A tail of two cities

O & H in front of Friedrichsfelde Palace with the very docile pelicans(?)  

 Berlin, having at one time been split in two by a great big wall, had a great number of duplicates once the wall came down. A lot of systems and services were combined into one, but many other things well, just remained as they were. And as such Berlin must be one of the only places to have two zoos. Actually, I can't find any others through Google. Given the proximity of Zoo Berlin at Zoologischer Garten to where we live, that's the one we tend to visit. We have heard lots of good things about the other zoo, the zoo in the east at Friedrichsfelde, but have just never bothered to go there. Until yesterday, that is. It is known as Tierpark Berlin, not to be confused with Tiergarten which is the big park near us which contains no animals at all, apart from little wild ones.

Flamingos

So what's the Tierpark got that *our* Zoo doesn't? Well, for starters it's got a lot of land. Most people who I've met who've mentioned it have said that they like the fact that there's more room for the animals to roam. And it's true. In a lot of cases the enclosures are big; the rhinos for example have probably about 8 times the amount of space than their friends in the west. But I also thought that a lot of the enclosures were incredibly small, far smaller than what I was used to seeing. The porcupines (below) seemed to have a very small enclosure though they had an entrance to a little cave and I have no idea how big that might have been inside. The inside area of the big cats enclosure also had some really small post-war tiled enclosures - ones that I think I would have been unhappy seeing animals being kept in. On the upside, the place was swarming with builders so maybe they're going to do something about that. 

Porcupines

They also seem to have a LOT of animals. Far more giraffes, rhinos, tigers, and elephants than Berlin Zoo. In fact, the Tierpark is quite well known for it's elephant breeding program, and they have both African and Indian elephants. They also have a lot of different animals to the other zoo. I read before we went that they have red pandas, which I really wanted to see, but which we missed. Another thing they do have is a train. Well one of those ones on wheels that is driven around the park by a slightly sullen driver/narrator. We were *lucky* enough to walk through the front gate and meet it just before it was due to set off. It was actually a very good way to get a quick tour of the place, get your bearings, and work out what you wanted to go back and see in more detail. Unfortunately, what the kids wanted to see was the Spielplatz (below), and as a result wanted off the train after 5 minutes, which I point-blank refused to do, making them stay on it for the entire round trip as punishment for making me fork out for it in the first place. 

Spielplatz

The Spielplatz is very good, but not a patch on the one in Berlin Zoo (I feel awkward calling it Zoo Berlin). It has the added bonus of a water-play area, which in most instances is great, but I didn't have a change of clothes with me for the kids and it wasn't warm enough for their clothes to dry off on their own.

Tigers with east German accents

What the Tiergarten lacks is some pretty architecture. I love the architecture in Berlin Zoo, especially the amazing enclosures for the giraffes and the zebras. The architecture in the Tierpark is just a little bit too 'concrete block' for my liking, well, that is apart from the rather beautiful pink Friedrichsfelde Palace which sits in the grounds of the zoo in amongst some lovely gardens and ponds and a little canal with pretty locks. In fact they have made a lot of the walkways between enclosures with pretty planting and big patches of lilies and so on, but another thing I wasn't too keen on was the huge amount of stinging nettles there were everywhere. A bit odd considering the number of kids rocketing around.

East German zebras are slightly browner than West German ones. They also go to school in portacabins.

Sadly, we never made it round all the animals as Hamish started getting too tired to walk everywhere, but it does seem like a great zoo. At least if we go back we know we still have a lot to see on a second visit. But I have to admit, my heart still belongs to our own zoo, Berlin Zoo, or 'Zoo Berlin' as it likes to be known.

The monochrome delights of Plattenbau architecture, rocks, and elephants. Where's Elmer when you need him?

P.S. If you have a Jahreskarte (Annual Pass) for either zoo or the aquarium you get a 50% discount on entry to any of the other two. Just remember to take it with you!

Links:

1000 steps round... Berlin Zoo - lots of photos of the lovely architecture.

Zoo Berlin - official site of Zoo Berlin/Berlin Zoo

Tierpark Berlin - official site of Tierpark Berlin

Friedrichsfelde Palace - Visit Berlin gives the low-down on what's inside.

Touching Nemo's cousins

We took a little trip to Berlin Zoo's aquarium yesterday. There are two aquariums in Berlin: one attached to the Zoo, and the Sealife Centre, which is near Museum Island in Mitte. We've been to both a few times, and both have their merits. The Zoo aquarium is much cheaper than the Sealife Centre especially when you lie about your kids ages. I should be paying for Orla now that she's turned 5, but given that the German kids don't believe she's tall enough for her age, I figure we might as well make the most of it. I just have to make sure the kids are out of earshot when I lie about their ages, or they'll land me in it.

Anyway, as a result we get in for 6 Euros as I have a Jahreskarte for the Zoo and thus you get a discount. We have been to the aquarium many times before. We have worked out a set route around the place. Once through the turnstile we make for the coy carp pool. Germans are awfully keen on touching animals and penguins and fish and stuff. Over the course of the past two years I have become less horrified and disgusted by this. I just can't help but think that my two will swish their hands around, pick up some vile bacterial illness, and then suck their fingers clean before I get a chance to antibacterially boil wash them. Because unlike in the UK, you don't find 'hand-sanitising units' right next to the dirty animals. You are expected to just take your dirty animals to the toilets which could be up to a kilometre away.  

Once we've finished with the coy carp we go searching for Nemo. That is all they want to do. Usually we can find him straight away, along with his dad, and his little friends. The aquarium have upped their game though and this time, we couldn't find Nemo. He must be there somewhere, but we gave up on that game as the other thing we like to do is dash round the whole place in as little time as possible, ticking off all our favourites, but barely stopping long enough to even find out what some of the fish are called. After all there's an ice cream vending machine upstairs that's going to require a hell of a lot of begging and whining.

We all like the jellyfish. They keep a bunch of them in a tube shaped tank near the front beside the lift. They light it brilliantly so that they all glow as they pulse around in the water. At the moment this tank is full of teeny tiny ones, and the bigger ones are further along as you walk along towards the ugly fish and the shark in the tanks at the end. The shark is pretty amazing to see. I imagine he's bored out of his brain, but it's great to be up against a full height tank and have him sweep past your face. 

Upstairs, the whining and the moaning starts about the ice cream machine, but we manage to offset this by reminding them that they've got crocodiles to see first. On this floor there is a central atrium bit that is climate controlled. You enter on either side via glass doors and stand and look down from a bridge on the crocodiles and turtles. I saw the above photo in there and was quite relieved that times have changed and the  crocodiles have less opportunity to interact with the visitors nowadays. Perhaps a few German children got a bit too enthusiastic with touching the animals.

There's another floor above where the crocodiles and turtles and snakes are that has all sorts of creepy crawlies and frogs and things. But given the desperation for ice cream and the fact that I have no change for the machine we decide to make a hasty exit and head for Wittenburg Platz to an ice cream cafe. I love the stained glass windows on the landing, and I love the ceramic border featuring fish and crustaceans on the other staircase. They are almost worth a visit on their own.

Fish: Seriously, how long until the schools go back???

1000 steps round.... Berlin Zoo

One of the places that has featured a lot in our lives over the past year and three quarters is the Berlin Zoo. Given that it's only 10 minutes walk from our apartment, it's close enough to warrant regular visits and the cost of the annual pass is very reasonable when you consider that it's not only provided education and entertainment for me and the kids, but has also been my main source of photographic ID in Berlin. The German authorities might not recognise my (supposedly) global health insurance card, but a flash of my Berlin Zoo card has allowed me to drop my kids off in a creche, collect parcels, rent DVD's, and generally get me past the kind of German administration barriers which normally see me having to return home, pick up my passport, and go through it all again. It wouldn't surprise me if I could fly with it: "Oh, you're with the Berlin Zoo? Well, why didn't you say? No passport required!".

The Aquarium entrance from inside Berlin Zoo with the ceramic frieze on the inner stairwell.

Now I should be an authority on animals by now, but the truth is, when we first arrived there was a lot of whooshing past a lot of the animals in order to see "more!". The kids, then 2 and 3 years old, were just keen to see everything at lightening speed, and it didn't really matter as I could come every day of the year if I wished. These days the kids seem almost jaded by it all. When you see tigers more often than you see regular cats, it's hard to get whipped up into a frenzy.

But it's a lovely place to visit. It's beautifully laid out, and the zoo architecture is pretty special.

"As a field, the architecture of zoos is a funny thing. The difficulty in distinguishing it from the design of individual animal enclosures lies in the fact that each impacts the other in almost every case.  [...] Zoo buildings instead usually reflect a negotiation between prevailing notions of an animal's best interests, and the desire to frame visitors' experience of looking at those animals in a way that they consider noteworthy. More simply, it's a negotiation between what's designed for animals, and what's designed for humans.

Berlin Zoo's Ostrich House (image via 'The Smart Set') 

You can usually tell which is winning by where and when you stand in the history of the zoo. European zoos of the late 19th and early 20th centuries incorporated the visual cultures of their animals' native homes into ornate buildings — reflections of their nations' colonial aspirations. The Berlin Zoo's ostrich house resembled an Egyptian temple, with large columns flanking the entrance and scenes of ostrich hunts decorating the exterior. Berlin's elephant enclosure was built in the spirit of a Hindu temple; the home for its giraffes adopted an Islamic architectural style. Zoos in Cologne, Lisbon, Antwerp, and Budapest, among others, created similar exhibits. These zoos were no home for subtlety: The animals they contained were exotic to most visitors; the buildings that did the containing reinforced the sensation."  - 'The Elephant in the Room', by Jesse Smith for The Smart Set


Nowadays, most zoos try to recreate as natural an environment for the animals as possible: the zoos role in society is more for preserving & breeding (endangered) animals, than for the exhibit of creatures for our entertainment. Yet that's still a role that they provide in order I assume to bring in funding for breeding programmes. Obviously there are a lot of people who don't like zoos and don't approve of animals being kept in captivity in this way, and you can read an awful lot more about that topic elsewhere on the web. 

The Elephant Gate on Budapester Strasse

Berlin Zoo was opened in 1844, with original animals and birds donated by Friedrich-Wilheim IV. One of the most impressive pieces of architecture is the Elephant Gate entrance on Budapester Strasse. The original was built in 1899, but like a large proportion of the zoo, it was destroyed during the war and was reconstructed in 1984 as an exact replica, and is now one of the most photographed sights in Berlin. 

One of my favourite buildings is the giraffe house, but if I had to live in any of them I would choose the Zebra house, which has an actual little house attached to it (see above left image). How lovely to look out of the window and see zebras in your garden in Berlin!


Not all the buildings in the zoo are as lovely. As time has gone on you can see the architectural style of the buildings has evolved. While the elephants were once housed in a beautiful pagoda-style building which post-war has been replaced with something less exciting and probably more practical.

(l-r) The old Pagoda elephant house & sole surviving elephant in 1943/44. The modern elephant house. The latest baby elephant.

But what I really want to know is: when German anthropologists brought back a group of 30 or so Sudanese people in 1878 to study, and kept them in Berlin Zoo, what was their building like? Doesn't it seem astonishing that this happened just over 100 years ago? Perhaps it will be just as astonishing in 100 years time to think that we used to visit and look at animals in zoos today.

Links:
http://www.zoo-berlin.de (The Berlin Zoo website)
Tours of Berlin Zoo (incl. architecture tour info & booking)
War damage to the Berlin Zoo ostrich house (joshuaandandrew.blogspot.com)
http://www.bargaintraveleurope.com/07/Germany_Berlin_Zoo.htm
World War Zoo Gardener was where I found an interesting article on 'animal civilians' and their plight during world wars & also was the source of the image of the old elephant pagoda house circa 1943/44

Peeing against the tourist attractions

There have been many, many occasions in the past where I have written about potty training Hamish. Over the past year I have started and then given up again because something's gotten in the way, or he's been happy to pee in the potty when he's either naked from the waist down or wearing little pants, but then totally forgets when he's wearing trousers. And more recently still I thought it was getting to the point of ridiculousness and just took him into Kita one day and told them he was potty training (I'd started him off again fully over the weekend before) and that he had a big bag of clothes with him. I saw the woman's face drop and when I went to pick him up he was back wearing nappies, so I realised I wasn't going to get an awful lot of support from them.

The trouble with Hamish is that he just loves to drink loads. Orla is the complete opposite and was an absolute breeze to potty train. But Hamish is a little bit like a garden sprinkler timed to release every 10 minutes. (And no, he's not diabetic, he just really likes drinking, peeing, and us having to spend a fortune on nappies).

So with Stevie having a little intermittent whinge about how many nappies our boy goes through, I've been waiting for a good time to bite the bullet, and just get it done. This seemed like the perfect week. The kids are on holiday from Kita and with a weekend either side I figured I could get it done.

Of course there have been a few accidents. Mostly when he is either really busy (playing with water in the bathroom sink - I think it was the running tap that set him off), or when we are seconds away from stepping out of the house and he knows that a full change of clothing from the waist down including socks and sandals will delay me just enough to make me not just my normal really late but unbelievably late.

But mostly it's gone well so far. The bit I am not so keen on though is that when they say they need to do it, they really need to do it there and then. Yesterday for example we had been at the park and managed to get to the front door of our building when he told me he needed the toilet. As we live on the 4th floor I knew he'd never make it up to the apartment on time, so I whipped down his trousers and as he was nearly shouting 'It's coming!' we kind of had no choice but to pee against one of the giant potted trees outside the building. I was just waiting for one of the neighbours to come out and catch us. It would reaffirm ALL their suspicions about our unsuitability to reside amongst them. Especially as my hands and bag were a little damp from the finest mist of piddle that sprayed back at us from the stupid pot plant.

I had been trying to do that thing where you limit your trips out of the house to minimise hassle, but big mouth Stevie went and mentioned to Orla that if she fancied going to see dinosaurs this week then she just needed to mention it to mummy. So this morning I was getting the full on barrage of dinosaur requests from the two of them. But I managed to talk them out of it (I just couldn't have faced taking Hamish on a train into Mitte and feeling a little trapped if he was desperate.)

So I managed to talk them into a trip to the aquarium. It's only a walk away so easy enough to handle if we needed a pee stop. And oh, how he enjoys peeing outdoors (apparently just like daddy, though I can't confirm that. I believe it's the fact that he gets to stand to pee). He pee'd against the demolisher's fences surrounding the Zoo Palast cinema that they're currently taking down; he pee'd IN A TOILET! at the aquarium (without complaining or refusing to do it because they had neither a special mini toilet or little toilet seat); he pee'd into the foliage in a shady part of the zoo while looking at the elephants; and against the wall of the otter enclosure; and finally between 2 cars outside a Chinese restaurant.

Despite all the al fresco peeing, which I would prefer happened indoors in an actual toilet, I think he's getting the hang of it. Tomorrow we may venture on a journey into Mitte and see the dinosaurs and then I might let him pee on the Brandenburg Gate, the Fernsehturm, the Reichstag, and maybe even the Frederick the Great statue in the middle of Unter den Linden. And now I'm off to wash my hands again...

...way back, back into time...

If I didn't feel so nauseous I'd lick myself clean like a cat.

... to the days when being ill was nice, even a joy. Do you remember? It wasn't that long ago. Let me remind you: Once apon a time you could be as sick as you like, throwing up at your pleasure, lying in bed moaning and wailing and feeling as sorry for yourself as you liked, maybe even treating yourself to a wee cry just because you feel really crap, just because you can.

I could take you back even further to a beautiful time when there was someone to check you were ok, to see if you felt like eating some toast, or maybe a wee bit scrambled egg, and bringing you colouring books and comics in bed. But no, we don't need to go that far back to remember the simple pleasures of illness. Just 4 or so years.

To a time before kids. It's not that I don't appreciate that I now have a tag team of enthusiastic youngsters willing to hold back my hair, joyfully recreating the wretching noises, and even occasionally saying "It's ok Mummy, it's ok." accompanied by a wee pat on the arm. It's just that I'd really like to be in bed, reading magazines and books and drifting off to sleep as and when it comes up my humpf.

Today I am accompanied by two sick toddlers. I feel rocky, Orla has a temperature, Hamish is on the potty every 10 minutes, but the thing with toddler sickness is that they don't want to just lie in bed. They want to do stuff, make glittery pictures, grind Playdoh into the rug, make massive amounts of mess, make their mummy yelp in pain as a small plastic hippo is tossed into the path of her walking feet.

I want to lie still, drink tea, consume as much paracetemol as is possible without making my innards conk out to ease the razor blade agony living in my throat. I want a nice hot bath when I feel cold and I wouldn't mind watching some DVD's under a great big quilt. I do not want to go to the zoo and see baby animals.

Of course last night I made the mistake of not feeling tired and stayed up late pottering about with a German chocolate face mask on. From what I could gether from the packaging you could eat it if you were in desperate need of some chocolate and no harm would befall you. I would need to be stuck up a mountain with only the choice of that or some Kendal mint cake to keep me going in order for me to eat 'cosmetic products' (though god knows I bet you eat enough lipsticks in your lifetime, but at least that is more of a passive activity).

Anyway, come 2am I struck gold with Orla having a raging temperature and needing a hanky for her nose every 5 minutes. I'm feeling very tired, and I still have chocolate in my eyebrows. Times like this I wish I had a dog.

Christmas in its component parts

I have 3 sodding bags of Playmobil requiring my attention. Literally sodding. I decided I should start getting ready for Christmas whenever I have a chance in the evening as otherwise I'll run out of time. Amongst other things I have got the kids, I have managed to buy them a whole load of second hand Playmobil.

Hamish was desperate for the zoo and I was lucky enough to find it in the second hand shop round the corner from my language school, along with extra elephants and brand new in box pandas.

Orla was throwing desirous glances at the princesses sets, and I managed to get a small/medium set of that at a great price. And they both rather fancied the farm, and lo and behold the very next day after buying the zoo they had a box of farm bits and bobs with the largest herd of cattle imaginable. Well there're about 12, I'm sure you can imagine more, but you get the picture.

I also walked past another second hand shop in Charlottenburg one Sunday and spied what I thought might be a massive selection of zoo animals. So when Hamish was off Kita with the sick bug (but in recovery) I walked 3 miles there and 3 miles back, and all just for a family of polar bears and a camel.

My German teacher recommended washing it in the washing machine on a 30 degree wash, and that is what I have done. I have 3 bags which have zip closings and are washable and I stuffed them each full of Playmobil last night and washed them today.

The result is handbags full of Playmobil chaos. Everything has come apart. Down to all the little flowers coming off the princess garden foliage (I kind of expected that), but I also have a camel missing a leg and anything that can be broken down into smaller parts is in smaller parts. It took us ages to make up the zoo and we broke it back down into more manageable sizes for washing, but I can see I have many hours work ahead of me.

25% - part one

From here...

...to here.

ONE WHOLE Q U A R T E R OF THE WAY...

We have completed our first 6 months in Berlin. In some ways it seems to have flown by, where did the good weather suddenly go? Yet, in other ways, it seems so long ago that we lived in Derby. Looking back on the past 6 months, I think I would sum it up by saying that I really like it here, but I'm not exactly sure why. As my life is so much harder here.

Getting the negative out of the way: I HATE THE MEDICAL SYSTEM HERE!

I am 100% sure that they have great doctors here (and also 100% sure that they have some lousy ones too, like that weird clown-loving GP that I saw first), but I really would like to just see one GP, and not have to find my own specialists, and it is probably much better to have a paediatrician, but to be honest, I find it easier to just drag us all to the doctor together and get us all over-innoculated at once.

Oh that's right. Should you decide to move abroad with your children, I'd advise you to make sure that their red books are completely up to date with all their information and innoculations. I had just assumed they were, and even if they weren't I never really realised that it would really matter. Not that it does. Just that Orla has now just had an extra polio injection than the rest of the European population.

We've only just got a letter from Price Waterhouse advising us about forms we need to fill out that will make the whole health insurance annoyance easier. Instead of me having to take my passport, and nearly every other item of ID with me along with my private insurance card and my European Health Insurance Card every time I either need a repeat prescription or need to see a doctor; get them all photocopied (every single time!); see the doctor; get billed; go to the bank to pay the bill; give the bill to Stevie to claim back through the insurance company; then wrangle with the insurance company that it is something that is covered. This will all change (supposedly). We will be issued with new cards which the receptionist will swipe and hopefully that will be that. We'll wait and see. Call me cynical, but I can't quite believe I won't be showing them 3 cards, my passport, and all my ID, etc etc.

What do I like about being here? APART FROM THE CHOCOLATE...

Well, the chocolate is good, and I never knew how much love I could feel for Choko Liebniz. I know you can get them in the UK, but with so much (ahem..) choice in British supermarkets, I never gave them a second glance.

But what I really like about here is that there is so much to do. Hell, if I wasn't filling my days dropping off kids, picking up kids, learning German, seeing doctors, and arguing with the Commerzbank, I think I'd be having a great time. We generally fill our weekends with something new and different to do. At home I think we just got into a routine and we did go places with the kids a lot but it's less enticing when you have an hours drive in front of you to get to a zoo, compared with a 10 minute walk, or the closest aquarium is in Birmingham, and the closest dinosaur is in London. Here, it feels like we have everything on our doorstep, and that is the best thing about living in a capital city. In the summer it was great because we went out every evening when Stevie got home from work and we went places and saw things and ate out and generally had fun in some really nice weather.

I feel like we packed in quite a lot of sightseeing and activities over the summer and I still have a big list of things that I HAVE to do next summer. Our plans over the winter are to see the museums and galleries, though I am sure there must be some ban in place for taking toddlers.

Out and about in the DDR

"Where do you think they keep the sharp knives?"

In the 3 minutes of internet access I seem to be able to get per day, I thought I'd use it wisely on my blog rather than frittering it away reading rubbish on Facebook. It was Hamish's birthday the other day and we had a weekend of doing all the things that Hamish likes to do. So we visited SeaWorld which they loved and the big 50 ft circular tank with the lift that goes up the middle is great, but overall we think the SeaWorld in Birmingham tops it just a little bit. But the kids loved it and we bought the joint tickets which will get us into Legoland, which we'll maybe go to next weekend.

Yesterday was absolutely roasting, so in between stops for ice-cream (Hamish likes the cone, and tries to eat that before the ice-cream), we yielded to the requests for baby animals and went to the zoo (again. I think this might be my fourth time, in which case my annual pass has paid for itself). Anyway, I was so busy saying to Stevie, "Have you got your zoo card? Have you got your wallet?" Etc, etc that I didn't even bother to think about whether I had mine. So we walked there and then we went back home on the U-Bahn and I raced back to get my card. Thankfully we only live a little way away from the zoo so it reduced Stevie's moan level to 'minimum'.

Later we were sat in a cafe in the shade with both kids sleeping in the Phil & Ted's (what's that? Maybe only the 5th time they've both napped at the same time?) and Stevie said that he doesn't know what he'll do in the winter-time when there are less outdoor things to do. I suggested that we could perhaps visit the hundreds of museums that there seem to be. He said that he doesn't want to visit any of the concentration camps or visit any of the museums that are related to the war. Which effectively rules out probably about 50% of them. He just doesn't want to know about all the terrible things that happened here.

2 days ago we passed the station where there is a monument to all the children who got sent to Britain during the war and to those who got sent to the concentration camps. They all left from Friedrichstrasse Station. There were photographs documenting both the children who left for Britain and those who survived the concentration camps. Orla was quite interested in looking, but it made Stevie feel very uncomfortable.

What he is interested in is the DDR era and is keen to visit the DDR museum. I went with the kids in the first couple of weeks we were here as I'd read about it and really fancied it. It's excellent. It's down by the Berliner Dom on the River Spree in Mitte. It's quite small, but they've crammed it full of interesting stuff. When I went in, the man working there asked why I was bothering to bring the kids as they wouldn't enjoy it, but in fact they had a great time. It's very interactive. There is a Trabi that you can sit in and pretend to drive; a reconstruction of a DDR house complete with bathroom, kitchen, and living room, and the rest of the exhibits are all accessible and can be touched and used, or are in little drawers or cupboards. We spent quite a while there and I would definetly go back again with friends and family who come over. The kids particularly liked the living room and the Trabi. Maybe next we'll go to the DDR transport museum.