Exploring Berlin

We had a delicious breakfast this morning with Kris and Tina Kotarski, friends of my son, Richard. Photo of course included. The restaurant was called the Winter Garten, very classy. And the conversation with Kris and Christina delightful. 

With their help we headed off to East Berlin. 

It is amazing how often you come upon markets. We found three today. Notice the web address on the banner, old thing.de 

The best ones were those near the graffiti walled areas. But first the East Side Gallery. The art work first commissioned in 1991 on a long stretch of the Berlin Wall got a facelift in 2009 by the same artists from around the world. Even with graffiti it still is impressive. 

East Berlin has a rawness about it. The markets show that for sure.

And the art work, graffiti.

Norm couldn't resist talking with the guys from Britain (of course) on a stag getaway. 

Here is a food cart they would understand.

And lots more art work on walls, buildings....

Norm and I walked the Karl-Marx Allee. Now here is a grand processional street with statues, massive Communist block apartments and the Frankfurter Tor, a pair of towers with columned and domed cupolas that impose an unusual appearance to this grand wide street. The 1950s apartment blocks that line both sides are only eight storeys high, but the enormous wide spaces make individuals walking along feel insignificant. Perhaps that was the whole idea.

Alexanderplatz is where you'll see the World Time Clock and the Tower. Berlin has set up all over the city a series of kiosks telling about May 1945 (Spring in Berlin) and how Berliners began to rebuild. They are informative and well done. Did you know about the narrow gauge "rubble railroad" that ran many trips every day to remove the wreckage of bombed and burned buildings from the central districts of Berlin. We learned from a Dutch couple at a cafe Sunday morning about the Devil's Mountain, a hill made entirely of rubble east of the city, even equipped with chair lifts, until the Americans decided the high ground would make a better radar perch than ski hill.

As you can see, it was 8 am on the west coast of North America when Mary snapped this shot of the clock in late-afternoon Berlin.

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