8/10
[Berlin]
The DDR museum doesn't open till 10, so I've got some time to kill and pics to process.
384. DIE RAPISTS. Street graffiti on the vegetation-banked sidewalk of the Landsbergallee.
385. Graffiti on a Gothic-style brickwork by the Landsbergallee S-bahn stop.
386. Old abandoned house, Ostkreutz.
387. Old, closed, Bahnsteig, Ostkreutz.
388. Udopea head-shop, Alexanderplatz. Careful how you transport this stuff internationally.
389. Marienkirche in morning light. Every five steps coming out of Alexanderplatz, another frickin picture.
390. Rotes Rathaus over the trees.
391. Martin Luther statue by the Marienkirche.
392. Berliner Dom over some commercial architecture.
393. Rotes Rathaus, backlit. It probably looked better live.
394. Statues of Marx and Engels (see last year, #496) in a new monument under construction.
395. Berliner Dom, closer. I'll need a much wider lens if I ever want to get this entire building in the frame.
396. Noch nicht unter Hochwassergefahr. Görlitz was flooded and Dresden was bunkering in, but the surge had not gotten this far down the Spree yet, and would not before I left Berlin.
397. Friedrichsbrücke plinth and the Nationalgalerie.
After the DDR Museum, the Nationalgalerie, and lunch, some time to rewind.
398. Another look down the Spree, towards the rebuilt synagogue.
399. Decoration over one of the doors into the Berliner Dom.
400. View through the colonnade into the Nationalgalerie.
401. Frieze along the walls of the stairwell inside, showing important figures from German and Germanic history.
402. Rotunda on the second floor, part 1.
403. Part 2.
404. "Berkaer Landstrasse", "The Road to Berka". The composition is cool, and I also found it neat that I ran into this painting at this point, considering the next step in the journey.
405. Slate for 404 with some additional info.
406. Bright colors, Impressionism blending almost into pointillism? Is this really a German artist? Yes it is, German artist on a German subject, in the true fin de siécle before the guns of August started to sound.
407. The artist's reflection is visible in the glass of this still-life.
408. A half-finished Metzler showing the sketch construction.
Because I was an idiot and forgot my spare batteries, I wasn't able to shoot half of what I wanted to in the Nationalgalerie. It's worth a visit; nineteenth-century German painters don't sound so interesting conceptually, but as the few pictures above show, there's a lot of diversity even in that caption, and there's a decent selection of sculpture as well.
409. Across the courtyard, coming out.
410. The Pergamon-museum. Antiquities are cool and all, but that's a long fucking line. No dice; I'm on the clock and need to see stuff while I'm here.
411. As with Jesse-Owens-Strasse, Berliners had a fair number of streets with politically unacceptable names after the war, and rather a lot of people who needed apologizing to.
Now, lazy canal-boat tourism! The guide for this tour was a historical interpreter dressed as the Hauptmann von Köpenick, which fits; not only a famous character, but this is what Berlin is all about, the pretense that becomes real, with time and by accident. Or maybe too much Brecht is getting to me.
412. Graffiti under the first bridge.
413. Berlin - City of Peace.
414. Facade of the Kurfurstenhaus.
415. Sophienkirche behind some other buildings.
416. Some more under-bridge graffiti.
417. The Berliner Dom finally fits into the frame.
418. Really unusual protest graffiti, near the site of the old Volkspalast.
419. Battle damage, still unrestored.
420. Berliner Ensemble symbol -- Pflicht für Brechtner.
421. Reichsadler on one of the metal bridges.
422. Mosaic over the entrance to the Ganymed.
423. View up to the Reichstag.
424. New buildings of the Bundesamt.
425. Sculpture detail; installed on one of the federal buildings.
426. The Löbe Haus part.
427. Up to the Hauptbahnhof.
428. Coming up on the Moltkebrücke.
429. Kanzleramt main building.
430. Detail, Moltkebrücke.
431. Willows weeping into the river by the Congresshalle.
432. Repair scaffolding around the Siegessäule.
433. Congresshalle on the way back, since the camera was dead on the way out.
The batteries were functionally dead at this point, but I didn't have my spares mit, so this was an extended resuscitation operation to keep them functioning for as much of the remains of the tour as possible.
434. Another view of the Kanzlerhaus.
435. Memorial to the victims of the Wall, where it used to cross the river between the zones.
436. Modern insert in an old houserow.
437. Political mural on the way back.
438. Another Wall memorial.
439. Living architecture under construction. The ivy's supposed to cover the metal frames as on the left, building a living shadow of a classical temple.
440. Old and new; back of the Nationalgalerie and the Alexanderplatz TV tower.
441. Cool rib construction under one of the bridges.
After this, the camera was dead dead, not even enough juice left to check the pictures. Fortunately, I did pick up spares back on that initial food run Sunday night; the two remaining "charges" should last through the end of the festival.
Unheilig played Wacken in 2007. Now they're on top of the MTV charts. This is what's different about Germany: metal bands are not penalized in the scene for having the ability to cross over, and in return, the mainstream doesn't penalize them for being metal bands when they make a good song and video.
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