Berlin

[Bridie]

Thanks to all who contributed to this great thread.

Berlin is like nowhere else - you now what I mean.
I lived in W Germany in the mid sixties for a short while, went to school with children who's families had fled E. Germany and I visited the wall in Berlin. It's fascinating to see the other side of the wall from these pics to what I imagined it would be like.

[Sharon]

Wonderful stuff.


Some Berlin news; Tacheles is to close, being a prime development site and all.
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-0 ... mitte-site

[Charlotte]

This really is a great thread! The photos are amazing! I can't believe Tacheles is closing down I was there over a year ago protesting about its closure, but I guess it didn't work

[Toby Dammit]

Not surprising about Tacheles really. It had become surrounded by would be upmarket restaurants and chi-chi boutiques, while the building itself had become very touristy, all rather impressive to teenage French and Italians looking for something "cool", but lacking the authentic edge I'm sure it possesed in it's glory days after the Wall came down.

The building is an impressive semi-ruin however, a great shame it's become the victim of the gentrification it'll have generated in the first place. Correct me if I'm wrong but now the alternative, arty, "David Bowie Low" type centre of Berlin seems to have shifted to Kreuzberg.

[Toby Dammit]

Some unposted pics shot in July 2010.


Pergamon


The Koenigskolonnaden, Potsdamer Straße


East German Fountain outside Pension Reiter, Palisadenstraße


Berliner Kriminal Theater, Palisadenstraße


Now THAT'S a door. Hebbel Theater stage-door


Voßstraße


Wings over Karl Marx Allee


Underground entry hall for the ICC


Nighthawks at the diner


And finally, what is this spooky cat and rat sculpture for? I'm pretty sure its grafted onto a modern building on Friedrichstraße, but I can find no information about it.

[Monument]

Berlin have found their very own Panopticon - underground.

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/beautiful-berlin-cabaret-theatre-discovered-under-20-tonnes-of-rubble-8344028.html

[stilldontknow]

I love Berlin. First visited in 2006 and been four times since. Relaxed but endlessly interesting, can't get enough.


100_0205 by tommym2000, on Flickr



100_0470 by tommym2000, on Flickr



100_0566 by tommym2000, on Flickr


100_0635 by tommym2000, on Flickr


100_0748 by tommym2000, on Flickr

[Lucky Poet]

Berlin - can I go back soon? I'm a bit sad I probably won't be there this year. Anyway, last time I was there I ended up taking a trip over to Potsdam, which is at least on the Metro system even if it's obviously not Berlin as such. Close enough to belong in this thread though, I reckon.

The first bit I actually got round to taking a photo of could almost be in a 70s redevelopment anywhere in Scotland, in the form of a scabby old DDR-era library (belonging to the Uni, if I remember rightly):


Not far round the corner is this:


Which a helpful local told us had been a canal (um, until the Allies bombed the hell out of it):


There are plans afoot to restore at least a bit of it. There's a strangely pleasing shabbiness about some corners of the town: most of the centre has been beautifully restored, but then theres this kind of thing:


And a slightly down-at-heel side street. Take away the modern bikes and this could be any time in the last hundred years:


A wee bit further, a DDR-era theatre, currently awaiting some purpose:




Some of it is certainly not shabby though, like the other less well-known Brandenburg Gate:


And in Sanssouci, it gets over the top. Here are the terraces and steps seen and posed on in countless photos of Allied servicemen shortly after the 1945 surrender:


Fancy doesn't even begin to cover it:


In fact it's a bit silly:


Worth a visit though.

[Josef]

Berlin - can I go back soon? I'm a bit sad I probably won't be there this year.

No, no, no. We should just make it an annual HG event, much like the M74 (or whatever) walk used to be on the 2nd of January.

Gwan, gwan. You know you want to.

The thing about Potsdam was.... you turned a corner and you were in Cambuslang Main Street. And then another one, and you most certainly weren't. Oddness defined.