Earlier in the summer Lotte and I headed to the Karow Ponds in the north of Berlin. It resulted in an article that I wrote for Caught by the River, some nice pictures and some great adventures. On the walk to the ponds, Lotte told me: “Quiet Papa, I want to hear the nature…” and so we did, walking in silence towards the ponds set amongst the trees:

On a sunny Sunday we decide to escape the heat of Berlin by catching the S-Bahn north to the very edge of the city, where the Panke River runs alongside a small patch of marshland and meadows, pasture and ponds. We walk through suburban streets until a path takes us along the river bank and then in towards the Karow Ponds, a peaceful spot popular with strollers, runners and birdwatchers, where we can see bulls lounging in the fields and gaze across the ponds from viewing platforms to see cormorants, grebes, and a grey heron sunning itself on the far bank. Butterflies and dragonflies dart above the reeds, and an otter pulls itself ashore with a shake of its back. Berlin is a city filled with green spaces, but at moments like this I still marvel at the access we have to such places within a handful of minutes of our apartment, and how they managed to escape the rapid growth of the city that swallowed not only fields and forests, but entire villages, during the second half of the nineteenth century.

Read the rest of Caught by the River

Continue reading →

It is early afternoon on Saturday and we follow a cobbled road into the Volkspark Friedrichshain. It is a driveway to the hospital, twisting one way and then the other, flanked by ornate lamps. The park was laid out in 1848 and the hospital, the first of its kind in the city, was opened twenty years later, and it is not hard to imagine a rudimentary ambulance pulled by horses, rolling clackety-clack across the cobblestones towards the brick entrance gate and the hope of the hospital beyond.

So many of Berlin’s most interesting sights are tied up in that period of rapid growth in the second half of the nineteenth century, and walking along with the park on one side and the high walls of the hospital on the other, it is very easy to picture how it might have been, the city growing rapidly, swallowing the fields and villages surrounding it through rapid growth… until the spell is broken by a gang of orange-shirted “stags”, who turn the corner pushing a stolen shopping trolley laden with beer bottles and dripping from melting ice. We will see them again, in the beer garden, and then later, a few of their number AWOL, hanging out in a bus stop and singing German football songs at the cars passing by in the street.

Continue reading →

Wedding, oh Wedding. Sometimes when I think my neighbourhood has no more surprises for me, another one pops up in a place where you least expect it. The Badstraße, the street that is the extension of Brunnenstraße and runs down from Humboldthain and the Gesundbrunnen station towards Pankstraße and the river where the original spa once stood, was once the main drag in an entertainment and shopping district whose cinemas, theatres, beergardens and restaurants attracted custom from across the north of Berlin. Then the Berlin Wall was built, cutting off this corner of the Wedding district on three sides.

Continue reading →

On a Saturday morning we took the S-Bahn north of Wedding to a suburb of Berlin that sits on the Panke River not far from the Berlin-Brandenburg border. I had read about Karow as being home to a series of ponds, small lakes and wetlands that are popular with the local birdlife, but that exploration would have to wait for another day. We were there to catch the Heidekrautbahn or the Heather Train to Groß Schönebeck, the town at the end of the line and on the edge of the Schorfheide, one of Germany’s biggest forests and a place we had been once before.

This time we were going to stay overnight at the cabin of some friends, shoot bow and arrows at makeshift targets in the woods, and cook dinner on an open fire that would keep us warm as we drank beer until the early hours. And that is what we did, but first we had to get there and it was time for one of those funny little trains that operate on the branch lines of Brandenburg to take us north to the edge of the forest.

Continue reading →

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…

Continue reading →