U9

Yesterday I rode the U9 from one end to the other and back again.

First I took the U8 to Osloer Strasse, which is sometimes its end point when it doesn't go all the way to Wittenau. I was on one of the older trains, where the cars are separate and you sit facing people in groups of four rather than in rows along the walls. On the way there a group of people got on the train, blasting music and singing along to it. One of them wished the train a "Happy Halloween!" although he was obviously German--apparently that phrase is too concrete to be translated into German. After they got off everybody else on the train sort of laughed together. That's probably the only time I've seen a train car full of strangers really interact.

 I'd never been to Osloer Strasse, so I left the train station and wandered around. The neighbourhood seemed slightly similar to our neighbourhood, with quite a few Turkish shops and apartments above them, but it had a somewhat different feeling to it--wider streets, and maybe less of a concrete identity. I circled the block and then got back on the U-Bahn, this time the U9 to Rathaus Steglitz. In the U-Bahn station at Rathaus Steglitz I saw signs pointing to Das Schloss. Naturally, I assumed that if I followed the signs they would lead me to a castle.

They led me to a shopping mall.

The area around Rathaus Steglitz was an odd mix of new stores, old buildings, and historical sites. Wikipedia tells me this is Berlin's second largest shopping area, which I didn't know beforehand. That big brick building (the Rathaus itself, I believe) in the last photo had cafes and a U-Bahn entrance at the bottom. The square, bordered by shops, had a Holocaust memorial. Across the street from the mall was another old building, the Schwarze Villa.

Maybe I've spent too much time on the east side of the city and haven't explored the west enough, but areas like Steglitz or the Ku'damm feel much less Berlin to me. Malls in general always feel oddly American, even if many of the stores in them wouldn't be found in the US. Architectural cohesiveness aside, places in Kreuzberg or Mitte I've spent time in feel much more cohesive in some indefinable way. The combination of crowded shopping area with beautiful old buildings here feels strange in a way that isn't present in other areas.

I didn't spend very long in Steglitz. Malls make me uncomfortable.