New Berlin shoes in Dessau

Just look at Niel's cool new shoes

Time for...coffee!

Of coarse I got shoes too:

..and bed linen from IKEA:

just look at this pillow:

cuuuuute!

BERLIN! day 3: Sunday we went to Tempelhof

Kreuzburg was really fun!

Here we are at the sub-sub station waiting for the U-Bahn (stops at every single stop) to Tempelhof. Tempelhof is the oldest airport in Berlin and also one of the largest buildings in Europe. It served as the US air force base in the second world war and has since been replaced by two newer airports in Berlin, Tegel and Schönefeld. We read an artikel in the Dazed and Confused magazine about the airport and decided that it's worth the visit. Tempelhof isn't completely deserted - there are still some flights that use this airport

Remnant of the eagle statue that stood on the airport previously

The building is really enormous and it's difficult to know what to photograph.

It looks like a massive monument

A peeling sticker motivating saving Tempelhof

We had to book out by 12 and didn't have anywhere to go with all our IKEA shopping, so we took the train back to Dessau.

The end of our trip to Berlin.

But not the end of the kilometre walk from Dessau station to Brauereistraße...

I <3 trolley

BERLIN! day 2: Saturday evening took us to Kreuzburg

On Saturday evening we braved Kreuzburg aka not tourist-ville. Kreuzburg is the super exciting Berlin version of Melville in Johannesburg. The buildings are covered in graffiti on the outside, but the silhouttes of children jumping on beds that show through drawn curtains reflect a different nature of the place. At a glance, the seemingly hardcore buildings house civilised interiors and we felt at home right away.

Unlike in South Africa, drinking in public is not illegal in Germany and we each bought a Berliner Pils from a corner cafe and continued our night time expolrations. "Cake" was our pre-party palce of stay. With cocktails going for €4,50 before 9, I couldn't stop myself from ordering a €7 "communicator" and was soon on my way communicating to the portuguese guy next to me in broken german from two sides.

After both our vocabularies had come to an end and the midnight hour had arrived, Niel and I shifted across to Lido, a club true to the indie heart. Thanks to Our Friend Henry their indie pop songs were our sing-alongs. I can't say the same for the german folk that followed and by half past two we were on the train back to the Mitte, just in time before our day tickets expired at 3am.

Unfortunately I didn't take my camera to Kreuzburg. Perhaps it was better that I didn't look like a tourist.

BERLIN! day 2: Saturday 26 September 2009

The lawn in front of the Berliner Dom and the Altes Museum is a haven for tired feet

"Shoes"?

He thinks I'm crazy

BERLIN! day 1

First stop in Berlin was:

This is a photo of the sign in the subway..ooh. How exciting! If only we understood the signage!

€6,20 gets you a day pass on all the public transport and it was well worth the while. School children only pay €4,40, but it doesn't say anything about being a school child when you buy the ticket at the machine, so on our second day in Berlin we wondered why we hadn't bought the cheaper ticket on the first day...hmm. Dumb tourists. Fortunately nobody ever asked for our tickets and the only person who saw the tickets was the guy at the backpackers help desk, who then explained the difference to us.

Potsdamer Platz is, as Tash would say, really shiny!

And there are some really intense buildings, like this one. I thought Niel was going to leave me for it. He couldn't stop staring

But by far the most impressive was the sculpted grass

Geometric grass

En route from Potsdamer Platz to the Jewish Memorial we walked past these two interesting buildings..ying and yang. We both like yang. Ying looks like a stranded super yacht.

I really enjoyed the Jewish Memorial. Niel, on the other hand, had looked at the sections..apparently a dead give-away

Looking grave

Next on our tourist trip: the Branenburg Tör

It's almost time for the German elections and the political campaigns are quite amusing. The poster above left us both wondering what exactly more Germany wanted..hmmm

Sight-seeing for those who can afford it. Horse-drawn chariot in-front of the Kennedy's museum. We didn't go in. Visiting and american museum in Germany just doesn't make any sense

Me on my horse-drawn chariot visitng the Reichstag

Niel achieves shallow depth of field

Back at the subway

Unter der Linden is one of the main streets in Berlin. It got its name from the lime (linden) trees planted on either sides of the road by Wilhelm the great in the 1700's, transforming the street into a grand boulevard. Unfortunately, Hitler favoured visibility to grandeur and had the trees felled to expose his marches

Reason number 2 for coming to Berlin: our visit to IKEA. Now where's that train?

Yei! We bought everything... plus a trolley. Now to get it across the city to the backpackers and then to Dessau and then to Brauereistraße...and then to Röttgerstraße. Phew!

A walk through Dessau reveals two things..

1.it's a very pretty place and 2.the sum of the ages of the buildings is equal to the sum of the ages of the people. Above is the Deutche Post building beside the tram stop

There is a permanent market in the main square. We viewed it from a distance only. The bizarreness scared us away..

We have never been to a market under umbrellas. I doubt we'll ever visit a market under umbrellas.

The turkish Döner (shwarma in a pita) seemed the safest bet. Here I am hiding at a table with my super-safe drink.

Brauereistraße 9E 420-3 and 420-4

On our arrival in Dessau we moved into two bachelor flats in a building approximately a kilometre from the varsity buildings. We were thrilled since this had been our first choice of the two given. The second option is a triple storey commune with shared ablution and kitchen facilities, with the advantage of being situated a block from campus. After four days and much confusion we were informed that we'll be staying in the triple storey commune as of 1 October this year. After a week of walking atleast 8 km a day and sleeping 10 hours every night becasue of it, we've both made peace with the move. Who cooks in their room anyway?!

Our happy, but temporary, modernist home.

Some more on Dessau

The administration building where we'll be attending lectures and many of the lecturers have offices.

The workshop! Here we'll hopefully be most of the time :)

The Bauhaus from the other side. We usually walk along here on our way from where we stay now to the university buildings.

When we move to Heinz-Röttgerstraße on Thursday 1 October 2009 we'll be staying beside the park for the study of animal and plant sciences. This impressive building, with bronze bears on either side of the facade, is inside the park.

Another worthwhile visit is to the Umweltbundesampt, a new building constructed behind the old station, shown. I thought the brick and plasterwork above looks like a beer bottle. Everyone else thought I look like a tourist.

The Umweltbundesampt and Niel. Note the bicycle shed to the right. This picture was taken on a Sunday, but on any other day the shed will be packed with bicycles.

The red brick building on the right links the new building to the old station that I was standing in front of previously.. the link is really cool. From a distance it seems the old people built something funky, but on closer inspection it becomes obvious that the odd-shaped red face-brick library building is new..

The library adjacent to the old station building

The Umweltbundesampt has an impressive glass courtyard housing the cafeteria and a 4 m high concrete wall that protrudes with lawn on top