Friday, September 25, 2015

Europa Part Zwei

With the breathing space that a career change provides, I tacked on a week in Berlin and a final weekend in London before heading back stateside.  The three weeks altogether was the longest block of time I'd played tourist in awhile, but Berlin being the city that it is I felt right at home.  I read in a travel magazine once that Berlin is "the city where you don't feel out of place"; I certainly felt that on my first visit, a student backpacking through Europe, and again on this last trip.

It of course helped that I had the luxury of staying with an old Weimar girlfriend (10 year reunion!), but what really made me feel right at home was re-exploring a city overrun by designers and artists.  I'd heard a lot about its gentrification over the years, but it was so interesting to see what that meant for a city when the primary industries there aren't tech and more tech (and the wealth that comes with that).  Enter more open shared grounds, creative re-activation of spaces and good, cheap beer.

Case in point: my visit to Klunkerkranich.  This was a bar / restaurant complete with family-friendly sandpit was on the roof of a very unremarkable shopping mall in Neukölln.  I had to ask for directions at a run down dollar store to confirm that, yes, I should really just go to the top level of the parking lot and just keep walking.  I'm so glad I did!
Prinzessinnengarten was another gem of a space; a sustainably run community farm where you can come and enjoy lunch made from the vegetables grown, have a beer or just chill out.  Busy roads rush all around but you can't hear them once you're nestled in; importantly it was right next to...
...Planet Modulor!  Aka my dream store.  More than just a paper store, it's a comprehensive material store where they sell everything from ropes (above) to foam to cards and stamps and pens and packaging and even neon ribbon from the Netherlands.  I spent half a day there and considered that a huge act in self restraint *cue emoji of winged cash*.
Isn't it always zeit für brot?  Oh German bread how I missed you!  I also can't go this far in a travel post without mention of a good carb.  Not pictured: all of those dark, delicious heavy ryes I had before coming to this new kid on the block.
Succulents playing shoe adornments at Tempelhof Field - once a military base, airport and now a big sprawling mass of land for barbecues, sports and DIY gardens like this one.  The scale of it all was the startling part, it's so rare to be in the middle of a city and then suddenly be walking on broad, flat spans of land.
Obligatory photo of the canal, complete with tiny swan in the center.  What I especially love about walking along here in Berlin is that when the weather is good you see people really enjoying it, climbing over fences and making all efforts to swing their feet off the edge and sit with a beer, that always seems to magically appear when the weather is good.
Oh Berlin!  I hope it isn't another ten years until we meet again.

1 comments :

Anonymous said...

Looks like an amazing trip!

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