Tags
Berlin, boats trip, friends, kreuzberg, new friends, old friends, photography, rubber boat, spree, travel
A photographer friend of mine told me she knew someone in Berlin I “just had to” meet. So on Monday I took the U-Bahn to Kreuzberg and meet this delightfully vivacious person. She took me to the cafe am Engelsbecken (angels basin) and we chatted like old friends.
She spent the day showing me around Kreuzberg in a sort of scavenger-hunt for nice places to sit and eat/drink. And as we moved from place to place, the warm sun always smiling down on us, we told each other stories and slowly became new friends.
at the Engelbecken
an old lopsided tree-house an old Turkish man lives in
isn’t radical doing what you’re told not to do?
poster art on a lamppost
on the canal
Synagoge am Fraenkelufer
pipes over the canal
lots of swans
two friends in a rubber boat
After a delightful afternoon I then went to the Hauptbahnhof (main train station) to pick up an old friend of mine. We had met many years before in Dublin, but she moved back to Germany a few years ago and decide to come an visit me in Berlin.
After a late night of chatting we had a leisurely breakfast out in the garden, she, like a true German, with coffee, me, like the half-Irish I am, with tea. Because my foot was still throbbing and quite sore (it’s much better today, thanks for asking) and the sun had turned the heat up we decide to take a boat-trip. The one we picked is called the ‘bridge tour” and takes you along the Spree and two canals, in a circle around the center of Berlin. We were two old friends laughing, chatting and taking in the sights of the capital and I soon discovered that taking photos while moving is not easy.
break-feast
under a bridge
a ladder into the Spree
securing the boat
this is a Rosinenbomber (raisin bomber). After WWII West Berlin was isolated by the Russians (cold war) so the Americans dropped parcels with food etc from above and since there were little packets of raisins in the boxes they were nick-named raisin bombers
at a water-gate (or lock)
a shining piece of architecture
steps up into the Reichstag
Berliner Ensemble was founded by the great German play-write Bertolt Brecht in 1949 in East Berlin
jensinewall 