Hidden Paradise(s)?

For those who have been to Berlin, this is nothing new. But for those who haven't, maybe it will be something that entices you to visit the capital of Germany. The building style in Berlin is characterized by the courtyard. The buildings stand right up next to the sidewalk, but periodically there are wide entryways that give you a glimpse of what lies behind the building. This entryway (typically wide enough for a horse and wagen...or a car) leads back into a courtyard and perhaps to another building, behind which you can find yet another courtyard (Hinterhof). The buildings are like concentric squares, with space between that the residents turn into small green spaces, play areas, quiet spots to sit and enjoy coffee or a glass of your favorite beverage.

The courtyards that are on either side of my apartment look more or less uninteresting. Some people have plants on their balconies(if they have one) or outside their windows, but the courtyard itself is simply orderly, not cultivated.
Here you can see a late afternoon (or rather, evening--it stays light well past 9 p.m.) view into the first of two courtyards. The second courtyard, from which I enter my stairwell, you can see in my second post. It's been scaffolded so that the building behind mine can be insulated with foam before new stucco is applied.


Other courtyards are more interesting. Here is one from Potsdam:



Though it might be hard to judge from the pictures, courtyards are quiet spaces, away from the noise of traffic, streetcars and passers-by, who catch a glimpse of peace as they hurry by.

Prenzlauer Berg--home away from home

Prenzlauer Berg--21 June 2010
The place where I will live during the next five weeks is characterized by the picture to the right. Old, classic buildings shoulder-to-shoulder with newly renovated classic buildings. Nearly 20 years of unified Berlin can be measured in the number of buildings remaining to be renovated. Every year fewer.

The building(s) in which our seminar members have our apartments is one such renovated building. It looks more like the building on the left from the street, but from inside, that is, from the courtyard, it's looking rather good. That can be seen from the second picture here.
This is in fact the view from my kitchen window. The man there on the scaffolding on the left is (slowly) replacing the stucco on the brick of the building. The old stucco had to have been removed before...or it fell off. Across the courtyard (and this is the second courtyard from the street) you can see what the completed renovation of a stucco building looks like. The spiral staircase is something new.





That juxtaposition of old and new, disintegrating and gentrified, is repeated here in the stairwell of my part of Rhinower Str. 9. As I walked up the stairs (and there are many: I live in an apartment on the 4th floor above ground (5th floor for Americans= 4.OG)), I noticed that one of the spindles had been replaced with a newly turned (or newly stripped of paint) one. Among the gray sticks, it looked pretty funny--a strange reversal of old and new. It's possible that the cost of renovating didn't necessarily allow for all of the spindles to be stripped of their old layers of paint, nor for new ones to be turned. But to have the single old (new?) spindle among the cheap (new?) ones was a sort of ironic echo on a small scale of the juxtaposition of old and new that pervades much of a neighborhood on the east side of where the Berlin Wall stood. What's new (i.e. gray sticks) isn't necessarily always an improvement. It just takes time and patience to restore what was good.

A beginning

Well, one must start somewhere.
This will be my first attempt at blogging as a way to record and reflect on my experiences in Berlin, scheduled to begin June 20. I hope that as I do this, I learn and acquire a new tool in teaching my students German, and about Austria, Germany, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Switzerland and other places where people choose German to communicate.
Look for photos and short posts, in English and sometimes in German (or perhaps that will be a parallel blog?). More next week.