Pages

Wednesday, March 12, 2014

Spring is coming on!



Dears,

finally, it´s getting lighter in these parts and temperatures are rising! Spring is coming on and I can feel it in the air and nature around me, life starts bursting out again, yay!

Since my last post I read a lot in other peeps blogs, and again came across a statement from Chris at Aussie on the road, who talked about travelling the big world and not knowing about one´s own country so much.

That rang a bell with me, cause since I moved to Berlin, I kind of abandoned the original thought of exploring the city going to a different part of it each weekend.... but last Saturday the sun came out and all the beautiful patterns in the world couldn´t keep me inside.

So I grabbed my Lonely Planet Berlin guide and decided to go to a part of town I´ve never been to before, but heard a lot about: the Plänterwald. It´s in the south-east of Berlin, lying lushly by the river Spree and even sports an abandoned Funpark, which really tickled my imagination. I love exploring abandoned buildings or parks!

I went there by S-Bahn very comfortably and started out walking by the shore, where a lot of boats where roped to the poles, waiting for a rivercruise. A lot of other people had the same idea, but that didn´t spoil the fun for me. The sun was warm on my face and I enjoyed walking in the park.
 



Half an hour later the landscape started to change, as the open grass of the park gave way to beautiful tall trees and newly green bushes, less and less joggers and other folks were around and I left the riverbank and made into the woods. It grew a lot quieter here too. Loved it.


The ground was covered with bear´s garlic, the smell made my mouth water. Woodpeckers were hacking at some trees, other birds were singing, it was pure bliss and I was thankful to be alive and experiencing this in my own city, half an hour train ride from my busy street! I picked some bear´s garlic for my dinner on the way back, it´s so tasty:-)

I came across some strange building from the Funpark, I couldn´t figure out, what the heck it was made for, do you have an idea?
 
 
Anyway, there was so much to see, smell and even taste, that I felt truly blessed for an entire period of three blissful hours.
 
I would have loved to go inside one of the abandoned, but gorgeous buildings I saw along the way, but they were all fenced in and I wasn´t cheeky enough to try my luck.
 

 
 
It was a true joy to explore a part of my city and as spring is coming on strongly, I will do it some more for sure.
 
At last, I relaxed on a bench at the riverbank and held my face up to the sun!
 
 
Do you sometimes go to parts of your town that you didn´t know existed? Berlin is so big and I still haven´t seen half of it, so I most definately will.
 
I will leave you for now, thanks Chris for reminding me of my own neighbourhood and thank you folks for reading what my brain´s producing :-)
 
Feel free to let me know about your experiences and thoughts.
 
Cheers, Milan
 
P.S. next time will be a sewing-post again ;-)


Saturday, March 1, 2014

Little cork men



Dear lovely readers,

today I want to tell you about the little cork-men that "live" in Berlin.
The first one I stumbled over was when I waited to cross the street close to my home. I was lost in thoughts about what to cook when I reached my flat and wether I needed some ingredients when a little irregularity caught my eye.

When I crossed the street, I was able to examine it more closely, and saw it was a little figure made of bottle corks, glued to the top of a street sign. Normally, nobody looks at these signs, or if they do, they don´t really see what´s there.



I was fascinated. A little piece of art directly in front of me, and almost nobody noticed it! I felt like that little cork-man and me had a secret now, for I knew about his existence.
From that day on, everytime I come near this crossing, my eyes search for him and I smile at myself and feel like a conspirator. 

During my still ongoing discovery of new corners of my new found home town, I realized that there is a whole family of cork-men living on the signposts of Berlin.


I even have a little competition with a dutch friend of mine, and we send each other every newly shot little figure that we find. Always makes me laugh.


I will keep my eyes open and post frequently about new family members of the corks :-)

Do you have strange or beautiful pieces of Art in your city?

Let me know about your thoughts.

Have a good time,
Cheers,
Milan