This being one of the world’s great party cities, I am sure there were a reasonable number of Berliners who were comfortably still on their Saturday night out at 7.35am: but I will never be a person like that again. Personally, I was on the way to the airport. It’s been a good and potentially transfomative trip.
Formally this used to be the “Research Institute for Experimental Medicine”, which I am sure is quite as sinister as it sounds, so its being more popularly known as “The Mouse Bunker” does show that Germans indeed possess a sense of irony. It’s a masterpiece of brutalism, anyway, of which no one picture can do justice but you’ll get a better impression looking it up online. It’d be nice if the white ball of the street lamp wasn’t there, but otherwise, the light will certainly do.
Conferences are not the most exciting arena photographically, but at least this photo proves I am here to work — or at least, to listen to the outcomes of other people’s work.
Amongst various (acknowledged) perks of my job I get to visit some world-renowned seats of learning, and the Humboldt University of Berlin is definitely one of the elite. Scholars who have worked here include Einstein, Schopenhauer, Marx, Weber, Hegel, Planck and von Braun, and if you haven’t heard of at least three of those, you need to do some more reading.
There is something terribly autumnal about this shot, even if it was 25ºC and extremely pleasant in Berlin today. But here we are, mid-to-late September, and I suppose it’s an inevitability.
Second photo in a row of the next person along the platform, but this was an utterly random moment that could not be resisted. Somehow this bodes well for the rest of the week. The blog’s second, and my third, trip to Berlin.
The building which houses the Jewish Museum in Berlin is one of the most brilliant pieces of architecture I have ever experienced. Even if it were empty of exhibits — and at the moment, due to a renovation, it nearly is — it would make you think. There are these great vertical voids throughout the building, including the ‘Holocaust Tower’, a vast blank space illuminated only by a sliver of light coming in through the top. Another is covered with these metal sculpted faces, representing the innocent dead, that you must walk across in order to traverse the space. Then there is this garden, the ‘Garden of Exile’ — its plants placed high up on these stone pillars. Walking around it, other people appear and disappear randomly from view. This is architecture of genius, and well worth visiting. Though don’t expect to come out of it feeling any happier about the world — except, perhaps, that it has been built in Berlin. That fact alone gives me some hope.
Some parts of the old Berlin Wall remain in the city. Probably they could have been demolished back in 1990 but the authorities realised — correctly — that they were valuable as memorials and/or tourist attractions. Or, as in the case of the East Side Gallery, which runs beside the Spree for about a kilometer near the Ostbahnhof, an art installation; this long line of concrete has been decorated by a range of murals, including this one of Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov, who seems to disdain the busker beside him, playing as he is on a load of old water pipes, or something.
The next burst of summer holiday is taking place in Berlin, where Clare and I travelled today. We didn’t arrive until late afternoon and I feel I managed to do little, photographically, with the various opportunities offered: a few stereotypical shots of the Brandenburg Gate, which everyone snaps (our hotel is only a few minutes’ walk away). But this sausage stand nearby did capture the attention. As anyone who’s been to Germany knows, if you want a roadside sausage, this is the world epicentre. And that German word always gives scope for some dreadful pun or other.
Being 42 