Arrived in Berlin last Tuesday morning. I have been to Alexanderplatz about five times, but until this morning had not explored the neighbourhood beyond the Kaiser's three blocks away. Alexanderplatz kind of reminds me of Westlake, and some bits of Mitte I've walked through kind of remind me of downtown Seattle, but I walked down Oranienstrasse and realized it doesn't remind me of anything.
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| St Michael Kirche, under construction. |
The thing about living in a place with a lot of history is that it's full of funny contrasts. It's not strange to see graffiti (though nowhere in Seattle would you see so much of it), but it's strange to see a graffiti'd wall or a pink porta-potty next to a beautiful old church. It's a bit like being in multiple centuries at once--time lag mixed in with the jet lag.
Then there's also the places that you'd hardly believe used to be so different. I walked through the park that used to be in the Luisenstädtischer Kanal, which now includes a little lake (complete with turtles and a heron and some little birds that kind of look like sandpipers) and some nice paths. The canal became stagnant in the 1920s and was turned into a park, and when the Wall was built it followed the canal park on its southern side. In my walk I passed between crosswalks with the ordinary crosswalk lights to the ones with the little be-hatted Ampelmänner. Our apartments would have been inside East Berlin by one block.
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