Tim Berlin DDR, Berlin GDR, Berlin history, berlin, photos berlin, DDR, DDR museum, fashon

Getting your bearings betwen East and West Berlin is a tad tricky; just when you think you are in the old East, admiring or mocking all the old grim GDR soviet architecure, you realise you are in the West.

Now that little remains of the Wall, it’s path being too difficult to spot, erased by construction of roads, parks and buildings, the only true way to tell east from west is the traffic lights: old East Berlin boasts a rather natty set of walk/don’t walk signs – a green man in a homburg or trilby, not goosestepping, per se, but doing a strident powerwalk, and delivering a rather pungent upper-cut; or a red man, splayed like Jesus on the cross, albeit this christ-like figure is donning a homburg. It almost shouts: “Don’t walk, or we’ll nail you up, paint you red and make you wear a stiff felt hat with a pinch down the middle.”

This is a homburg, as immortalised by the cold figures Adenauer and Brandt!

The picture above shows a coolish bar – ampelmand-stand.de – in the Hackescher Markt, near the Spree, under the arches, exploring the theme. Sooner or later, we reckon traffic lights will become the tourist symbol of Berlin although the green man deckchair design here has Mr Homburg walking a different way to the real sign. Actually, he seems to us to be walking the right way, whereas the right GDR sign almost powerwalks the wrong way – a bit like the regime itself, powerwalkign to oblivion, thankfully.

The old West Berlin lights are the more ubiquitous European variety, a slim androgynous figure, almost skanking or moonwalking. A tad dull, really.

Tim Art, Berlin DDR, Berlin GDR, Berlin architecture, Berlin beach bars, Berlin history, Berlin walls, Mitte, photos, transport berlin, design, Mitte, traffic lights

Kollwitzplatz is ground Zero for gentrification, say locals. It is, well was, the hub of Prenzlauer Berg. Tall, strident, multi-hued Prussian townhouses, albeit spraycanned and tagged at the bottom; structures largely kept intact despite the carpet bombing and east German rebuilding. Colonised by DDR refuseniks, artists, rebels, drop-outs, and the first place to gentrify when the wall came down with west Berliner artists, freethinkers and drop-outs fleeing here for cheap rents. As happens elsewhere, the artists leave and the yuppies move in.

Cheap rent? No longer. A month’s rent for a room on Worthestrasse will cost you about 600 euros, London prices, well, nearly – this is sort of Notting Hill, Chelsea and Greenwich Village all rolled into ein.

Kollwitz Platz and its environs are choc-full of chi-chi restaurants – Chinoise hot-pot or Thai spring roll anyone? Walk around this area, and plenty of Deutsche tourists do, and you notice more playgrounds than pubs, well, green squares and sandpits for das kinder. Prenzlauer Berg should be renamed Pramslauer Berg, it is full of mums  mitt kids – a pram is almost weapon of choice here, the area mocked in Berlin and Germany as one big kiddie town, as the shops around the streets attest; kiddie clothes, wooden toys, and the ubiquitous LGB BioMarkt – “organic food”!

Pramslauer Berg, i’m told variously, has the highest birth rate in Germany or Europe. Every other 30-something woman is pushing a pram, or cycling with a baby in tow, or in a basket. If they have no kids, then they are pregnant. If they are not pregnant, and it’s rare here, they stroll around, arm in arm with das boyfriend with a smile suggesting they are gonna get pregnant very soon. The men? They all looked tired.

Tim Berlin DDR, Berlin GDR, Berlin history, Berlin news and views, Berlin work, Prenzlauer Berg, apartments, berlin berlin, DDR, GDR, Kollwitz Platz, Kollwitzplatz, prams, Prenzlauer Berg, Worthestrasse