oh, by the way, did I mention that Heart of Glass was set and mostly filmed near Herzog's childhood home in Bavaria? (I can't find an English page about Mühlhiasl, but here he is on the German Wikipedia. He was sort of like the Bavarian equivalent of Yorkshire's Mother Shipton).

As things get out of hand and lead to murder and arson, the townspeople begin to wonder if Hias's predictions are coming true because he really has clairvoyance, or because they were unconsciously acting out his suggestions and making them come true. The hypnotism metaphor again. Is Hias in fact just as guilty as the Master of controlling the townspeople's destinies and bringing about all this misery? And by analogy with the prophecies of the rise of Herr H., did Europe sleep-walk into madness, destruction and murder in the 20th C because of the hypnotic power of a Great Master, and to fulfil the claimed destiny of the German race?

All powerful and thought-provoking stuff. If there is an overall plot arc though, it is about never fearing the future but to move on regardless. The characters in the film who couldn't accept change - and in one remarkable scene a man actually dances with the corpse of his dead friend - all fare badly. The message is summed up with another parable at the end of the film, magnificently shot on the Irish islands of Skellig. A group of people who lived there were so cut off that they thought the world was flat. To sail off to the West would mean falling off the edge into the abyss, so they believed. And yet they set forth on the journey anyway, just to see what was really there. And of course, the world is in fact spherical, so everything turned out marvellously. What then if the end of life isn't falling into an abyss? Are we trapped in fear of going forward into death by our ignorance of reality? Is Death a terrible giant's shadow cast by a puny dwarf?

Or something like that.

The beauty of this film is how personally you interpret it; you bring to it as much or as little as you want to read into it. It is all wonderfully German in the Romantik tradition, and indeed the film opens with Hias sitting high in the mountains above a beautifully shot sea of flowing mist, very much like the quintessentially German Romantik painting Der Wanderer über dem Nebelmeer by Caspar David Friedrich. Add to this the haunting soundtrack of Popul Vuh and the result is a very strange and strangely haunting film that I think I will remember for a long time to come. Especially when I am just nodding off.

Summary: turn off your mind, relax and float downstream. It is not dying. It is not dying.

Waren - Cycling Through the Mecklenburg Lake District

2011-07-17T14:27:00.015+01:00

Flags at Waren Marina

Yesterday we travelled 125km NNW of Berlin to Waren, the largest town in the 'Mecklenburgische Seenplatte' or the Mecklenburg Lake District. It lies on the northern tip of Lake Müritz, which is the largest lake entirely within Germany (the largest that is part in Germany is Lake Constance - aka Bodensee - but Austria and Switzerland also have shares in that body of freshwater). Apart from Lake Müritz, there are hundreds of other smaller lakes, left over from the last Ice Age. Unlike the English Lake District, there are no fells or waterfalls of course, but there are acres and acres of woodland and natural heath in the Müritz National Park and Conservation Area.

As the landscape is pretty much flat, the area around Waren is prefect for unstrenuous cycling, and this is what we did. We travelled in a group of 13 English-speaking photographers from Berlin to Waren on a Regional Express train with three Berlin-Brandenburg Tickets (Waren is just over the border from Brandenburg, in Meck-Pomm, but it is covered by the BB ticket). The bike compartment was pretty full, and sensibly most of our group had pre-hired bikes at Waren instead at the excellent Zweirad Karberg, but the journey was only an hour and a half or so with no connections.

RE 4538 Bike Compartment

'Waren' literally means 'goods' or 'merchandise' in English, and it looked like there were lots of these for offer at the market in the old town.

Neuer Markplatz in Waren.
Rennovated Fachwerkhäuser on the edge of the square.

Apart from the usual flea-market stuff, there was some lovely Töpferwaren (ceramic ware) whose colours and patterns seemed to perfectly capture the shiny, fractured light of the sun on the lake and the flowers in the fields:

Pottery for sale at Waren

Of course the name 'Waren' doesn't actually come from 'merchandise'; it might be derived from the Slavic for place of Ravens, or might refer to the Germanic tribe of the Warnen (Varin). Anyway, it was first recorded as Virunum by the Alexandrian Romano-Greek geographer Claudius Ptolemy in 150 AD, so the settlement here has a long history indeed.

It first came to prominence as a walled trade town in 1260, but devastating fires in 1568, 1637, 1671, 1673 and again in 1699, followed by heavy sieging and destruction during the Thirty Years War, means that little of the medieval town survived. By contrast, it was given up without a fight to the Soviet Army on 1st May 1945. Perhaps they had had enough rebuilding from the ruins. Ironically, the surviving old buildings were then subjected to demolition by the East Germans in the interests of 'Urban Planning'. Enough were saved by a concerted 'Save the Old Town' campaign during the 1970's that, post unification, the town centre could be effectively renovated. The result is charming but with a slight feeling that it is all artificial, which indeed much of it is. All the better to entice the tourist!

One example of un-authenticity/tourist trappings is the Ritterstuben on Neuer Marktplatz where we had a pre-cycle coffee and Apfelstrüdel energy boost. The outside eating area was picturesquely located next to the market and the fountain, but go inside the Ritterstuben (literally: knight's parlour rooms), down the steps into the dark interior, and you felt like you might expect to meet Scooby Doo running in the opposite direction. The stone vaulted cellars are done up like a spooky castle dungeon, with antique shields and weapons on the wall, and suits of armour that at any moment might come to life. Outside, as I say was pleasant, and you could seat yourself in the cosiness of a cheery Strandkorb. But the waitresses were dressed in long brown and white robes and caps, looking as if they were doing some mediaeval penance. Perhaps as punishment for dropping litter, of which there was none to be seen in pristine Waren.

Here are a few photos to give you the feel of the renovated 'alt-Stadt':

The modern fountain in Waren Neuer Markplatz.

Quiet cobbled side-street in Waren.
Not ideal for riding a bike down!

Löwen Apotheke frontage
There must a reason why so many pharmacies are named after either a lion or an eagle (Adler) but I'm not sure what it is.

Neues Rathaus (Waren town hall) and Stadt-Museum

Another cobbled street

Another renovated Fachwerkhaus.

Marienkirche, Waren. The tower was first constructed back in the 14th C.
How many times it has been rebuilt since, Wikipedia doesn't say.

Back to the Marktbrunnen in Neuer Marktplatz.
OK, Waren centre isn't all that big!

The town also has examples of one or two more modern architecture. Okay, one, the Müritzeum, which is an introduction to the Müritz National Park - it bills itself as the House of a Thousand Lakes - and has a fresh-water aquarium of 40 local fish species. Apparently. We didn't go in to check. It does look a bit more like a cinema than an aquarium, but anyway that's about as modern you get in Waren's architectural town-scape.

The Müritzeum. Not to be confused with a cinema.

There are also some Fachwerkhäuser that haven't been renovated yet. Last chance to see, before they inevitably get covered up in plaster and paint. This example perhaps gives you an idea of how the pre-seventies town centre looked.

Un-renovated Fachwerkhaus

For our short (about 30km) bike tour of Müritz, we headed SE out of Waren, passing the Bad Feisneck public bathing beach.

Strandbad Feisneck

I love it how in Germany there are so many water-holes everywhere which people with their kids flock to and swim in the water or lay on the beach and generally behave as if they were at the sea-side. Never in England! But then in England you aren't ever far away from the real sea-side, and it does help that the vast plain of Northern Europe is mostly made of underlying sand. Which is great for building sand-castles!

Sandcastles at Feisneck

Soon we were cycling in open countryside along tree-lined roads with very little traffic. We saw an eagle circling overhead, and the many flowers were humming with bees and butterflies.

Cycling along Federower Weg

ein Schmetterling

We were heading for a small village called Speck, which sounds exactly like the German word for bacon but in fact derives from the Slavic word for an embanked causeway through a swamp. And looking at the map, you can imagine how all the small lakes merged with the Müritz at one point, with very little distinction between land and water other than that you sank slower into one than the other.

Places to stop were few and far between, but included huddles of services for the tourist like Federow, where you could get 'Bier vom Fass', or ice cream, or stroke sheep and piglets in the petting zoo. There was also this little chap.

Wooden woodsman at Federow

There are also two places at Speck to refresh yourself, but not a lot else. There was a small church though, which was cute enough nestling in the forest:

Kirche in Speck

Nearby was the gatehouse to a dilapidated Schloß. You couldn't go to it now, but an information board visible just behind the locked gates (and readable only through my telephoto lens) said that the Schloß was erected in 1937 as a hunting lodge by one Dr Kurt Hermann on the foundations of an 18th Century manor house. Ominously, after expropriation by the Soviet military, the information board goes on to say that the Schloß was the seat of the Soviet Kommandant for the area, and the grounds used as an internment centre for refugees. The German wikipedia page for Waren says that by the end of 1945 6,000 refugees from former German territories in the East (what was then Prussian, but is now Polish, Lithuanian, Latvian etc) ended up in the area, and that in 1946 a typhus epidemic claimed many victims. It also says that the Soviet NKVD (fore-runner of the KGB) used harsh torture to interrogate the refugees (trying to root out Nazis and fascist ideology). I wonder what went on beyond these locked gates, and shudder.

Specker Schloss Gatehouse.
Closed until further notice.

Nowadays the most populous presence around Speck are cows, and I wonder what the village (indeed, Waren too) is like outside the tourist season.

Calves near Speck.
About to do a three-cow pyramid.

The plattenbau block of flats are now succumbing to nature, and the scariest inhabitants are giant snails:

Speck Schneck

In fact, the whole area seems to be sinking into disuse:

Derelict barn, Speck

No time to ponder on the future of habitation in this area though, as we had to return to Waren before the bike hire period ran out. Hardly enough time even on the return journey to appreciate the abundance of wildflowers, the giant dragonflies, or the numerous skylarks singing high overhead.

Flowers in Müritz National Park

Time enough though for a stop on a wooden viewing platform on Feisnecksee and take in the panorama of land, lake, and sky. And to watch the many fish darting amongst the reeds and the grebes on the lake. If we had bothered to go in the Müritzeum we might have been able to say which of the 40 species of fish they were. Like we care.

Feisnecksee

Back in Waren we explored the marina area before heading back (either for a Bier on the Neuer Marktplatz or like us, for the train home).

Waren Marina

Smoked Fish

No idea what's going on here.
I guess it's what they call 'modern sculptor'

Cruise boats at Waren Marina

Evening on Müritz.

In conclusion, a great day out for a sunny Saturday, though for a photography club we spent more time cycling than actually taking photos. It is well recommended as an excursion from, and contrast to, Berlin. Though perhaps stick to visiting in season.

Berlin Grunewald - Deep in the Greenwood

2011-06-05T19:38:00.003+01:00

It is an interesting statistic that 18% of Berlin - almost a fifth - is taken up by forest. By which I don't mean park areas like the Tiergarten, but real, dense, natural woodland where it is not inconceivable (and in some areas a certainty) that you could come across a pack of wild boar.

It is no revelation that the Germans have a love for tree'd landscapes. At the heart of the Germanic Romantik soul is a dark forest, whether it is the one Arminius' Teutonic armies emerged from to hold the Romans to the border of the Rhine (think the scene at the beginning of the film Gladiator), or the enchanted forests of Grimm's Hansel & Gretel and so many other 'Märchen', or the nightmare treescapes of painter Caspar David Friedrich. Brits also love forests as well of course, especially when inhabited by the likes of Robin Hood, it's just that in Germany they historically didn't have a need to chop them all down. Most of England's forests, for example, went into producing timber to build the Royal Navy's fleet from Henry VIII's time onwards, and then the merchant navy that colonised a quarter of the world. Germany's forests on the other hand were kept primeval for the benefit of the feudal overlords, so they could go stag and boar hunting when they weren't bedding the newly weds of their downtrodden vassals. Allegedly. By the time a united Germany needed a navy, steel had been invented and they were pretty damn good at producing and using steel, as history went on to show.

By which circuitous route brings me to our day out today in the forests of the Grunewald in Western Berlin. Because our destination was the Grunewald Tower (Grunewaldturm), erected in 1897 in memory of Kaiser Wilhelm I, who knew a thing or two about building an iron navy.

Kaiser-Wilhelm-Turm Grunewald

The tower is 55 metres high and gives an unequalled view across the river Havel and its inlets, and of the vast Grunewald forest with central Berlin peeping up in the distance. It cost us 3€ each to climb the tower, which has a lot of steps and no lift, but that includes a 1€ voucher off food or drink from the adjacent restaurant and Biergarten (live music included, take it or leave it. And I could happily leave a strangled version of 'Strawberry Fields Forever' to its fate in the dark heart of the forest).

The view would be better if there weren't bars in the way to stop bungee jumpers or whatever, but here is a telephoto view where you can just make out the Fernsehturm at Alexanderplatz on the horizon (click for bigger).

View East from the Grunewaldturm

And this is looking more North West towards Spandau, with the Havel in the foreground:

The River Havel

Inside the base of the tower is a statue of the man himself, Kaiser Bill:

Kaiser Wilhelm I

And when was it built again? Oh yes, I remember:

The brickwork writing says: 'The locality of Treptow built me in 1897'

A very pleasant day out then, on a gloriously sunny Sunday afternoon. The added poignancy is that the last time we were here together was on my Beloved's birthday, back before we had moved to Berlin, and it was natural landscapes like this that made us fall in love with the city. And then just to top it all, whilst we were waiting for the bus back, a man cycled past us completely naked! Now, you don't get that kind of thing in the Peak District! (ok, probably you wouldn't want to, but it just shows how free life is here, ja?).

Tosca Has Passed On Too

2011-04-24T23:00:00.111+01:00

Tosca
29.05.98 - 22.04.2011

This is too much. Tosca has now died as well. That's three cats gone from us in as many months (first Simbi and then Suki). Only Cassie is with us now, and she is as lost as we feel, looking around the house and garden for her playmates, sitting watching the cat-flap wanting her friends to come back. At least we can understand why we'll never hear their purrs or stroke their furry heads again - Cassie can't.

Tosca wanted letting out into the garden Friday night, and I obliged. Oh that I hadn't! But how could I know? By the time I was ready for bed, she hadn't come back. I looked around outside for her with the torch, but no sign. Neither had she come back by the morning. By the afternoon and in a state of worry, we made some posters up asking people to look out for her, and pinned them to trees on our road. Finally, on Sunday afternoon, someone knocked on the door and took Ju to a place down beside the railway line where he'd spotted a cat. It was Tosca. She was dead. It looked like some animal had taken a nasty bite out of her back flank, and she must have fled down the railway line to escape, only to succumb to her wounds. The poor, poor little darling. She must have been terrified.

Still, we have lovely memories of her to look back on. She was Suki's sister, rescued from a farm and given into our care. Tosca always seemed the most intelligent and sensible of our cats, keeping the others out of trouble and giving them an exasperated look when they mis-behaved. She had a gorgeous white coat that she kept meticulously clean, even though her favourite leisure time was spent rolling around in the sand or earth in the sunniest spots.

We loved the way she would head-butt our hand, demanding a stroke, and rub around our legs. Unusually for a cat, she liked to watch the television, especially the wildlife programs; here are photos of Tosca watching the tv just last year. Not that she was a couch potato; she was an adventurous hunter too - birds and mice of course, but dragonflies especially could expect no mercy!

Darling Tosca was such a playful cat - she would spend ages pouncing on her toy mice and flinging them around the hearth rug, making the rug slide around on the polished floor with her. She also had the loudest voice, and the loudest purr. If you didn't wake up and get her food in the morning, then she would sit on your chest and purr deafeningly until you got up. And when fish was for dinner, she would climb up on her back legs and scrabble against the kitchen cabinets and your legs, patting with her paws, miaowing all the while until she was fed!

The strangest thing is that she was always afraid when the trains went past down the bottom of our garden, running in as soon as she heard them toot further down the line. And then she ended her life right next to the railway line that she never ever went near before.

We are going to miss her enormously, but she still regularly visits us in our dreams. And in our memories.
Sleep on in the sun, our little sweet-heart, and maybe we'll all meet again some day.

Here are some photos of Tosca that Ju took:

Tosca - so bright eyed and intelligent

Tosca sunbathing in the heather

Tosca exploring the snow

Tosca's snow-white coat blending in with real snow

Tosca alert to dragonflies in the garden

And here are some of my photos of Tosca:

Tosca curled up in her basket

Tosca surveying her domain, and giving that look of 'why are you pointing that camera at me?'

Tosca in the sun again

Tosca on the (well-scratched by her!) rug

Tosca watching a stork on TV

A contented Tosca purring on the sofa

Bye-bye Tosca. Thank you for letting us share your life with us and bringing joy into our hearts.

Plagarise and be Damned!

2011-04-23T13:35:00.006+01:00

There are some very naive people out there when it comes to the power of the internet. In Germany this extends all the way up to former German Defence Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg. Rising star in the CDU (Angela Merkel's controling rule party), and once tipped to be the next Chancellor of Germany, he resigned last month after revelations that a large part of his 2006 PhD thesis had been plagiarised, and the University of Bayreuth stripped him of his doctorate as a result.

See Guardian article 'German defence minister resigns in PhD plagiarism row'

Minister for cut-and-paste Zu Googleberg, full name Karl Theodor Maria Nikolaus Johann Jacob Philipp Franz Joseph Sylvester, Baron von und zu Guttenberg (and married to the great-great-granddaughter of Germany’s former chancellor Otto von Bismarck - who says Germany is a classless society?), used the wonderful resources of the Internet to do his research for his thesis 'Verfassung und Verfassungsvertrag. Konstitutionelle Entwicklungsstufen in den USA und der EU' (Constitution and Constitutional Treaties – Constitutional Steps of Development in the USA and the EU.)"
And fittingly it was the power of the Internet that brought about his downfall, specifically the thousands of people who spent the time to sift through this most exciting of thesis and find instances of plagiarism which they then published to the GutenPlag Wiki.

As far as I (or Wikipedia) knows, zu Guttenberg isn't a descendent of Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg, inventor of a system of moveable type and thereby instigator of a revolution in information technology. But what irony if he were to be! An invention that brought information to the masses rather than through the medium of the Priest, abused by a later zu Guttenberg, who is himself hoisted by his own petard!

It seems strange that people seem to think that they alone are able to google research. It is probably very appealing to first-time students with an essay deadline who think Wikipedia is a primary source. Hopefully they are soon made aware that universities have software that can take a random selection of essays and subject them to a comparison against information found on the net. You would think that zu Guttenberg might be wise enough to have grasped this fact. Or, being the Defence Minister for a large European democracy, to have the morality not to try to cheat in the first place. But it seems not.

Plagiarism on the net is not just confined to lazy students; photographic and design imagery is somehow considered fair game for copyright breaches just because it is in the public domain. If you think your images have been illegally filched, then one tool I can recommend is the TinEye reverse image search browser plugin.

Even bloggers are subject to plagiarism. You might think my rambling essays are not worth copying and passing on as your own, and I would agree with you. But I have other friends who blog whose opinions are much more worthwhile, and therefore open to theft. I have just been made aware of an example of this; my photographer friend and fellow Berliner ex-pat Craig Robinson writes an excellent blog called Prague Photographer. Back in August 2009 he wrote this witty article about not letting your Uncle Bob take your wedding photographs. Lo and behold, plagiarists and copyright thieves George Troup Photography published an almost exact copy of the article on 29th July 2010 on their plagiarising Dallas Photography Wedding Blog. Like zu Guttenberg, they perhaps thought that nobody would notice. How naive can you be?

p.s. this article is 100% the work of the author, me, except for the 80% of it I got from googled news items, Facebook, and Wikipedia.

Stralsund - of Bricks and Sea

2011-04-17T23:08:00.024+01:00

Potsdam - Ohne Sorge

2011-04-03T19:34:00.178+01:00

Spring finally feels like it has arrived, and these past two Sundays we have been visiting a favorite place of ours, Potsdam, 24km SW of Berlin.

Potsdam is almost as far West as you can travel on the Berlin transport system*, and yet it is not even in Berlin. In fact, it isn't in the same federal state either, and is the capital of Brandenburg. For 30 years it wasn't even in the same country as most of Berlin, being then part of East Germany (the DDR).

Potsdam lies beside a string of lakes fed by the river Havel, and mostly owes its importance because it was chosen as a royal residence by the Hohenzollerns; the kings of Prussia and eventually emperors (Kaisers) of Germany. The architecture is hence grand in scale, with colossal neoclassical and especially baroque palaces, churches, and monumental gateways. It had also been a centre of immigration, encouraged by the Hohenzollerns who were not so much tolerant of different religious beliefs as canny enough to know that the Hugenots etc had valuable skills to offer a kingdom wanting to build up its power. So amongst the Italiante and the gothic, there are also areas with a distinct Netherlandish, French and even Russian style.

The Royal court also attracted the wealthy bourgeoisie, whose stucco town villas still crowd around the city centre, some of them unrenovated and in crumbling grandeur. And to protect the court, Potsdam was also a garrison town with military barracks, stables, and training grounds.

In the twentieth century, Potsdam developed into a centre for research and technology, including a number of observatories, the best known of which is the expressionist architecture of the Einsteinturm built between 1919 to 1921 as a solar observatory to prove (or disprove) Einstein's theories of relativity.

Without doubt though, it was Frederick the Great (Friedrich II, Old Fritz) who made the greatest contribution to Potsdam becoming in our time a World Heritage site, when he had the Summer Palace and landscape gardens of Sans Soussci ( French for 'without worries' ) created, so that he could get away from boring political life in Berlin (and his shunned wife Elizabeth Christine stuck away at Schloss Schönhausen) and rap with philosphers such as Voltaire.

Here are a few of my photos from the last couple of weeks to help you get an impression of the town. For anyone thinking of visiting Berlin, then a trip out to Potsdam is a definite must. Actually, you could easily spend a week there and still not tire of the many historical, cultural and leisure opportunities (disclaimer: I am not in the employ of the Potsdam tourist board).

(Copyright me, and click for bigger)

Alt Markt, next to the building site that is to become the rebuilt Schloss Potsdam and seat for the Brandenburg Government.

The recently restored St Nikolaikirche

Atlas on the dome of the Altes Rathaus

Assorted statues and military ware on the Potsdam skyline near Alt Markt.

Window on the side of the St Nikolaikirche


Detail of an angel on the Nikolaikirche.

Detail of a skull on the obelisk in Alt Markt.

The rebuilt carillion of the former Garrison church. The church was bombed during WWII and could have been rebuilt, but the church (and its bells) was a symbol of Prussian militarism and was also where Herr H. chose to be sworn in as Chancellor in 1933. The DDR weren't too happy to revive these memories, but there is now a plan underway to rebuild the church.

Brandenburg Gate. No, not THAT Brandenburg Gate, and in fact this was built before the Berlin one.

Busy Sunday on Brandenburger Straße

The fantastical Chinese House in Park Sans Soussci.

Gilded statues adorning the Chinese House in Park Sanssouci.

Gabled houses in the Dutch Quarter.

Another of the gates that were once into the town wall - the Jäger Tor or Hunter's Gate.

The Italianate Friedenskirche, or Peace Church, on the edge of Sans Soussci.

Underneath the lantern.

The French Church (Französische Kirche) erected in 1750 for Potsdam's Hugenot community.

The Marstall, or cavalry stables, now the Potsdam Film Museum.

Mural from the DDR era series of murals 'Der Mensch bezwingt den Kosmos' at a former Data Processing centre.

Is it a mosque? No, it is actually a pumping house (Pumpenhaus) that used steam engines to pump water to supply the fountains of Park Sans Soussci.

Das Pumpenhaus seen across the upper end of the Templiner See.

More Potsdam reflections in the Templiner See.

Schloss Sans Soussci Summer Palace.

Column in front of the terraces leading up to Schloss Sans Soussci. The terraces are planted with grape vines by the way - not at their best this time of year!

A nicely un-restored town house.

Another quietly diapidating villa, this time with a DDR Trabi parked in front.

French Crêperie. Old Fritz would have approved.

Final, parting shot of Sans Soussci before the statues are uncovered, the flowers are planted, and the tourists come in their droves from around the world.

* Werder is the furthest West

Springtime in Lübars

2011-04-02T17:31:00.000+01:00

It is often remarked that Berlin isn't just one city, but a collection of towns and villages, each with their distinct character and contuing independence. This is down to the Greater Berlin Act of 1920 which forged the metropolis of Berlin from numerous suburbs and outlying settlements. Many townships resisted this amalgamation, and some, like Spandau, still carry on as if Berlin was just a neighbouring town.

This makes for wonderful diversity, and one example of it is the district of Lübars which still has a village green beside a church and a village inn. Here there are farms, riding stables, and rolling meadows around the picturesque Tegeler Fliesse (a small river), and it is hard to imagine that you are still in North Berlin.

Here are some photos I took of Lübars on a sunny Spring day:

Hellersdorf Trompe-l'œil

2011-03-20T21:27:00.000+01:00

Mile upon mile of blocks of DDR-era Plattenbau high-rise flats stretch out East from Berlin providing accomodation for hundreds of thousands of families. This area, centred around Marzhan, is a place few tourists choose to explore. That's if they even know about it from a few footnotes in their tourist guides. But even Plattenbau can be Geil, as demonstrated here by some imaginatively rejuvenated high-rise flats on Stendaler Straße in Hellersdorf (click for bigger!):

Plattenbau doesn't need trompe l'oeil cats painted on it to make it look attractive though (but it helps!), just an eye for the effective use of colour:

Brandenburg an der Havel

2011-03-20T20:00:00.779+01:00

Brandenburg's administrative capital is Potsdam, but the mediaeval town of Brandenburg an der Havel, which gave the German Federal State its name, feels like its spiritual capital. This is not least because of the numerous churches, two monasteries, and a vast cathedral that lie within the mediaeval town walls.

Brandenburg an der Havel lies about 70km West of Berlin (approximately 1 hour away by Regional Express) and we decided to explore it on the last weekend of Winter.

The history of Brandenburg goes back at least a thousand years. Up until 929 AD it was the site of a Slavic fortress, named Castle Brenna in the chronicle for that year by the Saxon historian Widukind von Corvey. He described its conquest in 929 by the German King Henry the Fowler. It remained in German hands for the next 56 years until a Slavic rebellion regained control, and for the following 170 years was ruled by princes of the Slavic Hevelles tribe (who took their name from the river Havel. The area today known as Havelland is the land that the princes ruled over. Spandau Citadel was their most easterly fortress). Then in 1150 Albert the Bear of Saxony (Albrecht der Bär, no relation to Rupert) took possession again after the death of Pribislav, the last of the Slavic princes. This was not a bloody coup, at least not at first - Pribislav had deliberately cultivated good relations with the Saxon aristocracy, and was in fact the godfather for Albert's eldest son, Otto. Albert henceforth set about driving out all the Hevellians and creating the land of Mark Brandenburg, making himself Margrave, and ensuring his descendents - the House of Askania - ruled here until 1320. 'Mark' and 'Margrave' (German Markgrav) here relate to a boundary country (between the Germanic and the Slavic people) - the Welsh Marches and Margrave are English equivalents. There is a statue of Albert the Bear outside the Citadel at Spandau, sadly not looking as cute as a statue of Knut.

Brandenburg (the town) was comprehensively destroyed and plundered during the Thirty Years War, which was when the court upped and left for Potsdam, taking the seat of power over Brandenburg (the land) with them.

Brandenburg an der Havel had grown into a major centre for industry and steel production by the time of the Second World War, when it was nearly destroyed once more, this time by Allied bombing and the armoured division of the Red Liberation Army. 70% of industrial sites were wiped out, but incredibly only 15% of the total area of the town was damaged. This low figure goes towards explaining why we found so many mediaeval structures surviving in Brandenburg. However the bombing would probably have been heavier if news of the activities of the Nazis here had got out sooner: Brandenburg-Görden Prison was one of the first concentration camps, as well as a designated 'euthanasia' centre for children and adults with mental illnesses. It was here that the Nazis first experimented with using gas to murder their victims. Believe it or not, the local people complained about the smoke puring out from the crematorium at the prison day and night, and so the Nazis actually closed the old prison down in 1943 because of that. If only Auschwitz had had such a diligent Neighbourhood Watch.

Enough of the depressing stuff, let's get on with a tour of the town.

Visitors by train will probably get to the more interesting centre of town by way of the Steintorbrücke ( = stone gate bridge). By the way, click on any photo to see it larger!

Steintorbrücke in Brandenburg an der Havel

The Steintorturm (turm = tower), is one of four well-preserved watchtowers that originally overlooked gates in the mediaeval town wall, and is the largest. You can climb up to the top of it for a good view of the town (we didn't).


Steintorturm

This bridge was also the way the Red Army tanks fought their way into town on 27th April 1945, and on the opposite side of the road from the tower is a Soviet graveyard and cenotaph to the fallen in the battle for Brandenburg.

Once over the bridge, Brandenburg starts to look a bit more picturesque: even its back-streets have a charm to them, with rows of tall Gründerzeit (mid 19thC) buildings padded out with tastefully done modern houses in pastel shades:

Brandenburg an der Havel

We took a right after Steintorbrücke, and walking along we caught glimpses of the mediaeval town wall at the bottom of people's gardens. Soon we came to the St.Paulikloster. Formerly a monastery built by Dominican monks starting in 1286, since 2008 it has housed the Brandenburg Land Archaeological Museum.

St Paulikloster / Archäologischen Landesmuseum Brandenburg

From the Paulikloster we could see a heavily Gothicised church tower rising above the rooftops towards the centre of the town, and we headed towards it. It turned out to be the St Katherinenkirche (St Catherine's Church, she of the wheel).

St Katherinenkirche Brandenburg

Particularly impressive, apart from its sheer size, was the wonderfully mad late-Gothik brickwork, or Backsteingotik as it is known. This is a style of architectural decoration that you see all over North Germany (and indeed, around the Baltic), gracing not just churches but also town halls and houses of important Burghers.

Here is more of the same around the main entrance to St Katherinenkirche. I especially like the banding of green glazed bricks alongside the usual red:

Entrance to St Katherinenkirche

And here's some more detail from the outside of the church:

St Katherinenkirche Saint Statues

St Katherinenkirche is right by the Molken Markt marketplace, which looks a lovely place to meet and chat over a coffee after a busy day's shopping on the high street.

Molkenmarkt, Brandenburg

It looks like a lot of regeneration work has gone into making the marketplace attractive and enticing enough to draw in the big name stores. But even here, right on the market square, there are deserted buildings. Or maybe they are there to attract people like me, who loves the impromptu urban art:

Graffitied building, Brandenburg

You always know when you are in a former East German town when you see trams trundling down cobbled streets, though in Brandenburg they run on cobbles down the middle of a modern pedestrianised shopping precinct.

Trams on the High Street

Heading NE from the marketplace we came to the second of the four towers in the town wall, Mühlentorturm, or the mill gate tower. Looking up at it we realised how tall the encircling walls must have been - the door you can see half way up the tower once opened out onto the wall ramparts.

Mühlentorturm, Brandenburg

What you also realise, because you cross over water again after passing the tower, is that you have just been on an island. In fact, Brandenburg was built on a number of islands, surrounded not just by the Havel river but also small lakes, and flooded moats that later became canals. We were now approaching the island on which the cathedral was built, and the view across the water here is gorgeous:

View of Brandenburg Cathedral

There are lots of other handsome buildings around here, as well as curious ones like the tower on the left, below. It has a clock face and hands when you get close up to it, but it isn't for measuring time but for water level:

Water Level Gauge - Brandenburg

Clustered around the Cathedral are a collection of brightly coloured buildings that are typically small-town Germany, like this bakery:

Holzofenbäckerei - or wood fired bakery

Here is another scene in the Domkiez, with the Cathedral in the background.


Domkiez, Brandenburg an der Havel

And for some reason known only to German urban planners, a pleasent 'village green' decorated with concrete statues of Triton and cavorting water-nymphs.

Domkiez water god and nymphs

The cathedral of St Peter and Paul is truly enormous. It is called the 'Mutter aller märkischen Kirchen' (mother of all the churches in Mark Brandenburg), and it really is one Mother of a church! The foundation stone was laid in 1165, on the highest point of an island surrounded by the Havel river. Building something with such a large mass of red bricks on an island that must often get swamped must have caused problems, but it seems to have fared well.

The truly enormous Brandenburg Cathedral of St. Peter & Paul.

The outside of the building has some wonderful lancet windows and tracery, but it was to a large decoration of the Star of David that caught my eye.

Dom St Peter und Paul

The church is more Romanesque than Gothic, showing its venerable age. You are reminded that Backsteinbau is so typical of Northern Germany and Europe becaue hey, where can you quarry any building stone on this vast, flat, plain?

Brandenburg Cathedral - windows

Around the top end of the Dominsel is a marina beside a curious mill, one half of which has been renovated, and the other left in ruins. This is the former 'Vereinigten Brandenburger Mühlenwerke' or United Mill Works of Brandenburg, here seen across the marina from another island, with the river cruise ship Sirius.

Vereinigten Brandenburger Mühlenwerke

I don't know if the plans are to eventually do up the whole of the mill, but for now I like the contrast between burnt out shell and ultra modern apartments. Here is a peep into the atrium for the new dwelings:

Vereinigten Brandenburger Mühlenwerke - a peek inside

After a refreshing beer sitting by the Havel watching the ducks and boats in the sun, we circled around the top of the islands and back across the Grillendamm and another bridge towards the town centre again. Up this end of town there are still a few buildings looking like they needed a bit of care and attention, but lovely in their decay for all that:

House on the Grillendamm

There was also a reminder here of the town's dark past. The marble wall memorial reads: "Here lived Gertrud Piter, murdered by the Fascist town council. Born 12/02/1899, murdered 22/09/1933. Never forget!"

Memorial to Gertrud Piter

Gertrud Piter was a trade unionist and a member of the German Communist Party, elected to the Town Council in 1924. After the Nazis came to power, she immediately lost her job on the Council. She went on to be part of the Nazi resistance movement which she went on to lead, until her and 45 others of the Brandenburg group were arrested in September 1933 after a tip-off by a spy. They were sent to Brandenburg prison, and she was beaten and raped during her ten day interrogation. Then she was sent to the Brandenburg concentration camp in the old Brandenburg prison. A day after her arrival, she was hung by the camp guards in her cell. Vergesst es nie.

Not long after and we found our third tower, this time der Rathenower Torturm:

Rathenower Torturm

And soon after, another church! This time St. Gotthardtkirche, dedicated to St. Godehard, bishop of Hildesheim (in Niedersachsen) until his death in 1038. This is the oldest church in Brandenburg; it was the chapel for the Slavic Castle Brenna, and until the building of the cathedral it was for a time the seat for the diocese of Brandenburg. Notice that the lower parts are built up of Feldsteine or cobblestones - it originated before anyone had started making red clay bricks.

St. Gotthardtkirche, Brandenburg an der Havel

The best part I think though is the enormous Christ figure welcoming worshippers over the entrance:

St. Gotthardtkirche doorway

A bit further on and we came to the Altstädt Markt and its magnificent Rathaus (town hall) and, of course, ubiquitous Roland statue. The Rathaus is another outstanding work of Gothic brickwork, and it is incredible to think that it was a) nearly demolished in 1905 (the town council hadn't been sitting there for the past two hundred years), and b) was actually demolished by bombing in 1945. Now it is once again the seat of local government in Brandenburg.

Rathaus and Roland Statue, the Old Marketplace, Brandenburg.

The 5.35 metre sandstone Roland Statue fared better than the Rathaus during the bombing raids because it was taken away and buried down a well outside the town to keep it safe. Dating from 1474, the Roland was preceded by a wooden statue erected in 1402. Here's a close-up of the statue, also showing more detail of the filigree brickwork of the Town Hall. It looked kind of familiar, and indeed a 1905 copy of it was erected outside the Märkische Museum in Berlin. That's where I've seen it before!

Roland Statue Brandenburg Altstädt Markt

We then made our way down Plauer Straße, noting some more wonderfully dilapidated buildings:

Building on Plauer Str. Brandenburg

And of course, more trams! (I like trams. Trams are cool!):

Straßenbahn, Brandenburg an der Havel

Until we came to the fourth tower in the city walls. Originally there were ten gates in the town walls, each with a tower like this. Again, note the door high up the tower, which led out onto the wall ramparts.

Plauer- or Luckenberger Torturm, Brandenburg

I have found a 1560 illustration of the tower and gate on Wikipedia that I think is interesting for giving an idea about how these towers once looked. The tower of St. Gotthardt is in the background (but no trams). Apparently the wooden building beside the tower, through the gate, was burnt down by the Red Army in May 1945 along with most of the street. Until then, access to the tower was only through the building.

Illustration of the Plauer Torturm after an unknown mediaeval painter, 1560. Source:Wikipedia

Somebody has set terracotta sculptures of various animals into former wood-beam sockets in the base of the tower. What the point of them is, I don't know. But they look cute.

Terracotta animal heads in Plauer Torturm

From the Plauer Torturm (named BTW after the fishing village of Plaue on The Havel), we walked in front of the old town walls through a small pleasant park that was starting to fill up with the cherry tree and magnolia blossom of early Spring. The park led to the Jahrtausandbrücke (millenium bridge) and another old church, the St. Johanniskirche. This church was once part of the Franciscan Monastery in Brandenburg, but was almost destroyed by a British bomb raid in 1945 (doesn't it make you feel proud!). It was neglected during DDR (GDR) times, and in 1985 the entire Western wall collapsed into the choir, after which there were plans for it to be completely demolished. The political changes of 1989 gave it a reprive, and it is now trussed up with supports and internal braces to prevent its total collapase.

St. Johanniskirche, Brandenburg

Crossing the Jahrtausandbrücke (the bridge was built in 1929 on the 1000th anniversary of the founding of the town - see above for what happened in 929AD) we made our way back up the high street (Hauptstraße) and stopped for some well-deserved Kaffee und Küchen.

Hauptstraße Brandenburg an der Havel. Katherinenkirch in the background.

Finally, we started making our way back to the railway station, walking the Jungfernsteig along the old canal that was once a moat outside the town walls. There was lots of boat activity on the canal:

Boats on the canal, Brandenburg

And proof that there are fish in it:

Young angler makes a catch!

Plus there are views of the town walls and the St Pauli monastery:

St Paulikloster and St Annen Promenade, Brandenburg

Before reaching the railway station, we happened across a curious, small church right up against the main road running SW. This was the chapel for St James' hospital (St Jakobskappelle) and was erected in 1320 outside the town gates to care for victims of the plague who'd travelled long distances looking for help. That's outside the town walls of course, as they didn't want plague victims starting an epidemic in the town (you can see the Steintorturm at the end of the road, marking the entrance to the town). The chapel is known in the local vernacular as the Verrückte Kapelle, or crazy/crackpot/loopy chapel; this dates back to 1892 when an engineer widening the road had the entire church put onto a wooden sledge and moved 11m.

Jakobskapelle

Conclusion: Brandenburg an der Havel is well worth a day-trip to from Berlin. Even if you aren't interested in mediaeval buildings or Backsteingotik, it has a small-town German charm with a modern shopping centre, opportunities for messing around on the water, theatres and cinemas, and public spaces to chill out in with a picnic and a Bier. It is, naturally (this is Germany) very clean and pristine, and hasn't suffered from Plattenbau-obsessed East German developers. And it's got quaint trams too! Why it isn't packed with tourists on a sunny weekend I don't know. Perhaps visitor numbers pick up in the high season? But if you want a taste of the State of Brandenburg and a contrast to Berlin, then a visit to the former capital of the Mark is recommended.

Howling at the Supermoon!

2011-03-20T15:39:00.059+01:00

Last night we witnessed a most beautiful perigee-syzygy.

No, that's not some kind of exotic Polish dish, but is simply the name for the alignment of three celestial bodies in the same gravitational system (in this case the Sun, Moon and Earth) coinciding with the perigee - the closest approach - of the Moon to the Earth.

Or put even simpler - a whopping, great big full moon! A Supermoon!

Sod's law is that on these occasions the skies cloud over, but last night there were perfect viewing conditions. We are also close to the Spring Equinox, and the Moon-gazing experience was doubly enhanced by long straggy v-lines of migrating geese returning to Europe crossing the Moon high above, their calls echoing through the still night.

Here is a photo I took, with my hand-held camera on maximum zoom and the auto-focus and light metre screaming at me 'WTF you doing, man?'


Spring Supermoon 2011

Now Suki has Left us Too

2011-02-18T16:12:00.021+01:00

Suki
29.05.98 - 18.02.11

Just a month after our Super Simbi died, now our sweet little Suki has also passed on to play in the Tabby Hunting Grounds.

They were both unwell at the same time, but they died from different causes. Suki had developed bad teeth problems that caused an infection that got into her sinuses, making her face swell and her eyes weep. The vet removed the bad teeth, including one of her canines, but the infection got worse despite antibiotics and lots of TLC. Though managing to eat lots, she lost weight rapidly, and as she was the smallest of our kitties she didn't have much weight to begin with. In the end, she was anaesthetised again by the vet to look at her mouth, and the abscess was getting really bad. She had been in pain, and frequently gave out the most aweful screams. So we made the sad sad decision to tell the vet to let her carry on sleeping and not bring her out of the anaesthetic.

Despite being so small, she was always the most adventurous of our cats, and the best hunter. On many occasions she came in through the cat-flap dragging a rabbit or jay twice her size, or was caught sneaking in after a visit to the lake in the woods, duckling feet dangling from her mouth.

Here's to the memory of our tiny Jägermeisterin, probably now terrorising the ghost mice and squirrels in the afterworld, and perhaps even playing with Simba again.

Sweet dreams little one, you are dearly missed.

Suki on a Santa hat, dreaming of mice pies for Christmas

Sunbathing by the pond

Suki surveying her domain

With her sister Tosca. They were both 'rescue' cats

Cat in a box!

Sweet tabby dreams

Schornsteinfeger - Chimneysweeps

2011-02-12T23:58:00.002+01:00

Today we had a visit from the Schornsteinfeger, that is, the chimney-sweep.

By law, in Germany you have to have your chimney cleaned and your heating system inspected twice a year by a Land designated chimney sweep. And you have to pay for it of course.

You don't need to make an appointment, they will make it with you. On the whole this is a good thing - you don't want to suffer from carbon monoxide poisoning from a poorly ventilated heating system, and you wouldn't want a build up of soot to cause a chimney fire. The history is of the risk of whole towns of wooden-framed buildings burning down because of one house catching fire. If only the Pudding Lane bakery in London had had such inspections then the Great Fire of London might not have happened. And then we wouldn't have had Christopher Wren's magnificent buildings in the rebuild, so swings and roundabouts.

In other German towns in past times the regulations were even stricter, and householders had to legally have leather-bellow fire extinguishers on hand in case of fire.

In the UK chimney sweeps are supposedly considered lucky, especially so at weddings, though I have never been to one where a sweep has been present. The media representation of a sweep bringing luck is in the film 'Mary Poppins', and the chim-chiminy.chim-chiminy sweep played by Dick Van Dyke with his peculiar Cockney/Hungarian accent.

In Germany the superstition of a chimney sweep bringing luck is much more prevalent, with table decorations in Kneipen and restaurants of ladders and chimney-sweeps climbing up the foliage at New Year. Other symbols of good luck in Germany, especially at New Year again, and on birthdays, are four-leaved clovers, ladybirds, and pigs (Glücksschwein). Why? Keine Ahnung!

Sweeps in the past have also had a bad reputation; in the Nazi era their statutory right to enter anybody's house allowed them to collect evidence of un-patriotic anti-National Socialist sentiments. This continued after the war in DDR times when they were often Stasi Mitarbeiter, spying on anti-communist dissident activity.

Unfortunately black kids in Germany were also compared to chimney sweeps in a negative way; a school-yard chant would be 'Neger, Neger, Schornsteinfeger!' because, duh, a sweeps' skin is sooty black. The experience of a black kid growing up in Nazi Germany who suffered these taunts resulted in the autobiographical book by Hans Jürgen Massaquoi, and subsequent film, which are well worth reading / watching. See 'Neger, Neger, Schorsteinfeger'.

An engaging aspect of the chimney sweep tradition in Germany is that they often still dress in traditional top-hat and buttoned-up jacket. They might also become Journeymen after their apprenticeship has finished, travelling on foot with other newly professional former-apprentices across Europe dressed in their traditional gear. This tradition by the way gave us the Australian term 'swagman': so now you know what he was doing by the billabong with Mathilda!

The visit from the chimney sweep might cost us a few tens of Euros, and might seem like the state regulating where it doesn't need to in this day and age, but for the peace of mind of not worrying my boiler or wood fire is poisoning us or about to catch fire, I think it is worth keeping. And if it brings us luck, all the better! (we need a bit after the past year).

This photo is not by me - please contact me if you are the photographer or model and wish me to remove it.
Good though, innit?

Frankfurt und Słubice, Oder?

2011-02-12T23:00:00.365+01:00

Not the Place Hot-Dogs Come From

das Museum Junge Kunst, Frankfurt (Oder)

Today was cold but bright-skied, so we got ourselves a Brandenburg ticket and headed by Regional Express South-East to Frankfurt on the German/Polish border. First of all I should point out that this is probably not the Frankfurt you've heard about, the major financial centre with the Manhattan-style skyscrapers. That's the large city on the river Main further West in the state of Hesse. The Brandenburger Frankfurt we visited is the much smaller town on the Oder - hence it is often referred to as Frankfurt (Oder) so that you don't get the it confused with Frankfurt (Main) and arrange a conference of bankers in the wrong place. On a linguistic note, 'with-it' German youth often tag 'oder?' (= or) on the end of sentences in much the same way as English yoof add 'innit?'. This isn't one of those occasions.

A German border post on the river bank. The border actually runs down the middle of the river Oder, but you wouldn't see the post if they put it there!

The river Oder now forms part of the German border with Poland, but it weren't always so, and Frankfurt(Oder) once straddled this busy river trade-route slap-bang in the middle of the Kingdom of Prussia. Because of the redrawn boundaries at the end of World War II, Frankfurt found itself split in two, and has since been known as Słubice (pronounced something like Swu-bitsia) on the Eastern, Polish side of the river.

die St. Marienkirche, Frankfurt (Oder)

Travelling to Frankfurt you pass through miles and miles of rolling countryside and unbroken forest, and it feels like you are heading into the middle of nowhere. This is a feeling not entirely dissipated when you arrive. Frankfurt is an attractive, clean, modern town that also has many interesting historic (rebuilt) buildings. But for mid-day on a Saturday in the main shopping area it wasn't exactly Oxford St London. Which is fine, as we hate crowds. Just as long as it doesn't feel too post-Apocalyptic.

Frankfurt Side of the Oder

We came across a great deal more people crossing the bridge over the river to Słubice. The road-traffic was understandable because the Oder is a mighty river with limited places you can cross. On the Frankfurter side you could still tell where the border-control checkpoints and customs used to be, but nowadays you don't need a passport to cross.

The river Oder, looking South, up-stream. It's wide, innit?

It immediately became clear what the main attraction for visitors to Słubice is though, as the first thing to hit you are all the shops selling cheap booze and fags - 24 hours!

A typical 24/7 drive-in duty-free emporium in Słubice

Also, for some reason, all the pizza you can eat. Not that there weren't lots of places where you could get pierogis too, but for some reason pizzeria's seem to outnumber any other kind of restaurant.

If you want to stuff your face with Italian cuisine whilst drinking and smoking yourself to death as well as getting a tattoo - Słubice is hog's heaven for you!

Though it wasn't like Oxford Street on this side of the river either, sometimes it did feel a bit like the Old Kent Road:

A London Pub in Słubice? Make's a change from Irish Pubs I suppose.

Apart from the sense of a typical border town, the other thing that is apparent is that you are definitely in a different country. That might not be so surprising - after all, you are - but the suddenness after walking only a few hundred metres across a bridge is striking. The language, the shop and street signs, the architecture, and yes, the signs of poverty and neglect all add up to the thought 'we're not in Germany any more, Toto.'

Słubice High Street. We weren't sure if all the wooden supports everywhere were an architectural feature, or were actually stopping the balconies crashing down. We think the latter.

As you might expect, this important river crossing was a crucial defence point during the final months of the Second World War. Here the German Wehrmacht tried to halt the advance of the Red Army at Festung (fortress) Frankfurt. They of course failed, but not before the town was pretty much pulverised along with the population. There is (of course) a memorial in Słubice to the Soviet liberators:

Poignantly, on the Frankfurt side there is also a memorial centre to the victims of the NKVD (pre-cursor to the KGB) who came in the wake of the Red Army and arrested, murdered, or sent to gulags anyone suspected even remotely of being a fascist sympathiser.

Before you run away with the idea that Słubice is all pizza parlours, drug-pushers, and painful politics, there are examples of stunning, modern architecture around the European University Viadrina too.

Back in Frankfurt (Oder) the restored architecture is more traditional, and is a reminder that Frankfurt's history goes a long way back. In fact, the numerous churches and Franciscan monastery are there because before the Reformation (when Protestant killjoys said down with that sort of thing) Frankfurt was on one of the main mediaeval arteries of pilgrims making their way to the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in North Western Spain along the Way of St James (Jakobsweg).

die Friedenskirche Frankfurt

Nowadays, signs along the river bank direct you which way to go to follow the Jakobsweg. Or if that's a bit far, then there is also the 630 km long Oder-Neiße Radweg - a cycle path along the length of the German/Polish border. Unfortunately, we had to get back in time to feed the cats, so we climbed the hill (yes! A hill!) to the station and the train home.

Kitty Ice-cream!

Some of the sculptures in Frankfurt are really just rubbish

Simba ist gestorben - Simba has died

2011-01-16T20:52:00.003+01:00

Simba
15.08.99 - 16.01.11

Our cat Simba - little Simbi - has very sadly died.

It is probable that he developed feline infectious peritontis. What is certain is that he brought a great deal of joy and love to our lives, was taken away too soon, and will be sorely missed.

We adopted Simba from the Chesterfield Cats Protection League when he was just a tiny kitten you could hold in the palm of your hand. We hadn't planned on taking care of him: we'd actually gone to see his mother, Cassie, but it was clear that if we were going to home Cassie, then Simbi would have to come too. That was a decision we can never regret.

Here are some photos spanning his life. I hope you are resting in peace little sweetie, sleeping on an eternal sunny day in your deckchair or chasing mice and jumping in and out of cardboard boxes, and maybe just maybe you will rub against our legs again some day in the great beyond.

Simbi kitten playing with cardboard boxes

Simbi playing with his mother, Cassie

Simbi keeping guard of the house

Simba after a drop of Becks (not really, and it is the non-alcoholic version!)

Excuse me, I am trying to sleep!

Total relaxation!

Sleeping in the sun on our terrace in Basdorf

The last photo I took of him - getting ready for Xmas!

The German-Russian Museum Karlshorst

2010-12-31T16:31:00.006+01:00

For most visitors to Berlin, Karlshorst is just one of the stops on the train route between central Berlin and Schönefeld Airport. The suitcase-laden tourists desperate to make their flight connection are probably unaware that just a short distance from this unprepossessing S-Bahn stop one of the worst chapters in modern world history drew to a close. The reason? During the night of 8th-9th May 1945, in the officer's mess of a former Wehrmacht Pioneer School in Karlshorst, the unconditional surrender of the German armed forces to representatives of the four Allied forces took place. The Second World War came to an end.

After the war, the Karlshorst suburb of Berlin became a Russian enclave, hosting as it did the Headquarters of the Soviet military presence in East Germany. Russian troops and their families lived here until the last Russian soldiers left in 1995. So as you might imagine, when a museum opened in 1967 in the building where the surrender was signed, it had a definite bias towards the role of the Red Army. The 'Museum der bedingungslosen Kapitulation des faschistischen Deutschland im Großen Vaterländischen Krieg 1941 - 1945' as it was called (or, Museum of the Unconditional Surrender of Fascist Germany in the ´Great Patriotic War´ of 1941 - 1945), was given a more even-handed emphasis post-unification, and reopened in 1995 as the Deutsch-Russiches Museum Berlin-Karlshorst.

We visited it on a perishingly cold December afternoon, precariously walking the icy 1000m length of Rheinsteinstrasse from Karlshorst S-Bahn. A snow-covered Soviet tank stood guard beside the half-circle entrance to the museum, the building a grey functional box fronted with four plain Doric columns. There were few other visitors, or even staff. Granted, it was the day before Silvester and sensible people were doing their last minute NewYear's shopping or just keeping warm inside by the fire. But still, it didn't look like the museum was ever overwhelmed by visitors. Especially English-speaking visitors; the exhibition labels and information boards were all written in German and Russian. Apparently English visitors can pick up a folder of information sheets in their own language, but we didn't bother - more fun that way!

At the heart of the museum is the hall where the surrender was signed. It looks exactly as it did on that night of the 8th-9th May 1945. We know this because a looped black and white film recording the event is projected onto a screen in the hall. Well, not exactly the same - the footage of the military leaders arriving didn't show them having to plough through four foot of snow. It also looked exactly like my old school assembly hall - all wooden panels, parquet floor, and high curtained windows. Spooky.

Here you can see the three signed surrender documents (I suppose copies), translated into English, German and Russian. What the French representative had to say about a Gallic omission is unrecorded. What I didn't pick up on from information at the museum is that this unconditional surrender wasn't the first, but more by way of a ratification of a surrender that took place in Rheims on 7th May. There were a number of reasons for holding a second surrender:

The Soviets wanted their Soviet Supreme Commander Georgy Zhukov to be involved in signing this historic document. Zhukov it was who'd led the Red Army West from besieged Russia, pushing back the German Wehrmacht and liberating Eastern Europe right up to the final Battle of Berlin. The earlier Rheims surrender had been signed by a Soviet liaison officer with the Allied Forces in Europe, General Susloparov, without the authority of Moscow.
The Soviets also insisted that this historic occasion take place at the heart of where all the Nazi atrocities and destruction had sprung from, Berlin.
The British meanwhile felt that the surrender should be signed by a top military representative of the German Reich. The Rheims document was signed by Colonel General Alfred Jodl, who was deputy to Field Marshall Wilhelm Keitel. The Karlshort surrender was therefore signed by Oberkommando der Wehrmacht Keitel himself - i.e. get the organ grinder committed to the surrender, not the monkey. Both these Germans were later sentenced to death by hanging for war crimes, at the Nuremberg trials.

Anyway, the second surrender went ahead and is the one remembered here. To be honest, there isn't an overwhelming feeling of historical imperative about the space; that here, in this very room, the most horrific war of the twentieth century finally came to an end. It is after all just a large wood-panelled room, where German officers once danced with their wives or sat down at long benches to eat and drink. Or maybe I'm just thinking of my old school hall.

The rest of the museum is arranged on three floors and is fairly small. The emphasis is on the Soviet involvement in the Second World War - of course - and there are displays as you might expect of military uniforms, guns, field-kit, army medical equipment, flags and medals (all from both sides). A diorama gives an idea of the intense battle for the Reichstag, and there are interesting collections of propaganda posters and cartoons. There are also a couple of really rather good stained-glass windows in the Soviet Social Realism style.

What differentiates this museum from any other war museum is that it tells a story a thousand miles away (literally) from the Hollywood version of World War II that I am familiar with. There is a room dedicated to the Siege of Leningrad, for example. This lasted for 900 days, from 1941 to 1944, during which the city was blockaded, bombarded, and slowly starved to death by the German and Finnish armies. By the end of the siege, some 632,000 people are thought to have died, with nearly 4,000 people from Leningrad starving to death on Christmas Day, 1941 alone. And I didn't know about it. Or I vaguely did, from one afternoon in a history lesson at school when I was more than likely staring out of the window or swapping notes on the back row.

Another room is devoted to the victims of the Nazi concentration and extermination camps; yes, of course I knew about them. I can even name from memory, oh about a dozen of them. I've watched Schindler's List. I've read Ann Frank's Diary. I think I know about Nazi atrocities thank you. Well, a large map dominates one wall, showing how far the German army had occupied Eastern Europe and the USSR. The first thing that struck me was how far the Wehrmacht had swept, how much land they had over-run, what an enormous distance it is to the outskirts of Leningrad and Moscow from Berlin. There for the first time, I had a scale of how far way Stalingrad was. And behind the advancing Eastern Front, hundreds of dots marking each extermination camp, each Jewish ghetto, each labour camp. Computer terminals tell you how many thousands of people ended their lives at each of those dots: shot, or gassed, or hung, or starved to death. I had no real idea. I could have wept.

This is the point; you think you know about the Second World War, but you don't. There is always going to be something to shock you to your core. More specifically, if you have grown up with Western and US historical narratives, then the whole Russian and Eastern European experience will be unknown to you, untaught in schools, hardly covered by popular Western culture and media.

The museum only took an hour and a half to look around, including a special exhibition by the Leningrad photojournalist Nikolai I. Chandogin, but it gave me a whole new perspective on what drove the Red Army to fight with such ferocity all the way to the gates of Berlin at the cost of so many soldiers. It was dark and cold when we left, but somehow the inconvenience of a few inches of snow on the pavement didn't feel like anything at all.

Link to the Deutch-Russiches Museum Berlin-Karlshorst

Guided Tour of The Berlin Wall - iPhone App

2010-12-24T16:39:00.002+01:00

I have written my first iPhone app! If you have an iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad then you can now walk with me around Berlin on a tour of the inner-city part of the Berlin Wall.

I have written a tour that takes you from the Tränenpalast (the Palace of Tears) at Friedrichstrasse, along the Spree to the White Cross Memorials beside the Reichstag, up by the Brandenburg Gate and the Soviet War Memorial and statue 'The Caller', then carrying on up to Postadmer Platz and Leipziger Platz until you come to the longest stretch of extant Berlin Wall beside the Topography of Terror exhibition. Then you are guided to the famous Checkpoint Charlie, and finish at the poignant memorial to Peter Fechter, murdered whilst attempting to cross 'the Death Strip'.

Along the way you can hear my narrative guiding you through the history of the Berlin Wall, and see my photos of each of thirteen sights. The app works with your GPS to show you the best route along the tour, and tells you whereabouts you are in relation to each sight.

For more information, see the Berlin Wall Walk on GPSmyCity.com and the Berlin Wall Walk on the Apple iTunes website. Or, just go straight to your iTunes store software and search for 'Berlin Wall Walk'.

The price to download is minimal - I don't expect to retire on anything I do sell! - and you don't actually have to be physically in Berlin to hear, read, and view my photos (just don't expect the GPS to work).

And that's not all! As a special promotion, I have a number of codes to give away, so you can download the app FOR FREE! Get them whilst they last by emailing me at contact@andie.org.uk

LATEST NEWS! There is a review of my app on the Young Germany website Modern tourism: See Berlin with new iPhone App Thanks guys!

Berlin Christmas Markets 2010

2010-12-12T20:45:00.004+01:00

Nobody does Christmas as good as the Germans, and some of the best places to enjoy the festive season are the many Christmas Markets that spring up on any available town square. Here are some photos from Berlin Weihnachtsmärkte this year (click for bigger!). Pour yourself a cup of hot Glühwein, fill your head with the spicy smell, and imagine yourself here!

Fröhliche Weihnachten!

London Calling! NOT!!!

2010-12-03T12:19:00.052+01:00

The BBC World Service is a venerable institution broadcasting un-biased news reportage around the world into countries where other sources of news are censored by totalitarian regimes. It also provides a lively debating platform bringing together comment from English speakers worldwide, as well as having good arts programs and sport coverage. I found it a useful link back to the homeland, having it gently talking into my ear as I rode the S-Bahn or walked in the forests.

But no more!

On 1st December, BBC World Service Berlin changed to a new transmitter, and now I can't pick it up any more. Even in the centre of Berlin, supposedly where the new transmitter is located, my iPod Nano's automatic station finder can't home in on a strong enough signal. Out here in Brandenburg, all you get is static and the odd tantalising snatch of English.

I complained to the BBC, and had the following reply:

On December 1 2010, BBC World Service changed its frequency in Berlin from 90.2 FM to 94.8 FM.  This move was undertaken as the most cost-effective for the BBC to retain a presence on FM in the city. In the current financial climate BBC World Service is facing significant reductions in its funding, and the cost of continuing to broadcast on 90.2 FM in Berlin has become prohibitive. Moving the transmission to 94.8 FM presented an opportunity for us to remain on air in the city.

The 94.8 FM transmitter is located in Schäferberg and the signal is intended to cover Berlin city centre and much of the suburbs. There is, however, reduced coverage of suburban areas in comparison with the former frequency, 90.2 FM, particularly in western and southern parts of the city. We can only apologise to listeners who are now having trouble tuning in, but hope that they will understand the circumstances under which the decision to change frequencies was made.

...

With best regards,
Audience Information
BBC World Service

So basically, it is all down to cost. Never mind the prestige-factor of broadcasting quality programmes into the far corners of the world (or, Germany at least), or the thousands of people who have learnt English from listening to it, or even UK holiday-makers wanting to know the English Football League results back home.

It's a great shame, but on the other hand it forces me to listen to local radio stations in German if I want to hear the news whilst out and about.

Sending Post from Germany Abroad

2010-10-27T18:31:00.004+01:00

Christmas is coming (no, it really is; there is Stollen and Glühwein in the supermarkets already)!

So here's a quick post about posting using Deutsche Post.

I've been burned in the past by finding I am paying more to send a greetings card to England than I have paid for the card itself.

The first thing to note is that it costs more to send a card in a coloured envelope than a plain white or manilla one. The reason is that the contrast on the address isn't machine-readable, and/or that the bar-code they print on the envelope after reading the address isn't. i.e. even if you print the address on a white sticky label and stick it on, the machines can't read the barcode. Therefore they have to be hand-sorted, and that costs more. How much? Well, if you send a standard envelope (up to 23.5cm x 12.5cm) to a German address, it usually costs 55 cents. If you send it in a red Happy Christmas envelope though, it costs 90 cents. For post sent abroad, there is a similar hike in prices.

The second thing to note is that there is a steep price increase dependent on the size of the envelope. The same standard envelope costs 70 cents to send to the UK (1.70 to the USA). Now, say you have a colourful envelope and think you can cut costs by putting it into another envelope, for instance a plain A5 manilla one, you will find that you aren't saving anything at all. Quite the contrary! Sending an A5 (21.0cm x 14.8cm) envelope to the UK costs an incredible 3.40 euro (6 euro to the USA). I speak from experience of getting stung by this.

I'll not even start about the weight of the envelope. You can check out the cost of sending a greetings card (or any other kind of package) by using this postage calculator on the Deutsche Post website. Note that 'Briefumschlag' means a letter or card in an envelope, and that when you have chosen the destination (Großbritannien = Great Britain), the width (Länge) and the width (Breite), you should hit 'Porto Berechnen' (calculate the postal rate). Unfortunately there is no option to say if the envelope is 'bunt' (coloured) or not.

Standard paper and therefore envelope sizes can be found her.

By the way, all small envelopes sent to the UK from Germany go by Air Mail (Luftpost) so you don't really need to write this on the envelope or put on a sticker. Whereas post from the UK to Germany goes by ship and overland by default (and therefore takes a lot longer to arrive) unless you state otherwise (and pay more). Go figure.

Better still, send an e-Card instead! Admittedly your recipient can't hang them on a string over the mantlepiece, but on the other hand e-Cards don't gather dust and fill the dustbin (or paper recycling bin) in the new year.

May I be the first to wish everyone a Frohe Weihnachten und ein gutes Neues Jahr!

Berlin Festival of Lights 2010

2010-10-19T14:16:00.003+01:00

It's the annual Festival of Lights in Berlin once more. Lots of cultures have similar festivals this time of year as the nights draw in and the biting cold of Winter start to become more imminent: Diwali, Samhain, er - the Blackpool Illuminations. But only Berlin's festival also has Glühwein on hand too, hurrah!

Here are a few snaps I took walking from Potsdamer Platz, by the Brandenburg Gate, along Unter den Linden, to the Berliner Dom (cathedral). Enjoy, and to hell with thinking about the carbon footprint of it all!

(p.s. click to biggify!)

Exploring Hackescher Markt

2010-09-23T11:17:00.364+01:00

One of the many things that makes Berlin so enticing is that it is made up of so many areas with their own distinctive atmosphere and culture. A case in point is the area around Hackescher Markt, with its distinctive S-Bahnhof, eclectic market, eateries and bars, exotic night-life, cinemas, shops, and Jewish history.

Outdoor restaurants beside Hackescher Bahnhof

Underneath the arches

The area gets its name from a Prussian General and Commandant of Berlin, Hans Christoph Friedrich Graf von Hacke. He was given the job in the late 1740's, by King Friedrich II, to lay out a market square and residences in what was then swampy marshland outside the city wall. Friedrich II was in the process at the time of having the old city fortifications torn down, and a new wall - for collecting duty on goods entering Berlin rather than defence - built further out from the centre (and you thought there was only the one Berlin Wall, which fell in 1989, didn't you?).

Hackescher Markt Station with the Fernsehturm peeping over the top.

Another view along Hackescher Markt

The buildings on Neues Promenade on the edge of the market square are pretty much original from the time of the establishment of Hackescher Markt, give or take a major rebuild and change of façade. In particular, the Weihenstephaner restaurant/Biergarten/Bierkellar at No.5 advertises itself as having a 'historisches Kellergewölbe' or historical cellar vault from 1749.

Weihenstaphener Restaurant Hackescher Markt

By the way, the Weihenstephaner is a bit of Bavaria transplanted onto Berlin soil, serving those delicious brews from the Bayerische Staatsbrauerei (Bavarian state brewery) that claims is the oldest brewery in the world, having being founded in 1040.

Next door to the Weihenstephaner at No.6 is the former entrance to Aufbau-Verlag, which was founded in 1945 with a remit of publishing Communist and anti-fascistic literature, and became the largest publishing house in the former East Germany (DDR/GDR). It moved out in 2009 but is still very much a respected publisher, albeit now in private ownership rather than a propaganda arm of the SED.

The literary tradition of Neues Promenade goes back a long way; for example, the Idealist philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte lived out his final years here at No.9/10. For this reason, an application was made to name the street Fichterstrasse in 1862, but this was turned down. Meanwhile, the house at No.1 was built for the poetess Anna Louisa Karsch in her old age. Her life was marked by poverty, but her poems drew the attention of King Friedrich II, mainly because she praised his campaigns against Silesia (in Poland) to high heaven. Otherwise, the beauty of her poetry brought her to the attention of Enlightenment figures such as Moses Mendelssohn, Herder, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, and (inevitably) Goethe. The house at No.1 was built for her by Friedrich II's successor, Friedrich Wilhelm II, in 1787 and she lived there until her death in 1791. Called in her own time 'The German Sappho', she is considered the first female German poet to make a living by her writing. There is a memorial to her on the outside wall of the nearby Sophienkirche, with the inscription "Kennst Du, Wandrer, sie nicht / So gehe und lerne sie kennen" ("Do you not know her, wanderer? Then go forth and get to know her").

The Sophienkirche where Karsch ended her days was consecrated in 1713, before the creation of Hackescher Markt, and built on land donated to the Protestant congregation by the Jewish community ( the Protestants obviously having a cash-flow problem at the time). The fact is that this swampy area had already been colonised, growing up outside the Spandauer Tor - or Spandau Gate - in the fortifications thrown up to defend what were then the twin cities of Berlin and Cölln. These were enacted by The Great Elector Friedrich Wilhelm of Brandenburg beginning, in 1650, in response the the Thirty Years War (you'll notice all the nobles in the story of Berlin are called either Friedrich, or Wilhelm, or both). The undefended shanty town was known as the Spandauer Vorstadt, and inevitably it was originally a place for misfits who didn't enjoy the protection of the Berlin garrison, so no surprises that a strong Jewish community was established here.

To this day, the history of the area is reflected in the street names. For example, the pedestrianised lane running parallel to the S-Bahn line is named Am Zwirngraben:

Am Zwirngraben and the entrance to Hackescher Markt S-Bahn

This is because originally there was a moat (Graben) running along here in front of the city walls, from which a cotton twine mill (Zwirnmühle) got its water until the moat was filled in and the S-Bahn line built in 1877. In fact the S-Bahn line from Am Kupfergraben, across to the Museum Island, through Hackescher Markt, Alexanderplatz Bahnhof, and all the way to Jannowitzbrücke Bahnhof follows what was once the city wall and moat.

An der Spandauer Bruecke

For a similar reason, the road from here towards central Berlin is named An der Spandauer Brücke ( at the Spandau Bridge), because it ran across a stone (later iron) bridge over the moat to the Spandau Gate in the city walls. For many years the bridge was lined with unofficial booths selling tourist tat to pilgrims visiting the Heilig-Geist-Kapelle hostel just inside the city. The bridge and gate were also sacrificed to the S-Bahn in 1877, but 'plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose':

Tourist stall outside die Hackeschen Hoeffe

Not that there's anything wrong with selling tat to the tourists: for many years the British Council had a shop and offices here too.

The building in the background above is another good reason to come to Hackescher Markt - it is one of the entrances to die Hackeschen Höfe. These are eight inter-connected courtyards ('Höfe') built in 1908 as an experiment in housing in what had become a densely over-populated Berlin: when originally built there were eighty living apartments with en suite bathrooms, indoor toilets, balconies, and coal-fired central heating. Nowadays, after being restored in 1997, the courtyards contain smart restaurants, boutiques, a cinema, and so forth in airy, light-filled, art nouveau spaces. By way of contrast, you will also find here the Anne Frank Centre Berlin on Rosenthaler Str., and the Museum Blindenwerkstatt Otto Weidt ('museum of the workshop for the blind of Otto Weidt'). Anne Frank I'm sure you are only too well aware about, but perhaps not Otto Weidt. Follow this link to the Otto Weidt page on the Jewish Virtual Library for more information.

The memorial plaques for former Jewish residents of apartments are particularly and poignantly dense on the pavements around Hackescher Markt:

Street plaques to previous Jewsih residents deported to Auschwitz

In German, these brass covered cobblestones are called Stolpersteine - 'stumbling blocks' - and are were originally conceived by artist Gunter Demnig. A translation of the plaque on the far right in the photo is: 'Here lived Uri Aron. Year of birth 1942. Deported 1943 Theresienstadt (concentration camp). Murdered in Auschwitz." There are around 3,000 of these plaques in Berlin, and many more again in other cities across Germany and other countries where the National Socialists carried out their crimes.

On a more positive note, not far from Hackescher Markt, on Oranienburger Straße, is the marvellous Neue Synagogue with its restored Moorish-style golden dome once again gracing the Berlin skyline.

The Neue Synagogue

I could go on for another thousand words if I spiralled out from Hackescher Markt into the surrounding area, which is sometimes known as the 'Scheunenviertel'. This means 'the barn quarter', because hay for a large cattle market on Alexanderplatz was stored here by order of the Great Elector Friedrich Wilhelm of Brandenburg. He's the person you'll remember had the original city fortifications built, and he ordered the highly inflammable hay to be stored well outside the walls of the (mostly wood-built) city, thank you very much. I'll leave that for another blog, but before I go, just a word or two about the Hackescher Markt S-bahn station.

The elevated S-Bahn line here runs along the former city wall and moat, and the station was opened in 1882. It was originally called 'Börse' Station, because the city's stock exchange used to stand nearby. Then, in the DDR times, it was renamed Marx-Engels-Platz station. Only in 1992 did it get its current name after the adjacent Hackescher Markt square. It is one of the best-preserved stations from the original electrified urban light-railway (Bellevue is another good one), with interesting Gothic brick and ceramic work.

Whether you visit Hackescher Markt for its night-life, day-life, history, or as a launch-pad into the Scheunenviertel, you cannot but agree that it is a unique part of Berlin. Thank you, Graf von Hacke!

Ein Grünspecht im Garten! German Garden Wildlife

2010-08-27T18:08:00.006+01:00

I really love living amongst the forest, particularly when we get a visitor to the garden that you'd be unlikely to get in a city. Today we had a green woodpecker pecking around on the lawn, the first time I have ever seen one so close. We quite often get 'great spotted woodpeckers', especially up our tall trees, tapping away, but this is a 'green woodpecker' first!

We also had a small, cute hedgehog snuffling around. I gave it a spoonful of cat-food to eat, which it gobbled down noisily.

The most exciting creatures to pass through our small piece of woodland though, are the red squirrels. Not wishing to be racist, but they are so much more colourful, agile, and just damn sweet with their tufty ears, than the fat grey squirrels that have taken over much of Britain. Unfortunately they have proved too fast for me to get a good photo of them. When I do though, I'll post it here.

Luckily the cats were too busy sleeping to notice any of these trespassers!

Ve haff vays ov making you laff!

2010-08-12T13:28:00.035+01:00

It seems to be a common stereotype of Germans amongst Britons that they have no sense of humour. And actually, there is a German stand-up comedian working in Britain, Henning Wehn, who bases his act on this misconception and bills himself as 'the German comedy ambassador'.

Here's a taste of his style. Note the stop-watch around his neck that he uses to time the length of audience laughter to his jokes: You see, Germans are all over-analytical - geddit? Vorsprung durch Humor.

Respect to Henning for exploiting this German stereotype, and for getting in some well-placed digs at the English. But the perhaps surprising truth is that Germans have a very well-developed and sophisticated sense of humour, Danke sehr.

I'm now going to post a few examples in support of this proposition, though I should point out that I don't particularly think these are the funniest; however, they are the best I could find on YouTube.

One of the best British TV shows recently has been 'The Office'. Could the Germans appreciate the humour of laughing at the embarrassing cringe-worthy antics of David Brent? You bet they could - they did after all coin the word 'schadenfreude' for the pleasure derived from the misfortune of others.

'The Office' inspired a hugely popular German version called Stromberg (after Bern Stromberg, the eponymous anti-hero) that caused a bit of friction between the producers and the BBC over how much 'The Office' influenced it.

However, rather than show you a clip from 'Stromberg' I am going to take it one step further and demonstrate how the Germans can ratchet the cringe value up a couple of notches more. Click here for David Brent as Adolf Hitler! (Don't worry if you can't understand the language, I think the visual comedy is enough to understand the main joke). This parody is from the ProSieben show 'Switch Reloaded', which spoofs German TV shows, which is funny if you've seen the originals, but a bit difficult to 'get' if you haven't.

Another show that makes fun of (rather than parodying) other TV shows is 'TV Total', created, produced and hosted by comedian Stefan Raab. Its format is to show clips from other TV shows and then slag them off - a bit like Harry Hill's TV Burp but with Doc Marts on. Unlike Harry Hill's often surreal commentary, Raab is more cutting with his criticism. 'TV Total' also has Raab interviewing celebrities in a David Letterman style format, but from a rather bizarre desk that moves across the stage. I've dug out this clip of a very weird interview with Adam Green conducted in English and German (p.s you don't have to watch it all the way through if you don't want to!).

'TV Total' is itself parodied by 'Switch Reloaded', and so it goes around. The 'Switch Reloaded' parody usually has a Raab lookalike absolutely wetting himself with laughter at his TV clips, to complete silence from the audience. This is quite close to the truth :)

Stefan Raab is also involved in the Eurovision song contest, to the extent that he was even the Germany entry in 2000 with the nonsense song 'Wadde hadde dudde da', which unbelievably came 5th. You can see and hear it being performed here if you really want to. Bored with the Eurovision, he as-arrogantly-as-usual came up with his own song-contest called the 'Bundesvision Song Contest', promoting German-language lyrics and with entries from each of the 16 German states ('Bundesländer').

Stefan is such an all-round entertainer that many people would like to smash in his smug face, which is in effect what they can do on the ProSieben TV show 'Schlag den Raab' ('Beat Raab'). The format has been reproduced on British ITV as 'Beat the Star', with the difference that the British show has different celebrities whereas on German TV it is always Stefan Raab. But we're getting slightly away from German humour, other than that 'Schlag den Raab' exploits the universal appetite to see someone with an over-inflated ego beaten by an underdog (another case of 'schadenfreude' perhaps?

An example of a straight-forward sketch show is 'Sechserpack' on the Sat 1 channel. Sechserpack is German for six-pack - as in a six-pack of beer - but here referring to there being six comedians involved. A higher level of language comprehension is needed here, but some of the gags are visual too.

A TV program where the comedy is more character-led is Ladycracher starring the multi-talented Anke Engelke (who was actually born in Canada). Engelke's humour is like the English comedienne and actor Catherine Tate's, and she has created a large range of distinct characters with their own quirks and mannerisms. Engelke also uses word-play and language for humorous effect, which makes it a bit difficult for non-German speakers to get into. Here though is one sketch anyone will get the point of (it's a helpline for the deaf. Not very PC!):

Engelke also does a good stand-up, acts, sings, and provides the dubbed German voice for a number of English-language imports, including Marge Simpson on 'die Simpsons'.

A male comedian using character-led humour is Markus Maria Profitlich, best know from his Sat 1 program 'Mench Markus'. He too combines a mix of stand-up, pre-recorded sketches, and live sketches on-stage in his show. He reminds me of a German Alexi Sayle, and not just because they are both large and shaven-headed.

There are a number of comics who perform in only one character. On the stand-up scene, the main one to spring to mind is Cindy aus Marzahn, who goes to prove that Germany has its chavs too (Marzahn is a suburb of Berlin dominated by concrete high-rise flats mostly inhabited by people at the lower end of the income bracket).

Ilka Bessin has created a monstrous Vicky Pollard - like character in Cindy, but rounded out into someone more potent: we don't laugh at Cindy just because she represents the tasteless excesses of the Unterklasse (though there is that), but because she has licence to say the things that we're all thinking but social convention means we can't say. In this respect she is similar to a drag queen, which is also reflected in her rather large and masculine build and overdone make-up.

Here she is slagging off the people down the Arbeitsamt (JobCentre), and sorry non-German speakers, but Cindy's humour is very much language based:

Cindy represents a particularly Berlin kind of comedy, a very much in-your-face attitude which has its own name: the Berliner Schnauzer, translatable as something like the Berlin gob. Another very Berlinisch comedian of a different kind is Kurt Krömer (real name Bojcan Alexander). His 'Internationale Show' on the local RBB channel is a surreal mix of inept chat-show host, amateurish local reportage, and couldn't care less interviews where he generally seems to be getting more and more drunk. He does for Berlin local television shows what Alan Partridge did for Norwich, except Krömer is much more likeable as a character. Here he is 'interviewing' cabaret singer Ina Müller (note how the set, and Krömer's clothes, are reminiscent of East German deco):

Edit: oh bugger! YouTube have taken this one down. Try Googling 'Krömer' or something - it's worth it!

A comedian who is expert in creating many dozens of comic characters is Hape Kerkeling. His creations are too extensive to recount here, just to say he is the Dick Emery of German TV. Only much better and actually funny.

In this clip he is fooling former Bayern Munich footballer Stefan Effenberg by pretending to be an English Sports TV presenter interviewing him live. The effect of a German pretending to be Englishman talking in terrible German is quite effective (and embarrassing - maybe I sound like that?)

Ethnic minorities in Germany have their comedy expressed on mainstream TV too. The Turkish comedian Kaya Yanar is perhaps their best known exponent, with his televised stand-up show 'Made in Germany', and his sketch show 'Was guckst du?!' (which means something like 'what you looking at, mate?!'). Unfortunately, for the non-German speaker his stand-up comedy is somewhat inaccessible. Even for the native speaker it is a bit hard, as he uses a lot of 'Kiezdeutsch', which is a street slang mixture of Turkish, German, and other influences including Russian and American.

Here is a taster from 'Was guckst du?!', the point of the joke being that the Turkish couple in the car (supposedly) have little German and deliberately misinterpret the German cop's words to make out he is a Nazi:

One of the funniest sit-coms on German television also makes hay from Turkish cultural clashes, and also the universal problems of family life and teenagers. 'Türkisch für Anfänger' or 'Turkish for Beginners' has a great deal more depth than most sitcoms, and is at times emotionally moving and explores taboo subjects, as well as being very well acted and very funny. Here's a clip from right back at the beginning:

Germany has its fair share of bigoted comics too, of which Mario Barth is probably at the summit (or the depth) of opinionated male-centric egoism. Somewhat like a German version of Jim Davidson. But like Jim Davidson he has a big following, so even though he's not my cup of rooibos, here's a taster (with English sub-titles):

At the other end of the intellectual scale, there are lots of satire programs on German TV. I am unfortunately not near enough the end of the scale myself to even begin to understand a lot of it, particularly as it requires a deep appreciation of German politics and current affairs.

One satirical program I sort of get is Extra 3 by NDR. Here's a clip where they are taking a dig at Tom Cruise (with English sub-titles):

A comedian also labelled as 'intellectual' is Harald Schmidt, who has had success with his late night shows on ARD and with the very much anti-intellectual Oliver Pocher. Watching Extra 3 and Harald Schmidt I think that here 'intellectual' seems to mean one or all of 'so above our heads that it must be funny, but we're just too stupid to get it', 'totally off-the wall experimental but likely to fall flat', or 'so close to the edge of bad taste that it hurts.' In the latter category, Schmidt has on many occasions made jokes about Hitler (here he is looking quite Spike Milligan), and does shocking sketches such as this 'Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? For the Dead' which are almost Python at their blackest (the Dead Granny sketch).

As my example though, here is Harald Schmidt over-analysing the different kinds of Rock Metal (chosen because it has English subtitles). Hmm, maybe Henning Wehn is correct about the analytical German mindset?

But don't let me give you the idea that Germans have only recently learned the art of laughing. For example, one long-running sit-com from the 1970's is 'Ein Herz und eine Seele'. This had more than a passing resemblance to the British 'Till Death Us Do Part', though the far-right patriarch whoi looked like Hitler of course had more resonance in a recovering Germany than Alf Garnett did.

A simpler kind of comedy is expressed by the cartoonist 'Loriot', real name Vicco von Bülow. And yes, he is a descendent of the aristocratic von Bülow family that for example included the Prussian general who alongside Wellington defeated Napoleon at Waterloo. Vicco himself was awarded an Iron Cross in 1943. Here's an animated cartoon of his from way back when that characteristically for him deals with the problems of communication between a married couple:

I have concentrated on TV shows for my examples. Of course German humour is prolific in all genres, from the jokes told down the corner Kneipe, through humorous novels, cartoon strips, satirical magazines, comic opera (Mozart's 'Die Zauberflöte'!), 'Cabaret', and so on. Here, for example, is a clip from the musical comedy 'Der Schuh des Manitu' performed at Berlins Theater des Westens, which compares to anything on NY Broadway or London's West End.

I've come to the end of this brief overview of German humour. In conclusion, I think it is proved that Germans do have a well-honed and sophisticated sense of humour every bit the equal of the British.

Of course, you might argue that Germany never produced a show comparable to Monty Python, and you would be correct. But that doesn't mean that Germans can't laugh at Cleese and the gang, otherwise the Pythons wouldn't have produced 'Monty Python's Fliegender Zirkus' especially for the German market.

I leave you with a totally daft feature film 7 Zwerge – Männer allein im Wald (7 Dwarves - Men Alone in the Wood). So get out the popcorn (or the Bier und Wurst) and enjoy! No English sub-titles I'm afraid, but the jokes are pretty visual or at least not hard to guess. You might spot that Nina Hagen is playing the Queen and Harald Schmidt (see above) is The Best Jester candidate.

Karl-Marx-Allee - Socialist Realism in Stone

2010-08-09T15:50:00.024+01:00

I imagine that most tourists alighting at Alexanderplatz Bahnhof will spend a bit of time exploring the square - the Fountain of International Friendship, the World Clock, and the fall of the wall exhibition - before maybe shopping at Galeria Kaufhof or Alexia, then perhaps booking a slot to go up the Fernsehturm TV tower. They might then wander off towards the Nikolaiviertel or the Museumsinsel by way of Rotes Rathaus, the Marienkirche and the Neptunbrunnen. I'm guessing of course, but I don't think many tourists will be heading towards Karl-Marx-Allee for a stroll amongst the best display of Socialist Realist architecture outside the USSR. Which is a great shame, because to really understand DDR Alexanderplatz and the large parade ground joining it to the previous site of the Palast der Republik on the opposite bank of the Spree, you really need to see it as the culmination of the wide processional show-piece of Soviet might and progress that is Karl-Marx-Allee.

So, if you have a stout pair of walking shoes, or a bike, or a motorised wheel-chair, then I would recommend a trip up Karl-Marx-Alee (it's about 2km long). Just don't go up it in a Soviet tank - that kind of thing is frowned upon nowadays.

The starting point is the Haus des Lehrers (The House of the Teachers), next to the domed Kongresshalle. This was the first high-rise building to be built at Alexanderplatz (opened 1964), replacing a building from 1908 which was kind of a club-house and restaurant for the Berlin Teachers Association. Of particular note, on what is otherwise a boring tower block, is the frieze encircling the building (apparently like a 'cigar band') between the second and fifth floor. Called 'Unser Leben' (Our Lives') it was designed by Walter Womacka in the Mexican mural style and is supposed to show everyday, happy and fulfilling life in the DDR.

I might sound cynical, but really I quite like this style: it has a lot of movement, colour, and joyful innocence. The Haus des Lehrers has also been the canvas for more contemporary playfulness: in 2001 (and at other times since) 'Project Blinkenlights' has used the windows as individual pixels on a giant computer screen and created, for example, a way to play 'Pong' using mobile phones. Sounds crazy, and as this video shows, it probably was.

Not far up Karl-Marx-Allee itself is a contemporary of the Haus des Lehrers, the Kino International (opened 15th November 1963).

This cinema was used for many premiers of films coming out of the state-owned film studio DEFA (Die Deutsche Film AG) based in Babelsberg. I particularly associate DEFA with the production of the children's stop-motion animated adventures of das Sandmännchen, but its mission statement was to "help in the restoration of democracy in Germany, to unshackle German heads from Fascism, and also to nurture socialist citizens." ("Helfen, in Deutschland die Demokratie zu restaurieren, die deutschen Köpfe vom Faschismus zu befreien und auch zu sozialistischen Bürgern erziehen."). To this end, about 700 movies filled with happy, smiling, socialist workers were produced. More socialist realism like the Haus des Lehrers mural then. Honecker and the SED party elite had their own party room for after-show drinks, and even a private bunker underneath the cinema just in case WWIII broke out whilst they were watching a film about joyous tractor production.

Nowadays the Kino International is still used as a cinema, and plays a prominent role in the Berlinale Film Festival, mostly thanks to its cool retro architecture and deco.

Near to the Kino International you can still see Soviet-era advertisements on the roofs of buildings. They are in fact protected monuments of historical significance. This one advertises Tatra Motors, which is the third oldest car maker in the world after Daimler Mercedes-Benz and Peugeot. Unfortunately you've likely never heard of them, because they were based in what became communist Czechoslovakia which crippled their export to the west somewhat. They seem to have been big in East Berlin though, and according to their Tatra website it looks as if they are still going.

This far up Karl-Marx-Allee, apart from a few Sixties era buildings like the Kino International, (and you might have seen the Cafe Moskau and Bar Babette, which however retain little of their original style), there is little by way of architecture to SMS-Text home about. However, just take a look back towards Alexanderplatz (that's the Park Inn in the centre) and marvel at the sheer width of this boulevard. Why would anyone build a street this wide? Especially as we don't seem to be heading anywhere major. Au contraire; you are heading East. East towards the homeland of the soldiers who ploughed through this way in the final stages of World War II. This was one of the main routes for the tanks and soldiers of the Red Army, fighting street by street, constantly under fire, advancing through the rubble of bombed out buildings in order to liberate Berlin from Fascism. There, now I'm getting carried away by Socialist Realism too!

More practically, Karl-Marx-Allee is as wide as it is because it was built for the May Day parades showing off the size of the army, their rocket missiles, and the patriotism of marching blue-shirted FDJ (Freie Deutsche Jugend) kids.

The architecture starts to really get imposing as you approach Straussberger Platz. On the left of Karl-Marx-Alle as you approach the circular Platz is Haus Berlin:

On the right of the Allee is an almost identical building, Haus des Kindes (named thus because it housed a department store catering for the needs of children). This view is looking back towards Alexanderplatz, with 'The Floating Ring' fountain in the foreground (and some building works), and the two 'Haus's like guarding sentinels.

The Haus des Kindes has a quote from Goethe's play 'Faust' carved into the stone (and note the hints at socialist classicism in the columns and rustification):

It says:

Solch ein Gewimmel möcht’ ich sehn,
Auf freiem Grund mit freiem Volke stehn.

Or in translation, something like:

Such busy, teeming throngs I long to see,
Standing on freedom’s soil, a people free.

I'm sure this wasn't put there as a prophecy of the fall of the rather un-free East German Soviet state. Nor was it all that accurate in that there was hardly anybody around, let alone a teeming throng.

Here's looking across at the Haus Berlin again. After the common-place Plattenbauten of Karl-Marx-Allee thus far, Straussberger Platz does seem like you've passed into another country. The architecture lining the wide Karl-Marx-Allee from herein just gets more alien to your typical Berlin tenement blocks or pre-fab high-rises.

It's here that you'll also find a statue to the eponymous hero of the boulevard, Karl Marx.

It might come as a surprise though that this boulevard wasn't always known as Karl Marx Allee. From its rebuild in 1949 up until 1961 it was named Stalinallee (previous to that it was called Große Frankfurter Straße). By the early sixties, even the DDR was realising that Uncle Jo had personally caused the death of millions (variously calculated between 3 and 60,000,000) of Russian dissidents and that it would be better not to revive his memory with the main show-piece Socialist street of East Berlin. It will be interesting to see if Berlin continues with the name Karl-Marx-Allee post-unification, or whether at some stage it will be renamed Große Frankfurter Straße again. Watch this space.

Karl Marx Allee (okay, Stalinallee) from here onwards is the result of a national building program ('Nationales Aufbau Programm') and a competition for architects with a five year plan (how Stalinist!) to create the first Socialist street on German Soil (der 'ersten sozialistischen Straße auf deutschem Boden'). Or as SED Secretary-General Walter Ubrecht said: 'The Stalinallee is the foundation stone of building Socialism in Berlin, the capital of Germany' ('Die Stalinallee ist der Grundstein des Aufbaues zum Sozialismus in der Hauptstadt Deutschlands, Berlin.'). There are still commemorations to this five-year plan in the buildings on Karl-Marx-Allee (as usual on my blogs, click for a larger photo - all taken by me, by the way!):

Meanwhile, some of the 'foundation stones' of the SED survive in the entrance halls of the buildings, e.g. this by PM Otto Grotewohl:

Whether the architects succeeded in building Socialism, I find their creations amazing. Here are a few photos:

I particularly like the façade of the Karl Marx Bookshop. If you have ever watched the German film about the Stasi 'The Lives of Others' ('Das Leben der Anderen'), you might remember this bookshop near the end:

Just by here you will also find the excellent Cafe Sibylle, which apart from a good place to rest and have a cuppa after traipsing up Karl-Marx-Allee, also has a very interesting museum about the construction of the street.

As you approach the Twin Towers of Frankfurter Tor, you might notice another 60's style cinema; this is das Kosmos, and premièred all the other DEFA films that Kino International couldn't manage because of the high output from those studios of films about ecstatic communists.

It is ironic that the five year plan to build 'the first Socialist street on German soil' was also the cause for the first demonstration by workers against the East German Soviet regime. But so it was when on the 16th June 1953 construction workers on Stalinallee, dismayed by increased productivity targets for no wage increase, went on strike, triggering mass uprisings across the whole of the DDR. Demonstrations were brutally suppressed by the Red Army and the East German Volkspolizei the next day in Berlin, during which they shot dead at least 55 protesters. It is for that reason that the former Charlottenburger Chaussee (the Western continuation of Unter den Linden) was immediately renamed the Straße des 17. Juni by West Berlin. It was a consequence of disaffected workers going to West Berlin for better-paid jobs that the Berlin Wall was erected in 1961, before which the DDR had lost 20% of its 'happy' citizens.

Soon though you come to the domed towers of Frankfurter Tor:

These rise up like lighthouses either side of the boulevard:

From here on the road is now called Frankfurter Allee. There are further examples of the kind of architecture that dominates Karl-Marx-Allee, but they have missing tiles, heavy graffiti, and a general air of neglect. At Frankfurter Tor, money for renovation ran out. It is worth having a look though to see the state that the rest of Karl-Marx-Allee had descended into. The final irony of DDR Socialist Realism is that in the end East Germany was running on a bankrupt economy, and when glasnost and perestroika swept through the Soviet Bloc it knocked out the props from a subsidised DDR. The May Day parade of 1989 had Erich Honecker and an uncomfortable looking Mikhail Gorbachev celebrating 40 years of the DDR, as tanks and soldiers passed by them along Karl-Marx-Alle. By the end of the year, it was all over.

On Yer Bike! - Public Bike Rental in Berlin & London

2010-08-03T09:53:00.026+01:00

I was very pleased to see that Mayor Boris Johnson has launched a public bike hire system into London. Well, I say 'public' but it is called the Barclays Cycle Hire and the bikes all have the Barclays Bank logo on them. But a minor quibble - they have to be funded somehow. It's just that it would be preferable if it wasn't by a bank that had built itself up from investment in the slave trade, financed the apartheid regime in South Africa, and bankrolled Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe. Still, the bumbling floppy-blonde-haired toff done good!

(photo AP - used without permission, sorry! I'll take it off if anyone complains)

Berlin has its own Deutsche Bahn 'Call a Bike' scheme - as do lots of other German cities:

(photo Andie Gilmour - click for bigger)

Getting around by bike is surely one of the best ways to explore a city, though perhaps not so cool (though exponentially more expensive) as doing it by Segway. London and Berlin are both good cities for cycling around, being relatively flat and with lots of green spaces, and I imagine traversing the cityscape might be less popular in San Francisco, Seattle, or Rome.

I wondered what comparisons there were between the London scheme and the DB 'Call a Bike' scheme and here are my findings.

Accessing the Schemes
To access the two schemes; London's Barclay's Cycle Hire currently requires you to purchase a 'membership' key for £3, and then charges £1 for each 24 hour period. With a key you can release four bikes, for use by family or friends. Eventually you will be able to pay at the docking stations without requiring a membership key.

For Deutsche Bahn's scheme you first need to register on-line for a one-off fee of €5, of which €2.50 is credited to your on-line account. In both schemes you need to give your credit/debit card details and any rental charges are automatically debited from them. In this comparison, the DB scheme is cheaper, especially if you are going to hire a bike a lot. By the way, the London scheme is going to develop so that you don't have to purchase a membership key beforehand, greatly enhancing its potential for casual use by tourist visitors.

Hire Charges
For rental charges whilst using the bike, the London scheme is better for short periods, as it is free for up to 30 minutes usage. If you return a bike to a docking station in this time, you can continue using the bikes for as many times as you want during the 24 hours for free. For using the bike for periods greater than 30 minutes, the costs are: up to 1 hour £1; up to one and a half hours £4; up to two hours £6; up to two and a half hours £10; up to four hours £15; up to six hours £35; and up to 24 hours £50.

By comparison, the DB scheme charges a flat-rate charge of 8 cents/minute, which works out as a whopping €4.80 per hour. Much better that you rent the bike for a full 24 hours, which costs €9. For a week's rental, the charge is just €36. If you have a BahnCard then you are only charged 6 cents/minute, but it is clear that there are opposing philosophies behind the two schemes: London encouraging short journeys, whist Berlin's is clearly for all day use. By the way, the DB scheme in Suttgart allows one hour free usage. I don't know why this isn't the case for all the German cities, but it would certainly be welcome I'm sure.

Pick up and Return
To rent a bike in London you need to go to a docking station, much the same as the Parisian Velib public bike hire scheme. There are lots of these, with more planned, and they can be located using this map.

By comparison, the DB scheme allows you to pick up and leave your hired bike at any road intersection. This map shows where all available individual bikes have been left at any particular ioment (click on 'Berlin' in the drop-down menu next to 'Stadt', and enter a street name if known). A good bet is that there are always plenty around places like Alexanderplatz and Potsdamer Platz, as well as the major train stations, but really, you do see them everywhere and anywhere.
At the moment it looks like the Barclay's scheme is concentrated on central London, whereas the Berlin scheme extends well out into the subburbs. This may well change in the future for London of course, as the scheme becomes popular. On the Berlin map there is a red zone where bikes have to be returned to, but looking at some of the outlying available bikes it looks like this isn't always adhered to!
With the London scheme, you just pop in your membership key in the slot in the docking point next to the bike to release it. The DB scheme is a bit more involved, in that you have to phone the (freecall) number on the bike, which includes the bikes unique id. You will be given a four digit code. You tap this number into the LCD touch-screen on the bike, and away you go. Be sure that the digital display on the bike has a flashing green light that means it is available. A flashing red light means that it still in use; a neat feature of the DB scheme is that the bikes have an inbuilt bike-lock and at anytime you can use the touch-screen to lock it temporarily. When you have finished using the bike for the day, take it to an intersection of streets within the red-marked zone on the map, and lock it. You use the touch-screen to tell it you are done, and it gives another four-digit return code. This you need to phone in again, also giving the two street names of the intersection, thereby ending you rental period and updating the website locator map.
The London scheme then is a lot easier to use, provided you know where the docking stations are. The Deutsche Bahn 'Call a Bike' needs you to have a mobile phone (the clue is in the scheme's name!), but allows you a great deal more freedom; for example, you could cycle out to the Grunewald forest on the Western edge of Berlin, and confidently lock your bike whilst you went for a bathe in the Havel or stop off at a Biergarten.

The Bikes
Comparing the two bike models, they both look solid, sturdy affairs. I think I would prefer the DB bike if I were going off-track. Also it has a handy carriage seat on the back for taking a child along with you, or carrying luggage; the dinky front-basket on the Barclays bike doesn't look so useful and I wouldn't fancy hauling the bike over my shoulder.

Alternative Bike Hire
As an alternative, there are many private bike-hire (Fahrradverleih) companies in Berlin and London. One such company has outlets in both; Fat Tire Bike Tours.
This is a photo I snapped of their shop under the Fernsehturm near Alexanderplatz:

As a comparison, Fat Tire in Berlin charge €12 for a day, but their strength is in their great guided bike tours and friendly (English-speaking) service. There are of course lots of other bike hire places in Berlin.
Conclusion
So in conclusion, I heartily recommend both initiatives. The more bicyles we can get onto our traffic congested streets the better. It might also encourage the building of more cycle lanes, though I must say I find Berlin has quite a good network. With the tourist in mind, I think the DB scheme would be much more useful and cost-effective, but then with the free first 30 minutes charge of the Barclays scheme I think it might get more commuters getting on a bike instead of clogging up the already over-crowded Tube trains. A disadvantage of the DB scheme though is that it all seems to be transacted in German. On the other hand, I can only find English on the Barclays Cycle Hire website.
Of course, it would be even better if Amsterdam's 'white bicycle' scheme from the late sixties had caught on, fifty white painted bikes left around the city by the anarchist Provos that anybody could just pick up and use for free. Unfortunately Reality is at variance with such a hippy utopia, but it does seem a shame that it is Barclays that is sponsoring the London scheme. Mind you, if they took over the DB scheme it would be rather interesting to see the reaction of people cycling around Germany on bikes prominently displaying a Prussian-looking eagle!

Prussian War Flag

Barclays Eagle