A Saturday stroll through Hermsdorf, Berlin

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The choice of title of this piece has been chosen in homage to the inspiration for our explorations in the north of Berlin last weekend; the wonderful Strollology Berlin website that is devoted to “strolling through Berlin, collecting impressions of the city while moving around from A to B, as well as ‘strolling’ the internet in search of historical curiosities and images.” In a post last autumn, there was featured a slideshow of images from their “home neighbourhood” of Hermsdorf. The post intrigued me because, not only did their neighbourhood look leafy and green and well worth an explore, but also because up to that point I never even knew that Hermsdorf existed, and I was surprised to discover it was only about fifteen minutes away by S-Bahn.

It turns out that Hermsdorf is tucked up against the very edge of the city and the border with Brandenburg. Which means that, as Hermsdorf was part of West Berlin, the northern boundary of the neighbourhood was blocked off by the Berlin Wall. We did not make it that far on Saturday, instead climbing down from the S-Bahn and walking through quiet streets towards the old centre of the village (the “dorf” in Hermsdorf), stopping to explore the foundations of the former village church before following a narrow path down to the Tegeler Fließ, a stream that runs for 30km from outside Berlin (close to Wandlitz) to the lake at Tegel – hence the name. The stream itself was threatening to flow into some of the gardens as it appeared to have already broken its banks at various points, but the ducks seemed happy enough as they paddled in the shallows. By the time we reached the section where it opens out into the Hermsdorf lake the surface was frozen, contrasting nicely with the spring-time sunshine we were enjoying from above.

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The London Perambulator and Deep Topography

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The interest in “adventures beyond the front door” that eventually led to the creation of Under a Grey Sky, and the idea that you need not be in a National Park to enjoy the outdoors, has been developed not only by the getting out there and doing it, but by flicking through the pages of books – such as Rebecca Solnit’s wonderful Wanderlust or Edgelands by Paul Farley and Michael Symmons Roberts– as well as reading essays online, listening to podcasts, and even watching the occasional film.

These virtual adventures beyond someone else’s front door led me to the Ventures and Adventures radio show presented by John Rogers and Nick Papadimitriou – also available to download as a podcast – as they explored the outer reaches of London using old walking guides, or simply the interests of the two presenters, whether it was the Brent Cross shopping centre or the North Middlesex/South Hertfordshire Escarpment, otherwise known as Scarp and the title and subject (or starting point) of Papadimitriou’s book which currently sits in my to-read pile.

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Walking and the imagination in London

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On our last day in London we left the hostel in Knightsbridge, not far from the Natural History Museum, and walked across Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park before making our way past Buckingham Palace, the Houses of Parliament, through to Whitehall and eventually up to Leicester Square, Chinatown, and Covent Garden. I realised as I walked that although I have been to London a number of times in the past fifteen or so years, I don’t think I have walked those particular streets, and past those particular sights, since a primary school trip to the capital in what must have been 1989 or 1990. I had sudden flashbacks, such as walking past Baden Powell House, or Westminster Abbey, that took me right back to that school trip, and memories that I would have presumed were long forgotten.

The other thing about walking through these most famous of London cityscapes, along with all my fellow tourists from around the world, was how familiar it all was. How many times have I seen the Houses of Parliament, on the news credits or on a bottle of brown sauce? So many time that it was only standing there looking at it in the flesh that I considered how preposterous the architecture of the place actually is, whilst trying to imagine how it was in the days of the plague and the Great Fire when the river was so polluted and foul that they had to hang chlorine-soaked sheets in the windows of the Parliament to try and alleviate the smell. I heard that story on one of the archive editions of In Our Time that I had downloaded to listen to before the trip, trying to get a crash course in London history as I waited on the S-Bahn platform at 5 in the morning for the train to the airport.

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The Chimney and the Grindstone

A walk in Brandenburg, Germany

Ghosts of Elephant and Castle, London

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Last week I was in London for work, and stayed for a night in a new hostel that has opened in Elephant & Castle and occupies the former headquarters of the Labour Party. Indeed, in the reception area – all shiny surfaces and plush carpets – the foundation stone as laid by James Callaghan occupies pride of place. The date too is symbolic, as the building work was begun in the summer of 1979, just after Margaret Thatcher’s election victory and the start of eighteen years of Conservative rule. I was born three days after that election, and would watch Labour’s victory in 1997 five days shy of being able to vote for them myself.

Across the street from the hostel is the southern edge of the Heygate Estate, once home to around three thousand people, and now empty as it awaits demolition and redevelopment as part of a regeneration strategy for the neighbourhood. Hmmm. As we walked the next morning down the road to find something for breakfast, there was a corner shop front filled with images of how the Heygate would look once the development was finished. The artists impressions painted a picture of sunny days and green spaces, of large balconies and evening strolls, but it made me wonder; how many of these shiny new flats and apartments would be occupied by former residents of the estate, and also, where have the three thousand that once called it home gone?

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City Strolls with Slow Travel Berlin

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Next week Slow Travel Berlin are launching a couple of new “City Strolls” of neighbourhoods around Berlin as part of the ITB and the related Travel Massive gathering of the travel industry, blogging community and travel media. The idea of these walks is to offer the visitor, or maybe the curious Berliner from a different part of the city, the chance to take part in “informal but well-researched strolls that draw on history, literature, architecture and other cultural phenomena to provide unique, un-clichéd insights into the city’s past and present.”

One of the tours is led by me and will take a small group through my neighbourhood of Wedding, where I have lived for the last couple of years. As you might have seen on Under a Grey Sky over the past year, I have been enjoying exploring the places just beyond my front door as much as more further-flung expeditions, and I think it is going to be really great to have the chance to share the cultural past and present of my home with those who come along on the tours.

As well as my tour, Slow Travel Berlin head honcho Paul Sullivan will be leading a tour through Prenzlauer Berg (as well as hosting a Photography workshop) and German history expert Richard Carter is hosting two tours, one taking a stroll through Berlin’s historic heart, whilst the other explores the architecture of East Berlin. I will be making a page here on Under a Grey Sky about the tours in general, but if you are interested in the tours taking place on the 3rd or 5th March, you can find more information and book one of the extremely limited places, here on Gidsy.

(Photo by Katrin Schönig)

Special places and the joy of the familiar

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With this post Under a Grey Sky reaches the milestone of two hundred articles, all published in just over a year, and featuring the words and pictures from contributors all over the world. It is the variety that has made this such an inspiring project to work on, as people have used the space here to talk about and document the type of the places that inspire them when they take a step out of the front door.

For the two hundredth post, then, I wanted to dwell a little not only the places that are special to me, but also those that have a meaning beyond perhaps an obvious beauty or an exotic location. They are the places related to personal history, to moments in the memory, that may also be special to others but not necessarily so. In his book, “The Wild Places”, Robert Macfarlane discusses this very issue;

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Outside the front door – A walk through Wedding, Berlin

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Since we moved to the neighbourhood of Wedding* at the end of 2010 we have enjoyed exploring and getting to know a new corner of the city. Not long after we moved, I wrote about my experiences and first impressions for Slow Travel Berlin, and even then I was quite taken by this corner of the city that has a pretty poor reputation in the city and yet has not only a fascinating history, but is also home to a number of really interesting grassroots cultural, artistic and community projects that reflect the diversity and also the “neighbourhood pride” in an area where the population is mixed between those with long-established roots here and those of us who are in the 35% who were born in another country – the highest percentage of foreign-born residents anywhere in Berlin.

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A Moment in Time

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By Chris Hughes

I have recently digitised my old colour slide collection and the moment came when I was certain all of them had been saved and the large pile of card and film was now completely redundant. It was still some days before I could finally take them to the bin, finally cast them in and know that the step was irreversible. I am now part way through scanning old photographs and while some have gone straight from scanner to shredder many of these are kept as the look and the feel of the old photograph cannot be replaced by the computer image, no matter how much I am able to improve it with the magic of Photoshop. These treasures will carry on until another generation makes the decision to cast them into the wheelie bin.

But…… some images have stuck in my mind as I have gone through this sorting process…

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