All posts by Helle Møller

Retired from a long working life as secretary/assistant in UN and EU institutions. Freelance stress counsellor and proofreader/copyeditor. Now living in Berlin.
Photography

Things I can photograph without leaving home

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(Continued from “My Corona Diary”).

25 October

The pandemic now pervades all of our lives to an extent that a sequel to the first Corona diary is in order, and therefore, this will be continued in “Corona Diary II“.

21 October

Autumn colours

17 October 2020

Which will win today – the mist or the sun?
Red basil in bloom

15 October 2020

Another grey and rainy day.

8 October 2020

Covid19 numbers are back to what they were during lock-down in early spring. And so is the weather, so this feels like “back to sqare one”. Looking out the window, mainly for splashes of colour.

The containers in the backyard of the neighbouring construction site about to be overgrown, and a bottle left from New Year’s Eve 2019/20.

6 October 2020

Between two buildings in the morning.

8 September 2020

28 August

With or without the tree?

22 August

It finally rained, and the construction site was quiet. Bliss.

14 August

Not exactly from home, but I am not at home a lot these days. This is not a good time of year to have to keep all windows and doors closed due to ear-splitting noise and clouds of dust (see “Neighbours from Hell”).

So on one of my getaways, I missed a train and therefore had time to photograph the starlings which reside on Bahnhof Alexanderplatz. Tiny but cute, with beautiful plumage.

31 July early morning

27 July

Probably my favourite lens – the 35 mm macro

26 July

Beautiful rain. I could not resist putting some of my plants back on the balcony. I usually scoff at people who spray water on flowers before taking photos of them. So I wait till it rains. A concept possibly better known as a form of hypocrisy.

15 July

14 July

Swallows (I think – correct me if I’m wrong). The acrobats of ornithology. They fly so damn quickly that I’ll never be able to get a sharp photo, even if they come quite close to our balconies. They are probably also the reason why insects never really make it as far the flowers on our balconies. Both a blessing and a curse.

13 July

12 July

I am not going to stop till I get a response

10 July

9 July

My balcony on a rainy day.

7 July

I have tried to make my balcony insect friendly by sowing some wild flowers, and also counting on the herbs that eventually bloom, such as oregano and thyme.

So when there is finally a suitable macro photography model on my balcony, is it thanks to those efforts? No. It is because of a mint plant which I bought in a supermarket earlier today.

6 July

Splashes of yellow.

And some experimenting.

5 July

A crane disappeared and revealed a tower I did not know I could see. Now I have to go and see what it is. Sigma 150-600 at 600 mm.

28 June

27 June

It was just a tiny little thing, about ten mm long. And don’t worry, no animal was harmed in the making of this photo. It is safe and sound, back in the coriander plant where I found it. I love my Canon 35 mm Macro lense.

  • The underside
Clover, as part of my efforts to create an insect-friendly balcony. Failing miserably.

24 June

A small section of my early morning coffee view, with a little bit of exposure tweaking in Lightroom.

23 June

And in the early evening, I played with Mr Sigma 150-600

22 June

Enjoying the sunrise (very early morning). I do hate pigeons, but they sure make better models than, say, swallows.

Sigma 150-600 mm, at 600 mm, heavily cropped:

20 June

Thistles.

19 June

It was just a tiny little moth, not much bigger than a mosquito.

Berlin, The Balcony that "would not be affected"

Now it looks like this

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The wall has been looking like this since some time between 22 and 25 September when I came home from a trip. I wonder how long I will have to look at that.

This time, everything is covered in sawdust which I assume will not be too difficult to remove, but I had not planned on having to clean the balcony once more this side of winter.

Cresco Real Estate

Schön & Sever

Berlin, Photography

Volkspark Blankenfelde 30 September 2020

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Botanical Garden Pankow.

Daytrips from Berlin, Travels

Getaway to Wismar 22-25 September

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Wismar is so picturesque, it is almost nauseating.

Island of Poel

On the way to the zoo:

Wismar Zoo

Berlin, The Balcony that "would not be affected"

Documentation 19 September

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This afternoon, I spent (wasted?) about an hour cleaning my balcony – again (see https://www.hellemoller.eu/2020/09/14/i-cant-believe-this-is-actually-happening/) (that was probably stupid, but I could no longer stand looking at the mess). It currently looks like in the photo above. I have not washed anything, and my gut instinct tells me it would be asking for trouble to put the furniture back once again. But at least I can sit on my balcony now.

This time, there was too much rubble to carry to their doorstep in one go, so I just threw their “gifts” onto the scaffolding. A lot of it was stuck, so it took quite a bit of hacking and scraping. Washing the floor and the marble shelves (which were brand new from February last year) would probably reveal some damage done, and that would ruin my mood which for some strange reason is relatively good right now. Perhaps because I have just been out of town, and am going away again next week, and for another two weeks after that will be relocating to house- and catsit elsewhere in Berlin.

I do appreciate the fact that I am able to get away most of the time, and that I live in a (for me) new country with a good train service and an endless supply of places to visit (although when during the winter I decided to sell my parking space, that was not what I planning on spending the money on :-)).

However, truth be told, given the lovely weather this month, not to mention Covid19 and my age, I would have preferred to be able to spend most of the time on my balcony and sometimes have one or two visitors over for brunch/lunch/coffee/drinks.

Cresco Capital Group

Schön & Sever

Daytrips from Berlin

Cottbus 17-18 September 2020

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Wikipedia.

Kunstmuseum Dieselkraftwerk

Website. Wikipedia.

Staatstheater

Website. Wikipedia.

Tierpark Cottbus

Website. Wikipedia.

In my opinion

Please stop calling it “Europe’s Migrant Crisis”

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No, CNN and BBC World, it is – still – not “Europe’s migrant crisis”. It is certainly a crisis, to put it mildly, for the migrants. But for Europe, it is a crisis of xenophobia, bloody-mindedness, mean-spiritedness, inhumanity, and lack of empathy and solidarity, as well as of political will to solve an issue which ought to be a piece of cake for an area as large, wealthy, and some even say enlightened (yeah, well, just keep thinking that and it may come true one day) as Europe.

The Balcony that "would not be affected"

At least they have not dumped anything on my balcony for the last 48 hours ….

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(but to be on the safe side, I will not clean it for another few days).

However, this drilling has been going on for weeks: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1073953174.

The Balcony that "would not be affected"

I can’t believe this keeps happening

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Remember the balcony that “would not be affected”?

Also see this post about the gift that keeps on giving.

And this one about all the lies. And perhaps also this one about some of the other damages.

The whole story is outlined in this category.

On Wednesday 9 September I came home to find a corner of my balcony looking as below, after I had cleaned it a couple of weeks earlier when they had previously dumped a load of sh.. there.

As mentioned in the post linked to above, the monstosity they are renovating is “unter Denkmalschutz” and that seems to mean they can do whatever they like, and I apparently have to keep smiling and am not allowed to complain.

I decided to leave it a couple of days to make sure they had finished, and yesterday, Sunday 13 September, I finally had enough looking at all that disgusting mess and cleaned it, as shown here:

I was going to wash it all and put the furniture back this afternoon, when I found the same corner again looking as below. And of course still nobody saying even as much as “oops” to me about it. In fact, the entrepreneur has not even bothered to reply to my e-mail about it, and neither has our Hausverwaltung, Schön & Sever (who is on the side of Cresco Real Estate anyway).

Cresco Capital Group

Schön & Sever

GBP Architecten

Berlin

Berlin, a good biking city? Nothing could be further from the truth

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Let’s start close to home, the courtyard of the building I live in.

Cars and other motorised vehicles are allowed to park helter-skelter wherever they like, but bikes are ONLY allowed in a room which is much too small, alternatively in our own rooms in the basement which involves schlepping the bike through the main door, carrying it down two short flights of stairs, unlocking the room to the basement, then up a couple of steps, round yet another corner and unlocking our private room, which is barely big enough for a bike.

In our building, which is obviously stuck somewhere in the mid-20th century (anti bikes, anti environment ….), everything has to be as easy and simple as possible for motorised vehicles, and as difficult and bothersome as possible for bikes.

In my view, the courtyard should be used for something much better, nicer, more modern and more environment-friendly than asphalt and cars, and no cars should be allowed in the courtyard at all.

When I bought the flat here, I also bought a parking space, and was promised that I would be able to use it for a bike rack (to make sure the bike would never fall over and get anywhere near the precious cars) and keep my bike there. However, the other inhabitants in the building did not want that, and kept cutting the increasingly heavy chain and placing my bike out of sight right at the end of the courtyard.

Ever since I moved in, I have tried to float the subject of creating bike parking spaces in the as yet completely un-utilised areas in the courtyard (not using those spaces is a complete waste if you ask me), but that has met with no interest whatsoever.

I have now given up, sold the parking space, and given away my bike.

By the way, did I mention that our Hausverwaltung is Schön & Sever?

Into the street: In Lindenstraße, there is a very narrow bike path BETWEEN parked cars and a very busy street (we all know how drivers can’t be bothered to look behind them before opening their car door). An arrangement seen in many streets all over Berlin. Who in their right mind builds streets like that?

Other bike paths (where they exist), apart from being equally narrow, are full of potholes, lampposts and trees, cars park on them with impunity, and some of them even have a double function as bus lanes (!!!!).