From Teufelseestraße the path leads through the winter woods for only a few metres before it begins to rise. Although we have come across to the other side of Berlin to climb a hill, in this the flattest of cities the steepness of the slope still comes as something as a shock to the system, not to mention the thighs. As we walk it is clear what this hill, the 99 metre Drachenberg, is made of. Beneath the young trees that guard its slopes, poking through the crumbly top-soil, is the rock of the mountain. Here it is granite. There it is marble. A slab of concrete. Red brick.

The Drachenberg and its neighbouring Teufelsberg (120m) were created out of the rubble of the Second World War. The latter hill is made up of an estimated 400,000 bombed houses, and buried underneath it all is the remnants of Albert Speer’s Nazi military training school. Pre-war Berlin is what these mountains are made of and as we walk towards the “tree line” and the open plateau at the top of the Drachenberg, it feels as if the history of those countless buildings is clamouring for attention at our feet and at the base of those bare trees. Continue reading →

Regular readers of Under a Grey Sky will know that I have spent the past six months or so working with my good friend Julia and an increasing band of walkers, writers, photographers and illustrators on a new quarterly journal of place. Above you can see the digital-only, half-size ‘zero’ edition that we created as part of our crowdfunding campaign to give people a sense of what the journal will be like when the first print edition is released in June 2015. Please have a look and a read, and if you think that this is a project you think you would like to support then I would be extremely grateful if you could visit the crowdfunding campaign via the link below, pre-order issue 1, take out a subscription, or one of the many other options complete with exclusive goodies that we have put together. It is an exciting project, and I am really confident we can create a wonderful print journal that will showcase the work of some fantastic writers, musicians, artists, illustrators, photographers and more… but we need some help to get us to the start line, so anything you can do to get us there would be really appreciated.

Elsewhere: A Journal of Place – Crowdfunding Campaign on Indiegogo

Yep… it is that time again. Under a Grey Sky will be taking a little break for the next month or so, as we recharge our batteries, think about what we want to do with this project moving forward, and of course, to have some more adventures beyond the front door that we can write about here. Our plans will take us on a road trip through Germany, some time in the steephead valleys of the Jura, in France, and who knows what else closer to home? We hope all the readers and contributors to Under a Grey Sky have a great summer, and many thanks to all of you who have continued to read, write and comment over the past twelve months.

Paul and Katrin

For a week I was in Japan – or was it six days? I count back on my fingers to try and piece together the chronology of a trip that even now, only a couple of weeks later, is something of a blur. It is okay, I tell myself. Just try and write it up, and you will find the through line; you will be able to chart a clear path through your notes and make sense of all the sights and sensations of those six days… but it has not worked like that, so we will go this way instead: fragments of a city to which I cannot wait to return…

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…we can hope, because that might mean we get a little snow with the holidays. Under a Grey Sky will be cuddling up under a warm blanket by a lake for the next week or so, with service resumed in the New Year. So all that is left is to thank everyone who read and contributed to the site over the past twelve months. During this, the second year of Under a Grey Sky, we welcomed a lot of old friends to these virtual pages but also many new ones as well. No-one gets paid and we are extremely grateful to everyone who has shared their words and images with us.

On a personal level, Katrin and I have once again found that Under a Grey Sky has not only been a great place to collect our words, our thoughts, and what we capture through a lens, but also inspires us to get out the door and look for new adventures. This year we made it over to the United States as well as a couple of trips to England, but we have also enjoyed many smaller trips out from Berlin, up to the Baltic sea or the Oder river, the lakes and forests of Brandenburg and Mecklenburg, or even days exploring corners of our city both familiar and otherwise. Over the two years of the website it has definitely proved to be kick-start to get us out the door on a Saturday morning…

Hope you have a great couple of weeks and we will see you on the other side.

Music: Seanin and Trubadore