Scrambled egg history

This week I've been noticing parts of the Berlin landscape that have been recycled or used in unexpected ways. That's the door to the Bauakademie, but it doesn't open onto the Bauakademie, because the Bauakademie no longer exists except as a canvas mock-up in its former location. It is now part of a different building. If you didn't know its history, it would seem simply a pretty door in a random building. Though inserting it in another building has preserved it, it has also obscured the door's history--and simultaneously made that history richer.

I happened upon the Give Box on a random tiny side street near Weinmeisterstrasse. The idea is that if you have something you don't need that you think someone else could use, you leave it in the Give Box, which is about the size of a wardrobe and has hangers for clothing and shelves full of stuff. It's tucked into an alcove on  the side of the street; you can't see it until you're standing next to it. It seems like an odd thing to run across, an odd use of public space in an oddly formal way--this is clearly a well-established thing, not just a "free stuff" box by the side of the road. Who knows how it started.

Nobody seems to know that statue's story. It stands in Viktoriapark, and it's a mystery who it represents and why it's painted as it is. The paint obscures the statue's identity, but if it were not painted it would be just another statue--and, frankly, I have seen more than enough statues.

The Bauakademie door and the statue are a good example of how history is visible here, but it's not always visible in legible, logically organized ways. The door isn't consistent with the building it's attached to, and the purple and silver paint isn't consistent with what looks like a statue of a nice 19th century gentleman. In Berlin, history is sometimes a bit of a jigsaw puzzle.