Spaziergangen rund Berlin

Spring is in full force in Berlin. I spent this weekend wandering my neighbourhood and wandering the city, both haphazardly and methodically, and everywhere I looked life was blooming and the birds were singing. It's after nine o'clock at night now, the sun has set, and my friendly courtyard Eurasian blackbird is still singing. Not a bad way to say goodnight, really.

Cherry blossoms on Käthe-Niederkirchner Strasse.

Yesterday, after a lazy morning, I set out initially with it in my mind to go back to Weißensee, but then I saw streets like Käthe-Niederkirchner, above, and I decided that on such a glorious spring day, I'd rather explore Prenzlauer Berg some more. And so I set out on a meandering path through the neighbourhood, leaving Bötzowstrasse behind and wandering further west, into the heart of Prenzlauer Berg. I found myself in short order at Kollwitzplatz, a super picturesque little square named after the artist, Käthe Kollwitz, and home to a lively little farmers market on Saturday afternoons.

Saturday market on Kollwitz Strasse.

Kollwitzplatz.

Spring light is pretty good light.

This old Wasserturm (water tower) was once used as an early concentration camp under the Nazis...

...but has since been converted into fashionable apartments!

View from the top of the Wasserturm platz.

European buildings are pretty!

Prenzlauer Berg being beautiful.

Balconies.

I spent quite a while by the Wasserturm, which has this beautiful little park around it. I went to a café across the street and ordered an iced tea to go (and actually managed to complete this transaction entirely in German, including asking where the bathroom was! ...I mean, I'm sure that the woman knew I didn't really speak German, but she didn't really speak English, so we managed with my nominal German, and that felt pretty good!). I took my Eistee and sat under the shade by this playground that had some really cool toys I wish the playgrounds of my youth had had. I left only once I started to miss my little nephew too much--all those little kiddies everywhere! But in general I like the fact that there are so many young families around here, because I can actually understand German kids--they speak plainly and clearly and use a simple vocabulary, which is always helpful.

On my way home, I stopped in yet another grocery store (I swear, every other day I pick up something!), since places are closed on Sundays in this surprising traditional country. I also treated myself to a cupcake at this place around the block from my apartment that I walk by every time I go to and from the tram stop. I had resisted it for this long, but the rhubarb vanilla cupcake they were advertising clinched the deal for me.

Vanilla!

Rhubarb vanilla perfection. Served with a fork, because Europeans are dainty.

Saturday was a lazy day designed for spontaneous meandering, but today I signed up for a tour of Berlin and pulled on my sneakers for a day of some serious walking. I headed out this morning to take the bus (Did you know Berlin has yellow double-decker buses? Because it does.) downtown, only to find that the bus wasn't running its full route because of a marathon. All of this was fine, really, because it gave me an excuse to take the U-bahn, which I actually hadn't yet taken since my apartment is located on the tram/bus line instead. At any rate, I made my way to the Brandenburg Gate where the tour was meeting.

Das Brandenburger Tor!

One of my new classmates joined me, (Amy, from Michigan), and we set out on the tour. It was a pretty basic tour and didn't take me anywhere I hadn't been before, but I did learn some new things, which is always a good thing. For instance, I learned more about the specific series of miscommunications and mistakes that led to the fall of the Berlin Wall (did you know it was really just a doofus of a GDR press secretary who mixed up his words and ended up telling the world media that travel regulations between the East and West would be permanently lifted, effective immediately? Seriously, how do you accidentally say that??), and I learned that the ground upon which the national Holocaust Memorial now sits was once the no-man's land between the Wall and before that was the pleasure gardens of the Third Reich ministries. Layers upon layers of history in this city. Sometimes quite literally.

Some photos from my walking tour:

The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, with the buildings of Potsdamer Platz in the background.

Cracks starting to show on some of the concrete stelae in the memorial.

Hitler's bunker, now buried under a parking lot.

The Berlin Wall and, on the right, the side of a building that originally housed the headquarters of the Luftwafte during the Third Reich, then government ministries under the communist East German government, and now the Ministry of Finance--one of the few buildings still standing in Berlin that has been used by three successive government regimes.

Checkpoint Charlie.

Unfortunately, Checkpoint Curry was not vegetarian-friendly, but I liked their name.

Babelplatz, where the Nazis' mass book burnings took place in May 1933. Every May, Berliners set up this outdoor library and reading space on the square as a kind of "suck it" to the Nazis. I kind of love it.

One of the buildings of Humboldt University.

I want that bicycle!

Oh hi, Fernsehturm! I see you there hiding behind the Berliner Dom!

All in all, it was a lovely weekend, with some lovely weather. I'm looking forward to my first full week of classes!

Oh yeah, and this happened this weekend:

Sometimes pretzels in Germany are not shaped like pretzels at all!

BREZELN COUNT: 2