Plattenbau, not yet ‘torn asunder’
Posted: February 25, 2011 Filed under: Lost in Berlin | Tags: Berlin, Gehrenseestr, hohenschönhausen, photos, Plattenbau, ruin porn, ruins 1 Comment »
Ghost city...creepy
Maybe I watch too many horror movies.
Tip-toeing over the broken glass on the overgrown street, alone and surrounded by the ghostly abandoned buildings I could have sworn I felt eyes watching me from the dark empty windows above. Birds rummaged in the dry leaves allowed me for a second to imagine I heard someone following. Another noise in the building above turned out to be a torn window shade flapping in the wind.
The whole time I was imagining zombies out of 24 or I am Legend running out of the shadows while I had my eye in the view finder. Surely the minute I walked inside, the door would slam behind me and a rat pack of teenage undead would scramble down the hallways, stomp me to a pulp, and eat my brains?
It could happen. Read the rest of this entry »
WTF am I doing in Berlin?
Posted: February 24, 2011 Filed under: Lost in Berlin | Tags: Berlin, culture clash, culture shock, disease fiction, gentrification, German American relations, language, photos, Political fiction, travel writing 2 Comments »
Whether people voice the question precisely that way or not, it’s a question almost everyone asks me. Not just my family and friends, but complete strangers here in Berlin, almost anyone I talk to who finds out I’m an American, people next to me in line, waiters and waitresses (sorry, ‘server’ sounds too much like ‘servant’), the guy renovating our hallway, the young lady working at the bakery down the street, everybody.
I especially feel like I need to explain this to Berliners. The big debate right now is about Gentrifizierung: all the cool kids, young professionals, graphic/fashion/computer game/everything designers, all the government workers and whathaveyou, not to mention the foreigners: the Russians, Polish, Balkan, Vietnamese, Nigerian, Turkish, North African, and worse, the British, Spanish, Italian, Dutch and Americans, and even the worst of all: the Schwabian, Bavarian, Rhinelandian, Westphalian and whatever other ‘Wessis’ pouring in the city.
I am not one of these hated Latte drinking “Gentrifizierer.” I drink normal coffee anyway. Read the rest of this entry »
Plattenbau, “Torn Asunder”
Posted: February 22, 2011 Filed under: Lost in Berlin | Tags: Berlin, Deutsches Demokratisches Republik, GDR, German Democratic Republic, Ossis and Wessis, photos, Plattenbau, population collapse, ruin porn, ruins 2 Comments »
What happens when a million and a half people leave a city? Detroit is learning this, New Orleans learned some about this a few years back, and twenty years ago Berlin wrote the book.
Actually, twenty years ago, when the wall fell, Berlin wrote the last chapter in its 60 year story of losing citizens. And that’s just last century’s book.
Yes, the highwater-mark year of 1939 (only as far as population and nazis) Berlin claimed more than 4.3 million inhabitance…one million more than even today call the city home. Read the rest of this entry »
My brain is bear and I am Colbert
Posted: February 18, 2011 Filed under: Lost in Berlin | Tags: Berlin, l, photos 2 Comments »
Due to a run on some fabulous anarchist anger this week in Berlin, I got me some great smashed window pictures.
Other than that apparently my brain is a cold, pregnant bear and has wandered off into the mountains to find a place to hibernate.
Jesus. There we go again. This entire week…actually now around ten days…all I put on the page is vomit. Crap. Icky icky things. I fucking hate bears. Read the rest of this entry »
Berlin graffiti
Posted: February 9, 2011 Filed under: Lost in Berlin | Tags: Berlin, Graffiti, photos 3 Comments »
Yes, don’t adjust your monitor, that is William Jefferson Clinton with the word ‘Pimp.’
Now, mind you, plenty of hardcore graffiti websites exist dedicated to the art everywhere on the walls in this city. There are movies and youtube videos and probably several books.
I don’t claim to have discovered anything…and I don’t know anything about the artists, I’m not cool and I don’t know the schools and styles and what’s hip and what’s not, who’s copying who and who is ‘original’…I haven’t even yet seen the Banksy movie yet…I simply enjoy spotting this stuff.
I mean, Bill Clinton with the word “PIMP” below? That is awe-inspiring, mind-blowing…whatever it means.
Sunday’s lost and found
Posted: February 6, 2011 Filed under: Lost in Berlin | Tags: Berlin, photos Leave a comment »
Another Sunday’s wandering… my neighborhood walking west a few blocks to Karl Liebknecht. The corridor between Moll Strasse/Landsberger Allee and the Karl Marx Allee, which consists of a Plattenbau cluster or two, but mostly empty space for rent.
There are miriad Big Dreams of tearing this all down and building skyscrapers. Surely, more than one of the pictured buildings’ days are numbered.
I somehow find the buildings kind of cool. Commie office buildings. The old steaming coffee cup is just about as cool as it gets…to have seen it all lit in neon in its day!
Today, unfortunately, it all falls into the Burst Asunder, Gentrifizierung catagory that Berlin’s super left is revolting against, especially in the last week since the police evicted a squatter house around since the 1990. Stay tuned for an article on that one, for now here’s a slide show. Read the rest of this entry »
