Need to shake a feeling of doom and gloom and a great sadness? What better place than the almost always windswept guess where?
I walked via Platz der Luftbrücke this time. The route on Komoot: https://www.komoot.com/tour/369693442.
The former Tempelhof airport, now a listed building with hangars used for concerts, art fairs etc., and the airfield, now a huge recreational area categorised as a park, is one of my favourite places in Berlin. A large playground for young and old but unfortunately, plans for building, at least around some of the periferi, are gaining ground.
I hope it does not happen, or at least that only a fraction of the land becomes built on. The park contributes greatly to the quality of life for many, many people, whether they visit daily, weekly, or monthly. For obvious reasons, it is even perfect in terms of supporting public health during a pandemic.
It has a rich history evocative of both unspeakable human cruelty and suffering, and of courageous acts of solidarity.
For me, it is within walking distance – even by two different routes depending whether I want to enter from Tempelhofer Damm or from Columbiadamm, but it is also within easy reach by public transport.
To have a space like this just a few steps away from a major public transport hub is something unique in the world and in my opinion must be preserved.
I have by now posted so many photos and links that I am giving it its very own category here :-).
For further information, here are some links which I may not have included in previous posts:
https://www.thf-berlin.de/en/location-information/history-of-location/chronicle/
https://www.airspacemag.com/history-of-flight/above-amp-beyond-the-village-of-tempelhof-9924004/
https://www.mil-airfields.de/germany/berlin-tegel-airport.htm
Saturday’s route: https://www.komoot.com/tour/368555710
This woman nodded her permission for me to take photos without asking what they were for or whether she might see them. I’m guessing she is not German :-).
Nearly back home on Saturday, what looked like an environmental disaster on Landwehrkanal but I think it is a natural phenomenon, and two children playing hide and seek outside the Jewish Museum.
This disgusting mess has now been there for about three weeks for no apparent reason or purpose other than to make the place look even uglier and restrict my use of my balcony even more than they already have done for two years now. I am sick and tired of looking at it. I can’t believe the way they feel entitled to do this to others for so long. And I am completely powerless. Even our Hausverwaltung is on their side. They are renovating a building which is under “Denkmalschutz” which means they can do whatever they like to neighbouring buildings. For years and years.
My only “light at the end of the tunnel” right now is that by the time I have been vaccinated (1 July plus two weeks) hotels and holiday homes in Germany will be open so I can get out of this place and spend a couple of months at the North Sea, and return fit to face another autumn, winter, spring …..? without a balcony and with all this ugliness to look at.
Schön & Sever, Cresco Capital Group, Victoriahöfe, GBP Architekten
One of the few things I miss about Denmark – apart from my brother and his family, and the proximity to the sea – is the relative honesty. I am not saying everybody in Denmark is pure as the driven snow, and that there are no bad apples, but growing up, I was practically brainwashed to believe that lying – for whatever reason – Is. Not. An. Option. Period. It just makes life easier when you can, on the whole, believe what others are telling you, and vice versa.
Not that making life easier is a thing in Germany. Just look at the garbage disposal system designed to be as cumbersome as possible – a small thing but a daily annoyance. The door to the general garbage bins binds, and has done all the time I have been living here, to the point that I am sometimes unable to open it, even when doing the shoulder-and-all-of-my-not-unsubstantial-weight-on-it thing. To dispose of paper/carton and bottles in separate bins, you have to drag the bins out in order to ease the stuff in, and then push the bin back in. Although I am old, I am not that weak yet, but I still ask myself almost every day what country and which century I am in when things are designed to be so difficult to everybody other than the youngest and strongest.
Anyway, that was a side track. So I was not overly used to being lied to, and I am also blessed with a healthy skepticism, but I have still been lied to, often in small matters which I have noted and forgotten, and often in matters that I did not see at the time, just realised later, and either added them to my mental list of people who are mendacious and unreliable, or brushed them off as not important . I will use the example of the renovations next door to make my point.
Far be it for me to glorify Denmark (after all, there are many reasons I am not living there …) but had that type of renovation been carried out in Denmark, I am quite sure that:
I now know why there is so much distrust and suspicion in this society. It is because everybody knows that they and everybody else lie whenever that is the most convenient solution in the moment. Just something to get used to.
Schön & Sever, Cresco Capital Group, Victoriahöfe, GBP Architekten
Meeting one of my “walking around taking photographs bubbles” at Märchenbrunnen early in order to beat the crowds. Finally sunshine – albeit cold – but at least not snowing ….
The route on Komoot: https://www.komoot.com/tour/362686318.
Did I ever mention that I love trees?
(Previous posts on the subject can be found here).
Two cigarette stubs miraculously disappeared, and then two new ones appeared.
As a complete coincidence, I saw one of them – still lit. It is raining today, so the fire hazard is minimal, but the material you placed there about a week ago, apparently for no other reason than to make my balcony look even uglier and restrict my use of it even further, to me looks highly flammable when it is dry.
You obviously consider my balcony nothing more than an ashtray for your workers, (and thanks to you, my flat is worth nothing these years), but it is my home, and believe it or not, despite everything, I love it. So please try not to burn down the house.
Schön & Sever, Cresco Capital Group, Victoriahöfe, GBP Architekten
You would think that the least they could do was refrain from throwing cigarette stubs on my balcony as an added insult. I thought that had stopped after I complained about it some months ago, when I also found burn holes in one of the chair on the balcony. But no. Of course not.
Schön & Sever, Cresco Capital Group, Victoriahöfe, GBP Architekten
Previous posts on this subject are here: https://www.hellemoller.eu/category/neighbours-from-hell/.
The promise that my balcony would not be affected was made in a meeting between administrator and owners about two years ago, and is to this day the biggest lie anyone has ever told me. I think it was in the same meeting that we were promised some kind of compensation. I did not pay much attention since the amount was negligible – actually on hindsight completely pitiful – and I just thought yeah yeah whatever since my balcony “would not be affected”. In any case, there has been no mention of that compensation since then, so that was probably just another lie.
The other day, I had just cleaned the balcony floor and shelves for I don’t know which time, and suddenly it looked like this again:
So I cleaned up again, just in time for them to turn up and place some covering there, so now it looks like this:
I guess this qualifies as progress, unless they leave it like that for another couple of years.
But for now, I am keeping up hope. Having the full use of my balcony back would be far more important to me than receiving the COVID19 vaccine. The vaccine would not make a big change to my current lifestyle anyway. I would still have to adhere to most restrictions, including my own, and masks will be required for many months to come, and besides, with the new mutations spreading from banana republics such as Brazil and India, the current vaccines are not going to be much good for anybody in the longer term.
Being able to use my balcony, not to mention the fact that if they finally finish work on that wall, that part of the scaffolding can be removed, and I will get the daylight back which it is currently stealing and has been for almost two years now. All that would hugely enhance my quality of life.
And by the way, the size of the balcony and the light were among the main reasons I bought this flat.
Schön & Sever, Cresco Capital Group, Victoriahöfe, GBP Architekten