Carnival of Cultures, Berlin
16 years ago 50,000 people took to the streets to watch the first parade of the Carnival of Cultures in Berlin. Over the weekend, the estimate was closer to a million, all drawn to the sounds, tastes and smells of this annual street festival and parade. We walked along the parade route, picking our way through crowds to get a glimpse of the floats and the performers, enjoying the novelty of a stroll down the middle of the road whilst cooks worked their stalls on the pavement and locals sunned themselves on their balconies as one of Berlin’s biggest street parties passed by beneath them.
Of pens and pencils – sketching and a sense of place
(above: Charlottenburg, Berlin – Rolf Schröter)
I first met Rolf Schröter when we organised a Slow Travel Day at the Circus last year, and he came along with the other members of Urban Sketchers Berlin to put together a sketching tour for people who fancied the chance at trying to capture their immediate environment on paper. Since then we have seen each other a handful of times, usually at a similar events, and I think that I probably would not recognise Rolf if he did not have his trusty sketchbook in hand.
Walking through memories, Berlin-Hohenschönhausen
This is the hundredth post on Under a Grey Sky. Before we begin, I would like to take the chance to thank everyone who has contributed to the website, as well as all of you who have taken the time to read it. Here’s to the next hundred…
A week or so ago we took the tram from where we live in Berlin-Wedding across the north of the city to Hohenschönhausen; part family outing, part mission to discover some of the secrets of this neighbourhood. It is not the most famous of Berlin’s districts, but as with everywhere in this city the streets of Hohenschönhausen had plenty of stories to tell.
There was Berlin history of course – from the site of the first Plattenbau built in the early 1970s to solve East Berlin’s housing shortage, via the only private house designed by Mies van der Rohe and a lesser-known housing estate by modernist architect Bruno Taut, to the thick walls of the Stasi Prison and a small, sidestreet Soviet memorial – but more personal than that were Katrin’s stories, as this is the neighbourhood where she lived throughout her teenage years.
St Jude’s In The City, London
Regular readers of Under a Grey Sky will know that we are fans of St Jude’s Fabric and Prints. Angie Lewin is the co-founder of St Jude’s, and this week as part of St Jude’s In The City is holding on exhibition of her work alongside that of Mark Hearld and Emily Sutton.
Angie will be exhibiting a range of limited edition prints including “Island Celebration”, which you can see at the top of this post, and there will be framed and unframed works from all three artists, as well as examples of the fabrics and wallpapers that have been made for St Jude’s. No tickets or invitations are required for the opening event, which will take place this Wednesday 23rd May 2012 from 6pm until 8pm at 30 Tottenham Street, London W1 (Tube: Goodge Street).
The exhibition then runs from 11am Thursday 24th may until 3pm Saturday 2nd June 2012, and if you want a chance to meet Angie, Mark and Emily beyond the opening event, then they will be hosting a book signing from 11am on Saturday 26th May. It all looks great, and we can only urge Londoners and those close by to go and check it out. Maybe there is a way we can persuade them to hold a St Jude’s in The City over here in Berlin…
In the Pankow Bürgerpark, Berlin
Saturday afternoon and the weather is unpredictable. In May you have to hope for a nice weekend, and this one is not sure how exactly it wants to be. When the sun comes out it is too warm for a jacket. When it hides behind the cloud it is too cold for a jumper. It is a reminder that summer is not yet here.
But still, with the first sign of sunshine and the first blossom on the trees Berliners head outside, to the beer gardens, the playgrounds, and most of all, the parks. At the Bürgerpark in Pankow families kick footballs around on the grass, or attempt to launch kites into the blustery sky. The goats grazing behind high fences look unimpressed at being watched by young kids in football shirts, waiting for a cup final that will take place past their bedtime. The beer garden is half-heartedly open, with sausages on the grill and beer on tap, but the shutters are down on the ice cream stand as if to say, “come on guys, not yet…”
No history on the long ridge?
Barry Sheppard looks back on the town he grew up in, and reflects on the stories you can discover in the places that you thought you knew so well…
When I was told the name ‘Under a Grey Sky’, only one thought popped into my head; home. Growing up in Lurgan there were plenty of grey skies overhead. I’m not saying it was dull, grey and boring – although it was at times like that – it is merely a passing comment on the usual state of the weather in that part of Ireland. For the sake of clarity I should point out there are several town lands of Lurgan in Ireland, one in Co. Galway, one in Co. Mayo and one in Co. Cavan. The Lurgan I spent the first nineteen years of my life is situated in Co. Armagh in the often disputed six north-eastern counties of Ireland. For those who don’t know, the name Lurgan is the anglicised re-branding of the original Gaelic name an Lorgain which means ‘the long ridge’.
In the nineteen years I spent in Lurgan before departing its designated electoral boundaries, I can honestly say that not much out of the ordinary really happened. Some may dispute this or say I have lightly glossed over the previous number of decades of conflict, but to that I would say that for my generation that was the ordinary. Anyway, back to the long ridge. In the norm people did the everyday things as they do everywhere; school, jobs, marriages, pub and bookies, and not always in that order. It seems that it was the normal drill since time immemorial, or since the plantations. It would be fair to say that there were not many who thought too hard about the history of their surroundings.
RSPB Marshside, Southport, UK
Chris Hughes on the birds of Marshside at the Ribble Coast and Wetlands Regional Park:
The River Ribble flows from Yorkshire via Settle, through Clitheroe and Preston in Lancashire and out into the Irish Sea between Lytham St Annes and Southport, a total length of 75 miles. It is tidal for 11 miles up to Preston and the estuary is 10 miles wide.
Up to 340,000 water birds over-winter on the Ribble estuary making it the most important wetland site in the UK.
In the 1960′s the last new sea bank was built north of Southport using household rubbish for the core of the bank and later the coastal road was built on top. Finished in 1976 it enclosed a large area of salt marsh which later became fresh water marsh. In 1994 the RSPB leased the marsh from Sefton Council and the RSPB Marshside Nature Reserve was created.
The reserve is now part of the Ribble Coast and Wetlands Regional Park, and is recognised as internationally important for several species of waterfowl.
Beers under a grey sky at Berlin’s Prater Garten
At Berlin’s oldest beer garden it is the first weekend in May, the flowers are blooming on the trees, but the shutters are most definitely down, behind which are locked beer taps that will not be flowing with Prater Pils. It seemed like the perfect time to head out for the first beer garden afternoon of the year. The skies may have been overcast all morning, and there is a slight chill in the air, but we have sipped beers in the rain here before, sheltering under those generous branches that provide shade on better days, or under the roof where they place the big screens for football tournaments.
Luckily the Prater has a restaurant, and they are more than happy to serve us some drinks to take out into the beer garden which we then have pretty much to ourselves. The kids do not have to wait for the swing in what is often both Berlin’s smallest and busiest “playground”, and we have our pick of the benches and tables. There is no sausages on sale, pretzels or pasta salad, but the burger place across the street is open and for once, there is no-one to object to us bringing in our own food.
What’s in a view?
George McKinney reflects on how we appreciate what it is we have before us, from the sun setting behind the island of Rhum to a Sea Eagle making graceful progress across the sky:
Of course the simple answer to the title-question is; whatever you see. Line ten people up to watch the sun set behind the Scottish island of Rhum and you will find that each will see something different and the process of sharing their thoughts can add something for everyone.
This process is only disturbed if any of the ten argue to impose their own perspectives on the others or if one person adopts a position that seeks to degrade any other person’s contribution by suggesting that s/he is not competent to appreciate what is there before them all.
In his book, ‘How to be a bad bird-watcher’ Simon Barnes excellently captures this sentiment and defends the importance for individuals to have confidence to simply enjoy what they see. If a bird is seen and the watcher marvels at its colours or actions, then that is absolutely fine as an end in itself. The same is true for the feelings and thoughts that an individual might have when watching that sun go down behind Rhum.
Above the cliffs of Duino
In January 1912 the poet Rainer Maria Rilke was staying with the Princess Marie von Thurn und Taxis-Hohenlohe at the castle in the small village of Duino, just up the coast from Trieste. It was whilst staying there and walking along the clifftops, that the first line of what would become the Duino Elegies – one of his most celebrated works – came to him.
Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the Angelic
Orders? And even if one were to suddenly
take me to its heart, I would vanish into its
stronger existence. For beauty is nothing but
the beginning of terror, that we are still able to bear,
and we revere it so, because it calmly disdains
to destroy us. Every Angel is terror.(Translated from the German by A.S. Kline, here)
