Tag Archives: Germany

Apr 01 2026
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Daily Post, Interior

Heads

Tuesday 31st March 2026, 12.55pm (day 5,332)

Neues Museum heads, 31/3/26

If I was more of an artist I would come up with some allegorical statement here, the heads appear as if they are flying — but really, they are trapped, objects displayed for the delectation of visitors to this museum, none of whom will care for more than a few fleeting moments, if at all. Then again if I were more of an artist I would dispense with these commentaries altogether; I did try it once, way back, but it never took. This is the Neues Museum in Berlin, by the way: our last full day here.

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Mar 31 2026
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Art and architecture, Daily Post

Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe

Monday 30th March 2026, 5.15pm (day 5,331)

Berlin memorial, 30/3/26

This memorial consists of 2,711 stone slabs — officially ‘stelae’ — of varying height arrayed across an acre of ground near the Brandenburg Gate: more land formerly occupied by a part of the Berlin Wall, in fact. For more, see this page. That’s three pictures out of four that highlight a less favourable element of this country’s history but at least they seem to be prepared to remember in public.

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Mar 30 2026
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Daily Post, Urban scene

In the suburbs

Sunday 29th March 2026, 1.25pm (day 5,330)

Berlin suburbs, 29/3/26

A trip out to the suburbs today: definitely not the former Communist blocks, more like leafy Hampstead or Carshalton (if this were London). Streets named after composers, big gardens and garages, that kind of thing. One thing I like about Berlin is that it’s all quite laid back: it certainly doesn’t have the over-energised manicness of some capital cities. Perhaps this shot captures that.

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Mar 30 2026
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Daily Post, Interior

Surveillance society

Saturday 28th March 2026, 11.40am (day 5,329)

Stasi museum, 28/3/26

What was formerly East Berlin still retains a sense of the Communist era, particularly thanks to the rather uniform tower blocks that sprout over most of it. And then there’s the former HQ of the Stasi, the secret police (officially the Ministerium für Staatssicherheit). This is now a museum. And while it could do with a bit more technology and a bit less running through the basics of Cold War history one does come to appreciate what insidiously awful wankers they were, and also how it was all proppsed up by a wide network of informers and ‘voluntary’ agents. The Stasi wouldn’t just surveill you — if they thought you were in any way subversive they were quite prepared to engage in the systematic erosion of your personal and profesional identity, setting you up to fail, turning your friends against you and giving the truth to the old saying, ‘are you still paranoid if they really are out to get you?’. This equipment is displayed in the place where it was used, concealed in the walls of a washroom on the Ministerial floor of the building, and so being used to spy even on those at the very top of the Stasi. Not that we’re a great deal different now — it’s just all done digitally instead. Orwell was close enough.

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Sep 22 2024
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Daily Post, Transport

Friedrichstraße station, Sunday morning

Sunday 22nd September 2024, 7.35am (day 4,777)

Sunday morning, Friedrichstrasse, 22/9/24

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.

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Sep 22 2024
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Daily Post, Transport

The River Spree, at Lübben

Saturday 21st September 2024, 12.20pm (day 4,776)

Spree at Lübben, 21/9/24

Took myself on a day out into the countryside, specifically to the little town of Lübben, which lies about an hour’s train journey south of Berlin, further up the River Spree. Here, the river breaks into a series of creeks and canals, on which, today, a substantial number of tourists were floating around in either a self-propelled manner or on Venice-style gondolas, only piloted by gruff-looking East German types. But let’s go with this person-free shot, instead. One has to be pleased with the colour contrast here.

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Sep 20 2024
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Art and architecture, Daily Post

Der Mäusebunker

Friday 20th September 2024, 4.40pm (day 4,775)

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.

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Sep 18 2024
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Daily Post, Urban scene

Humboldt University

Wednesday 18th September 2024, 5.55pm (day 4,773)

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.

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Sep 17 2024
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Daily Post, Portrait, Stranger

First photo from this trip to Berlin

Tuesday 17th September 2024, 4.55pm (day 4,772)

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.

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May 11 2019
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Art and architecture, Daily Post

The IG Farben Building

Friday 10th May 2019, 5.55pm (day 2,815)

IG Farben building, 10/5/19

At one point during the conference I was attending at the Goethe University in Frankfurt today, there were vague references to ‘our famous building’ that drifted through my Friday consciousness but didn’t take hold. Then, on my way back into the city centre afterwards, I saw the building.

The IG-Farbenhaus has had a chequered history to say the least. HQ to the eponymous company, when built in the 1920s it was the biggest office building in Europe and remained so for thirty years. IG Farben manufactured the world’s first antibiotic — and also the gas that was used in the Nazi concentration camps. After the war the USA used it as a military base — the ‘Pentagon of Europe’; following German reunification ownership passed to the state of Hesse who renovated it and then helped the Goethe-Institut build a new campus around it from 2001 onwards. And all set in parkland (kept free of development by the Americans for security reasons) right in the city centre.

I’m sure this photo doesn’t do the architecture full justice, but what the hell, the sun looks good too.

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