1000 steps from.... kita

I undertook a little project this morning. The other day Morganmuffel  of Anglo-Deutsch was set a little project by Linda of Dummy Text to walk one thousand steps from her front door and take photos every so often. Sounded like a fun idea to me. But seeing as everyone knows what me and the kids look like, our real names, etc, etc, I decided to preserve our last shred of privacy and not start at our front door. Instead I started at kita. So this is not far from where I live. Unlike Morganmuffel's and Linda's, mine is more like an architectural tour. However, it's a nice way to see parts of the city so I may do more of these setting off on different directions or from different locations in the future.

150 steps...

This is the Ellington Hotel. It's a vision of 1920's streamlined architecture. It's a lovely hotel, with what looks like lovely restaurants and very lovely modern rooms. At one point around this time last year they had a Veuve Cliquot bar which I could happily have whiled away the hours in. Alas, I didn't have the funds or the babysitter to be able to partake of this particular service. Along the side of the Ellington there are a few shops. My favourite is Florale Welten, a supremely stylish flower and 'lifestyle' shop which always has stunning displays.

200 steps...

Just a further 50 steps along from the Ellington Hotel is Peek & Cloppenburg's flagship Berlin store, a modern glass 'skirted' building. You'll see this in all the modern architecture books about Berlin. It is rather pretty. It was designed by Professor Gottfried Böhm, the only German to win the Pritzker award seen as the 'Nobel Prize' for architecture. Another building you'll see in the srchitecture books is Nike Town which sits diagonally across Tauentzienstrasse from Peek & Cloppenburg. Quite why it merits even a mention is beyond me, but then I'm no architecture expert. (You'll see it in a minute.)

220 steps...

Across the road from Peek & Cloppenburg (or rather in the bit in the middle of the two lanes of traffic on Tauenzienstrasse) you have a good view of the 'Berlin' sculpture, or the 'knot/spaghetti thing' as I call it. It was designed by Brigitte Matschinsky-Denninghoff and Martin Matschinsky in 1987, and is actually meant to represent a broken chain, showing the broken link between East and West Berlin. Today is the first time I have seen it in about 10 months or so. They removed it while they dug the living daylights out of the portion of land it sits on. But obviously they want to have it back in place in time for all the Christmas market tourists.

As you may be able to see from my ropey panorama above there's quite a lot going on in this part of town. From left to right: All the Christmas decorations are going up for the festive season. There are a couple of giant trees usually dotted along Tauentzienstrasse and Kurfurstendamm (which extends from Tauentzienstrasse). The KaDeWe (known as the Harrods of Germany) sits behind those trees, then we have Peek & Cloppenburg at the junction. Crossing over you can see the Berlin sculpture, and through that you can see (kind of) the Gedachniskirche, the famous bombed church which was left standing in ruins after the second world war. It is undergoing restoration work so it's under a lot of white panels (Follow the link if you want to see how it normally looks). If you head in this direction you end up on Kurfurstendamm, known to all as 'the Ku'damm', Berlin's famous boulevard in the West, where you can find all the designer shops. Moving further to the right you can see Nike Town, as I mentioned earlier. Is it just me, or is it nothing special? Anyway, most men like to drop by there when they visit. And then we finish up with a continuation of the street which leads you to the Berlin Zoo. Wikipedia says it is the oldest and best known zoo in Germany, and the most visited zoo in Europe. I imagine me and the kids have contributed quite substantially to that last stat.

350 steps...

Instead I wandered along Tauentzienstrasse towards the Ku'damm. Christmas is now officially on it's way! This morning along with all the street decorations being set up, all the Christmas market stands are being put in position and stocked up. The Christmas market around Breitshiedplatz and along Tauentzienstrasse and the Ku'damm is, I think, the biggest one in Berlin. This morning I saw the catering equipment going into the food stalls and the shelves being stocked already with those wooden nutcracker soldiers. From what I can tell the markets don't start until the 21st November, by which point we should have lots of pretty snow adding to the atmosphere. Yay!

450 steps...

I had intended walking towards Zoo station, famed for it's U2 connections, and it's seedy past. But my path was blocked by the barriers surrounding the Christmas market at Breitshiedplatz. So I headed a little further along the street. My 'neighbourhood' is chock to the brim full of souvenir shops. I thought I'd share with you some of the highlights. I am always surprised by the number of people who buy these bags. More than that though, I wonder where they keep getting this endless supply of 'wall' that they've been happily selling to millions of tourists since the Wall came down.

1000 steps...

We're at the last stop on my mini-tour. We're at the corner where the Ku'damm meets Bundesallee. I thought I'd finish up with another very modern glass building (of which I know zero), the rotunda of the Cafe Kranzler, and some signs telling us what else is around.

And that was the end of my 1000 steps. I should get one of those widgety things so we can group all these 1000 steps together. Let me know if you plan on doing one too. I hope you enjoyed mine.

I know you've seen them before, but...

I don't think you've seen them on a billboard!

As sad as it may seem I think seeing Orla and Hamish not only (a) on a giant billboard, but (b) not arguing, pushing, or crying and (c) without a dummy in either mouth, is one of the happiest moments of my whole May!



We knew some of the events for the 125th Anniversary of the Ku'Damm had already started and we'd missed them, but we decided to make our way down there yesterday afternoon and see if anything was happening. So we went to a vintage car display - is that what you'd call it? All the cars were parked at jaunty angles on the road, interspersed with Berliner Kindl stands and food stalls. It seems to really amuse Stevie that as soon as a bit of road or whatever is closed off for some reason, within 10 minutes there'll be a beer stand with 8 tables and 16 benches there ready for business.





The kids really enjoyed it. Hamish was in his element as there were lots of things with trailers, including a bus with a trailing bus behind it, and a fire engine with a big trailing fire engine thing. If I didn't have kids I would have had the time to patiently read the little German signs in the windscreens and tell you what these things were, but instead I drank the expensive beer all the time hoping it would help me drown out the incessant calls for ice cream, pretzels, sausages, sweeties, etc, etc. We even saw Herbie from the films. Hamish even climbed the front grill before I realised and plucked him off.

We had quite a nice afternoon just wandering around with me clicking away like a paparazzi as usual mumbling (to myself probably, cause Stevie wouldn't be interested) 'what a lovely curve that has', and 'ooh I love that font', and 'isn't that the most gorgeous grey you've seen (apart from me and my sister)?' I think it's a bit of a shame that the anniversary of the Ku'Damm isn't getting such a great write up. It seems to be that the English language news here think that it's desperately uncool and well the attitude is that the Ku'Damm may as well just be forgotten for what was once the Champs Elysees of Berlin is now just a sad, jaded run of the mill street with a plethora of international chain stores and a bunch of high-end designer boutiques.

I tend to think these things are written by people living in the east. Young, hip people who think the city barely functions beyond the east where life is cool, grafitti-covered, trendy, cutting edge, blah, blah, blah. And it is great on the east, but the west also has it's charms. Or maybe I just feel a lot of affection for the place now. But there always seems to be something happening here and I like that.

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I spoke to my friend Claire who moved back to Derby at Christmas last night. They're glad to be back, but they do miss Berlin and the amount going on. She said that their friends are amazed by how much they did and saw while they were here, and that's the thing, it's not hard. I guess it's like this in most capital cities, and I do wonder if we as a family are even becoming complacent about it. The kids are now so used to seeing wild animals in the zoo I think it would be a shock if we didn't have lions and giraffes at the end of our road in Derby.

So anyway, yesterday we also went into the Mini photo booth and got the kids photo taken for the competition to win a Mini. There photo also appeared on the giant electronic billboard above C&A, and luckily I had enough time to get over there and take photos of it. Now I just need to win the off-road Clubman to expand my German adventures with the kids (and copious amounts of luggage).