Alongside the railway tracks at Warschauer Straße, in the Friedrichshain neighbourhood of Berlin, is a former railway repair yard that has been turned into a post-industrial cultural oasis, with bars and clubs, a skatepark and a climbing centre, amongst many other small and medium sized projects. This is the “RAW-Gelände”, from the wonderfully German word “Reichsbahnausbesserungswerkstatt” – the repair yard of the national railways.

This was the oldest company Friedrichshain, founded in 1867 for the Prussian railways and in particular, the “Ostbahn” which ran from Berlin to Königsberg and East Prussia (present day Kaliningrad). By the end of the nineteenth century the repair yard was employing over 1000 workers, and it continued operations through the GDR years when it was named for the Bavarian communist Franz Stenzer, who was murdered by the Nazis. In 1991, following reunification, the yard was closed, and since the end of the twentieth century it has begun its new life as a cultural hub, although walking through the complex you still get a sense of what it used to be – which is part of the attraction.

Over the weekend I ran another Wedding tour, and as with the old “RAW” complex in Friedrichshain, I was reminded again how many different buildings and spaces are being re-imagined and re-used for purposes very different than they were built for. On the tour alone, in a couple of hours of walking through Wedding, we passed an old bus yard and tram depot, a former artillery factory, a former safe-making factory, small industrial workshops, a swimming pool and a crematorium, all of which are now being used for cultural or artistic projects. As with the RAW complex, it is the reminder of the former purpose and its integration into the new projects that are why these places “work” as locations, bringing new life and new activities to structures that have served their purpose and would, presumably, be otherwise destroyed, or left to rot.

Words: Paul Scraton
Pictures: Katrin Schönig

No, this post is not about the Botanic Gardens of Berlin, so wonderfully captured recently on the überlin blog. The reason for this post is somewhat more personal, as I caught the S-Bahn this morning from Bornholmer Straße south to Steglitz and the Botanischer Garten stop. This was my first neighbourhood in Berlin, back in the winter of 2001/2. Having moved to the city without a place to stay, one of my colleagues who was also studying at the Free University offered me a room in his apartment. The flat was on the ground floor, which made it a little dark – and happily cool when it came to the summer – but this was made up for by the fact that we had an overgrown garden out the back door that only Thomas and I had access to.

Altogether I lived down by Botanischer Garten for about nine months, before Thomas returned to Australia and I moved north, to Prenzlauer Berg, Mitte and, eventually, where we are now in Wedding. But I have very strong memories of that time, perhaps because it was my first months in the city. We would travel into the city on the S-Bahn, although if we were caught in town after the last train we would catch a night bus that took us on moonlight ride through deserted streets for over an hour, from Hackerscher Markt through Checkpoint Charlie to Kreuzberg and Schöneberg, before finally stopping in the shadow of the Rathaus tower in Steglitz. Sometimes, when Thomas had worked late and I was on an early shift, we would meet on the platform of the Botanischer Garten station, both of us bleary-eyed at opposite ends of our respective days.

Before I moved in with Thomas the Berlin I had known was that of the Rosa Luxemburg Platz and the north end of Mitte and Prenzlauer Berg. It was Alexanderplatz and Karl Marx Allee, the grand old buildings of Unter den Linden and the towering Plattenbau of Leipzigerstraße. I remember that Steglitz, only twenty minutes south on the S-Bahn, felt like another city altogether. Over time of course I realised that the distinctive character of many different neighbourhoods is part of the appealing nature of Berlin, and something I have talked about on here on Under a Grey Sky many times before, but back then I simply marveled at the difference between what I saw in the east and the west of the city, even though more than a decade had passed since the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Despite my interest in the history of the GDR in particular that had drawn me to Berlin in the first place, and the fact that the Berlin I initially fell in love with was the kilometre or so either side of the Schönhauser Allee in the old east, it was during those months in Steglitz that I also developed a soft spot for the old west. The shopping street of Schloßstraße reminded me of an English city centre. The U9 took me quickly up to Zoo and the West End, where everything felt much more like I the city I was reading about in Christopher Isherwood’s Goodbye to Berlin than it did around the Alexanderplatz. I mostly enjoyed the journey to and from work, even when works on the line resulted in a time-consuming diversion via the Ring-S-Bahn to catch the U8. This took me along the bottom of the Tempelhof airfield, as it still was, and I still have a very clear memory of that iconic old airport seen from an S-Bahn window in the early morning sunshine.

Walking around my old neighbourhood this morning I noticed some things that had changed in the ten years since I lived there – a “new” bakery, the fact that the Botansicher Garten station is locked up now, and you can only reach the platforms via the bridge,  and that my old kebab shop has moved to bigger premises across the street – but what is so striking, in this city where the debates around progress, changes, redevelopment and gentrification rage on and on, is how much that has stayed the same. I think this is what is appealing about many of the southern and western districts of Berlin, whether it is the area around Savignyplatz or the leafy streets of Lichterfelde, that there is a rootedness and a consistency to them; these are neighbourhoods that know and are happy with what they are. These are not the coolest, the most dynamic or the most vibrant corners of the city, but they manage, with their little squares and almost small-town feel to make this metropolis by the Spree feel that little bit more human… especially useful for the small town boy from West Lancashire. Sitting in that garden with Thomas as the sun came up one morning after a night in town waiting for the first S-Bahn to run, I can remember feeling happy to have landed there. It was nice to go back.

Words & Pictures: Paul Scraton

Since I moved to Germany I have made a handful of trips south to Dresden, that grand old city on the Elbe with its beautiful Altstadt and bustling and buzzing Neustadt on opposite banks of the river. The first time we went there we caught the train sometime in January, walking through the snow past some suitably eastern bloc socialist modernist architecture before we reached those buildings that made the city famous and that can, with a squint and a bit of imagination, return us to the city as painted by Bellotto during the 18^th Century, a period when Dresden was renowned for its art and architecture, and which inspired Schiller to write his Ode to Joy, his poem celebrating brotherhood and unity of all mankind.

The wide sweep of the river separates the old and the new towns – and the flood meadows that seem to stretch almost as wide as the Elbe itself highlight the sense of distance between either side. On another visit I came south with a friend to play Petanque, tossing those boules along pathways in the manicured gardens of the Japanese Palace on the northern bank, our view back across to the old town distracting in its beauty. It was around about then that they finished the reconstruction of the Frauenkirche, and it is at this point we come to the unavoidable fact about Dresden and one which cannot help but shape your view of the city however many times you visit.

For the best part of half a century the ruins of the Frauenkirche stood as an anti-war memorial, a visible reminder of those couple of days in February 1945 which continue to shape the city to this day. The bombing raids of the American and British forces remain a controversial act– Churchill would distance himself from the attacks even though he played an important role in the planning – and whatever one’s opinions as to the justification or otherwise,  the events of 13-15 February, which almost completely destroyed the heart of the city, costing the lives of tens of thousands of civilians in the process, remains a stark reminder of the brutality of the wars that shaped the first half of the 20^th Century.

The scars are perhaps not necessarily obvious, but like Berlin, or Coventry, or any other city that finds itself under sustained attack from the air and is left with such a massive re-building project as Dresden was, the memorial is – in many ways – the city itself that rose from the rubble. That walk past those communist-era buildings remind us of who it was that re-built Dresden after the war – and the division of Germany and the establishment of the German Democratic Republic was a legacy of the conflict as much as the ruins of the Frauenkirche. And now, like so many of the grand old buildings re-built during the GDR years and beyond, the Frauenkirche has risen again, a symbol of reconciliation between former enemies, and one which combines salvaged stones from the old cathedral that are speckled around the structure.

In some corners of Dresden you imagine you are looking upon a scene that has been consistent for hundreds of years. In others you are taken back to when this corner of the GDR was known as the Tal der Ahnungslosen (Valley of the Clueless) because of the locals inability to access “West” radio and television. In still others you see the battle all old cities face between progress and preservation, and which has cost Dresden and the Elbe Valley its place on the UNESCO World Heritage List. All cities tell a story through their architecture, but few required such a level of rebuilding after such a cataclysmic event that it is sometimes what is no longer there that resonates more than what has been built since. Perhaps it would have been better to leave the Frauenkirche as ruins, as they did in Coventry, Dresden’s twin city. Or perhaps it really is something special, that once a month the re-built cathedral hosts evensong in English, something that must have seemed unimaginable even in the months after the last bombs had fallen.

Words: Paul Scraton
Pictures: Katrin Schönig

The tours that we have started running over at Slow Travel Berlin seem to be taking off in a big way, and if you go to this page you will see many different fascinating tours coming up in the next few weeks. I have another cultural-historical neighbourhood tour of Wedding next Sunday (19^th May) which I am really looking forward to, and a week later on Sunday 26^th May I will be heading south with a small group to walk a 12 kilometre stretch of the Berlin Wall Trail, between Griebnitzsee and Wannsee.

Last summer I did a test walk of this route, which I wrote about here, and it is one of those walks that proves that the very edge of the city can be as interesting as the centre. The walk begins with the villas that housed Churchill, Truman and Stalin during the 1945 Potsdam Conference, takes us past enclaves completely surrounded by the Berlin Wall, old royal palaces and a bridge where spies were exchanged during the Cold War, before a beautiful walk along the banks of the Havel towards Wannsee – West Berlin’s “beach resort” where, in a shady villa at the end of a leafy street, leading members of the Nazi government met to discuss plans for the “final solution” and the murder of six million Jews in Europe.

The walk will take around four to five hours, and there are still a few spaces left. The best place to book is on the tour page at Slow Travel Berlin. And please take the time to look at some of the other tours that are happening over the next couple of weekends… a great way to explore some different corners of the city, and to hear some stories you might otherwise have missed.

A few miles north of Amherst we found Montague, driving slowly through the sleepy town to try and find the Book Mill, a bookshop that we had heard about that claimed to offer the winning combination of “books you don’t need, in a place you can’t find.” In the end it was not too difficult, as we followed the map until we reached the point where it crossed the Sawmill River and there it was, painted red and clinging to the embankment above the rapids that rushed beneath the road.

Stepping inside we found a treasure trove of used books, in a number of different rooms that all seemed to be on different levels, with low ceilings and reading corners tucked away on window ledges or under the eaves. There were tables, where people spread out their papers and got on with some work surrounded by millions and millions of words, and when they were stuck, or in need of sustenance, they headed down to the pub on the downstairs level, for a sandwich and a beer and  a view over the river. The selection is large and varied, and it would take days to really work your way through the shelves. It is hard to imagine a more perfect bookshop.

The first building on this site was built in 1832 as a gristmill, where families from Montague and the surrounding towns would come to the banks of the Sawmill River to get grain, which was delivered by railroad cars and ground into flour. The power of the river turned the stone grinding wheels, as it would later be harnessed to start the turbines that would be used by the Martin Machine Company that bought the site in the 1930s and would continue manufacturing here until 1987 when the company moved to Turner Falls.

And then came the books… and although the Book Mill has changed hands a number of times over the years it remains locally owned, and alongside the bookshop and the pub there is a restaurant with a  terrace looking out over the river, a music store and the Sawmill River Arts – a collaborative fine art and fine craft gallery. You can read more about the history of the building and the different activities that take place there on the website, but I can only urge anyone that finds themselves in eastern Massachusetts to take the road north from Amherst to Montague, and look out for the mill by the river… it is a place you can most definitely find, and I am sure you will find a book or two that you most definitely need…

Words: Paul Scraton
Pictures: Katrin Schönig

The first section of our walk took us along the busy road from Waidmannslust S-Bahn station and into Hermsdorf, past garden centres and discounter supermarkets, a couple of rough and ready corner pubs and an organic grocers, before we ducked through the railings where the Tegeler Fließ passes beneath the main road and within a handful of footsteps we had left the traffic behind and were left only with the sound of birds singing in the trees. We had been here before, a few months ago in fact, when it looked as if spring was upon us as we explored the old village of Hermsdorf before picking up the trail down by the river, but this time we really had moved beyond winter, and our walk would take us further as well.

We made our way alongside the Hermsdorfer See before the path became a wooden walkway along the bottom of pleasant gardens, raised on stilts above the soggy bog of the wetlands that spread out from the river bank in either direction. Here the Tegeler Fließ is two things… it is incredibly bendy, twisting this way and that, and it also happens to be the border between Berlin and Brandenburg. From the division of Germany after the Second World War until the events of 1989 and the reunification of 1990 this was an international border, although the planners building the Berlin Wall obviously did not fancy doing battle with the swamp and so set their fortifications further to the north, which left one bank of the river and its wetlands technically part of the German Democratic Republic, but sitting on the West Berlin side of the concrete and barbed wire barrier.

There was no remaining sign of this structure as we crossed the fields towards Lübars, a genuine village complete with church, village hall and riding school that is somehow still within Berlin’s city limits. Instead we used the wide open spaces on either side of the river to spot some birdlife, from a regal, hovering buzzard, to swooping swallows, a darting reed bunting, and numerous hooded crows that looked as if they were up to no good. On the other side of Lübars we reached the Berlin Wall Trail. It was at this point that the border made its way south, to no longer divide West Berlin from its hinterland, but to split the city itself. Not that you would know it, walking along a  neatly paved track with fields on either side, and the sound of yellowhammers singing in the trees.

On the cobbled streets of Rosenthal, admiring the (sometimes-) crumbling red brick buildings and elegant church, we brought our walk to an end at the end of the M1 tram line. It seemed somewhat strange to find this tramline here, one which I have used throughout my years in Berlin to take me to and from Rosenthaler Platz, Zionskirchplatz, Bornholmer Straße or the gates of the Prater Biergarten… but fate had decided I was not to be returned to my familiar corners of Berlin that easily, as roadworks meant we had to take a replacement bus as far as Pankow before we could pick up the tram that I know so well. It was another day wandering Berlin, starting and ending with something familiar, and yet with plenty of new discoveries along the way.

Words & Pictures: Paul Scraton

In December 1886 Captain Daniel O’Neil climbed aboard his ship, the “Annie Maguire” for a voyage north from Buenos Aires to Quebec. With him for the voyage were thirteen crew, two mates, his wife and his twelve year old son. Caught in bad weather just off the coast of Maine on Christmas Eve, O’Neil was aiming for Portland Harbour in order to take shelter and ride out the storm. On land, in the Portland Head Lighthouse atop the rocky cliffs of Cape Elizabeth, lighthouse keeper Joshua Strout was keeping watch as the clock approached midnight. It may have been Christmas Eve, but it would not be a quiet shift.

At around 11.30pm the Annie Maguire ran into the rocky ledges less than 100 feet from the lighthouse itself. Strout woke his son Joseph and his wife Mary, and they clambered down the rocks to help rescue the crew who had taken down the sails and lowered the anchors, and with the way to safety illuminated by kerosene-soaked blankets cut into strips and then set alight they managed to make it to shore. In the warmth and the safety of the lighthouse engine room, Mary Strout fed O’Neil and his family and crew the chickens that had been slaughtered for the Christmas feast. They ended up staying for three days, threatening to eat the Strout family out of house in home whilst Joshua attempted to persuade them to leave, as the Annie Maguire sat prone on the rocks. Roughly a week after the wreck the Annie Maguire broke apart, and that stormy Christmas Eve on its way north to Canada would prove to be its final journey.

Five years later Joshua Strout’s grandson John was born, and on his 21st birthday became an assistant keeper at the Portland Head lighthouse. On that day he painted a memorial to the Annie Maguire on the ledge where the ship had been wrecked, and over the years the inscription has been re-painted numerous times, and so a tradition of remembering the events of Christmas Eve 1886 was born which continues to this day.

(The inspiration for this entry came from our visit to Cape Elizabeth, but for the detail we are indebted to a longer account of the story of the Annie Maguire on the fascinating New England Lighthouses website. For more impressions of Maine, check out this earlier post here on Under a Grey Sky from Matt Lancashire).

Words: Paul Scraton
Pictures: Katrin Schönig

We took the S-Bahn south to the edge of the city, not far from Schönefeld and the mythological new airport that we hope our grandchildren will have the pleasure to use. We did not really know what to expect… the last time any of us had been to Grünau, this green and leafy corner of what was once East Berlin was almost twenty years ago and it was hard to imagine the changes that must have taken place since then. From the station we followed a path through the trees in the direction of the water, until we reached a small park with a jetty, and some friendly chaps enjoying the sunshine with a scowl as their fishing rods rested on the rusty railings.

At the end of the crumbling pier it felt as if we were on top of the water, and could see down the Langer See to where a large scoreboard flickered in the shadows of a grandstand. On the water itself we could see the first rowers of the day warming up for the regatta, that was about to take place. As we walked down the street towards the grandstand it suddenly began to get very busy. Broad-shouldered men and women jogged up and down, the name of their rowing clubs stitched into the back of their tracksuit tops – Tegel, Wannsee, Königs Wusterhausen, Pirna…

Family members unpacked coolboxes and picnic blankets from the back of their cars, and made their way through the gates beside the grandstand where the sausage grill was already doing a roaring trade and the first beers of the (early) afternoon were being sipped from plastic cups. We grabbed beers and sausages and found a spot where we could look out over the water and take in some of the action.

Of course, none of us were experts – we could see, obviously, who had won each race as they passed us by but not much more – and the massive scoreboard was not much use:

R317 Jung 4 x +13u A2 1000m
1. SCBK
2. PRV
3. RKuW
4. BRC
5. RCT

Post-trip research tells me that the team in Lane 5 won this particular race (Ruder-Club Tegel 1886 e.V.) in a time of four minutes exactly, just over four seconds ahead of their closest rivals…

If you have been reading this, or any other blog that has a relationship to Berlin you will know that this winter – even by local standards – has been long, too long. So it was not difficult to imagine the enthusiasm these rowers must have been feeling to be back on the water again, racing the one or two kilometres from the start line down by the bathing beach to the finish line in the shadow of the regatta complex. The vast majority of the people milling around appeared to be rowers or their families, and in the grandstand a handful of people lounged beneath the roof where, in 1936, nine thousand spectators cheered on the rowers and canoeists during the infamous Olympic Games. The last international competition was held here in 1993, but on Sunday afternoon the spirit of competition – local as it was – appeared to be alive and well.

Words & Pictures: Paul Scraton

Attentive readers will know that over the past few months I have been involved with Slow Travel Berlin in organising a series of walks and strolls through different corners of Berlin. Only this week I took a small group through my home neighbourhood of Wedding and it was once again a really brilliant experience to share my much-maligned corner of the city with others, as well as the different stories that make up its history. If you go here you can get an overview of the other tours that are offered, but I wanted to give a heads up for the newest tour that is being launched this weekend, with a second date on Tuesday 30^th April. This tour is through the neighbourhood of Neukölln, and is being led by Anna Sprang of the absolutely fascinating Strollology Berlin website. I would urge anyone with an interest in Berlin to take a browse through those pages, and if you at all have the chance, join Anna on her tour which promises to be excellent:

Rixdorf & Rollberge – a cultural-historical stroll through Neukölln

Berlin‘s gritty, working-class Neukölln district is widely known as a problem-gone-hip, now home to a colourful mix of people from all around the world. On this tour through the northern part of the borough, we‘ll uncover many different layers of its changing and often surprising history, some of which are still visible, with others  concealed in old photos, literature, eye witness reports and personal memories.

We‘ll take you back to the time when Neukölln was still the small farming village of Rixdorf, a popular weekend destination for Berliners that lay outside the city gates; to when a street fair of sorts lined the sandy road along the Hasenheide, and the Rollberge were home to numerous windmills.

We will look at the effects of the industrial revolution, its subsequent transformation into a working-class entertainment district, and why it got renamed Neukölln in 1912. Along the way, we’ll visit a ballroom-turned-supermarket (and famous venue of the workers‘ movement), remnants of what was once Europe‘s most modern department store and hidden backyards that illustrate Rixdorf‘s development from village to town to city.

The tour will also look at Neukölln’s former communist strongholds, how an infamous Mietskaserne with five rear courtyards became witness to dramatic showdowns between communists and the Nazi storm troops, and the area’s post-war life as part of the “American sector”. As well as historical context, participants will also gain insights into contemporary Neukölln – it’s flourishing creative scene, gentrification issues and some of the best galleries, bars and boutiques to explore.

To book a place on the upcoming tours – Sunday 28 April and Tuesday 30 April, click here.

The interstate runs right through the heart of the city, dividing the high, gleaming towers of the downtown with the wide, sedate Connecticut River. We wait for our junction and then roll off, the ramp taking us down and into the concrete canyons of the city centre. Not that Springfield is a large place – 150,000 people live within the city limits, just over a half a million in the metropolitan area – but it is the only true city that we will spend any time in, and the contrast with the university towns, sleepy seaside resorts, and hillside villages that make up most of our two week trip to the United States is quite marked.

The creators of The Simpsons, when deciding on a name for the town where Homer, Marge and the rest of the gang would live, chose “Springfield” as Anytown, USA – and indeed it is the fourth most popular place name in the nation – but Springfield, Massachusetts can lay claim to being one of the oldest, founded as it was in 1636. The history of the city has been one dominated by manufacturing, from the first American musket factory, the discovery of vulcanized rubber, and the Indian motorcycle company. Other claims to fame are as the birthplace of the first American-English dictionary (Merriam Webster), the sport of basketball – created in the local YMCA – and the children’s writer and illustrator Theodor Seuss Geisel, better known as Dr Seuss.

It is the latter that brought us down the interstate in the first place, to visit the Dr Seuss Memorial Garden in the heart of the museum quarter, just north of downtown. We park in a lot between red brick buildings in what we discover is the Club Quarter, a nightlife district of bars, pubs, theatres and restaurants close to the Amtrak station which is, on a weekday morning in March, completely deserted. As is much of the downtown as we walk through, the people presumably in their air-conditioned offices in those gleaming towers and with little reason to be out on the streets. We certainly stand out, and are approached a couple of times – “Are you American?”, “You gotta be careful in the big city” – on our way past the hulking sports arena that sits up hard against a collection of run-down-looking housing blocks.

It is one of those city walks, despite the pleasant weather, where your pace quickens ever-so-slightly because you have a very strong feeling on being alone on these streets, despite it being the middle of the day and our being right in the heart of downtown. It is an eerie feeling, until we climb the hill and reach the museums, where kids climb over the sculptures of the Cat in the Hat and Theodor’s other creations, and queue up to visit each of the decent museums in the quadrangle, including a Natural History Museum and a couple of arts galleries… one of which is showing a collection of photographs of the Beatles’ first tour to America, just to make us feel at home.

In 2007 Springfield embarked on a revitalization plan, including aesthetic improvements, infrastructure investment and construction projects, that seem to have reversed – or at least halted – the decline that began with the collapse in manufacturing since the 1960s. The crime rate has fallen, from being 18^th in the country in 2003 to 51^st in 2011. You can see this work on the streets, in the renovations and the public spaces, along the pavements and in colourful flags hanging from the lampposts declaring civic pride.

Nevertheless, you wonder how far such a revitalization process can ever go – it is hard to create jobs in this economic climate, and it is difficult to reverse the middle class flight from the city centre that has been going on for decades… in cities around the world it remains a debate as to how to keep a place viable, when the very things that led to their growth in the first place are no longer there. The people in Springfield appear to have some bright ideas, and with some raw materials in place such as the Basketball Hall of Fame, it is possible to wish them luck and imagine they might continue to succeed.

Words: Paul Scraton
Pictures: Katrin Schönig