Snow Graffiti

Spaziergang: Prenzlauer Berg to Mitte

Our walk begins on a beautiful Sunday in Prenzlauer Berg, after the Mauerpark...A hip neighborhood with lots of European expatriates, young parents, and hipsters...On this house you see a banner reading "Atomkraft? Nein Danke!" (Nuclear Power? No Thanks!), a common slogan in Germany among the left, young students, green party. It's Sunday, so things are relatively quiet. Most businesses are closed, with the exception of restaurants and a few bakeries.

Down Kastanienallee, which is nicknamed "Casting-Allee" because of its wide sidewalks and fashionable inhabitants, a street with lots of little restaurants, shops, and cafés. Here we take a break for a Waffel...with powdered sugar and Vanille-Quark.

We take a detour through another park along the way, where every inch of sunlight is being occupied by happy Germans, enjoying their sunny Sunday in the middle of a three-day weekend...

More sights that somehow seem very typisch Berlin...The graffiti left reads "We are all staying" and right is an abstract rendering of the Fernsehturm, the TV tower that hovers over Berlin's skyline.

Now we get into central Berlin, Mitte, and things start to look a little bit more schick...You can always spot the Fernsehturm in the background, the symbol of Berlin...Another Sunday market below, wrapping up, with the Bode Museum of Museum's Island in the background.


Across Unter den Linden, the main thoroughfare of Mitte, and through the Humboldt Universität.

Past the beautiful Gendarmenmarkt.

And right before we tuck into the U-Bahn, a Turkish Wedding procession drives by. The bride and groom's car is covered with flowers, and all the other cars in the procession are honking their horns the whole time.

Berlin graffiti

Looking back through my pictures, I saw a lot of Berlin graffiti pictures I still wanted to upload. Also because it's something I've been thinking about since being back in the States.

I have the sense that graffiti in Germany is received much differently than in the US. I know it's different in huge cities, New York and Chicago have their share as well, but even in small cities in Germany you will see it all over.

Maybe it's because the art/vandalism debate is different? Is graffiti perceived differently? I remember reading about this once and the source said that the police cracks down more on bigger crime and ignores stuff like this. And maybe I should differentiate between street art and "tagging." Some of this stuff is really amazing!

this was the door to our apt building, in a pretty nice, quiet residential area.

pretty sure this is by the street artist Banksy, on an old WWII bunker in Mitte.

below: I think this is Karl-Marx-Straße in Neukölln.

below: also in Neukölln, residential area

anti-BP graffiti

below: I actually took this picture because I thought it was so amazing that the sign for the park was in both German and Turkish, then noticed that you could barely read the sign because of the graffiti. But anyways, the first point is amazing. I bet no other German city has this, but maybe I'm wrong. (neighborhood of Neukölln)