Getaway to Wismar 22-25 September
Documentation 19 September
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.
Cottbus 17-18 September 2020
Please stop calling it “Europe’s Migrant Crisis”
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.
At least they have not dumped anything on my balcony for the last 48 hours ….
(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.
I can’t believe this keeps happening
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).
Berlin, a good biking city? Nothing could be further from the truth
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 (despite the fact that 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 (!!!!).
The diversity of my Hood
In lovely September weather, I thought I would go for a quick walk in the area before the Sunday hordes of morons, acting like Corona never was, hit the streets.
One of the many new buildings around what used to be the original location of the retail flower market in Berlin, and also once of the Berlin Observatory where Neptune was discovered, between the Jewish Museum and the southern end of Friedrichstraße, is Frizz23, a “cultural co-ownership project”, with, among other places of interest Café Nullpunkt, serving delicious vegetarian and vegan food and aiming for zero waste, and Bolsos, a shop selling hand-made bags made of recyclable material.
Also in the area is the location of one of the early concentration camps – the ”Gutschow-Keller”.
The warehouse with a basement in the second courtyard of the building Friedrichstraße 234 was owned by the greengrocers Hermann and Paul Gutschow who also owned the imposing building in Wilheminian style across the street in Friedrichstraße 17.
Already in 1932, the Gutschows placed their warehouse and basement at the disposal of the ”SA-Sturmbann III/8″.
From March to May 1933, the place was one of the first concentration camps in Berlin. Prisoners called it ”Blutburg” (castle of blood). Hundreds of trade unionists, communists, social democrates and Jews were seized in their homes, at their places of work and in the street and abducted to this place and interrogated, humiliated and tortured.
As these torture chambers of the SA were placed in a large tenement block, the screams could be heard from the street and the neighbourhood knew about the imprisonment, maltreatment and torture.
I have, as yet, been unable to find out what happened to the prisoners subsequently. One might suspect that they were transferred to larger concentration camps and killed.
The relatively new urban garden, next to the equally relatively new TAZ Building, is coming along nicely. There is also a Sprachcafé and a DIY bike repair shop:
Hand-made shoes:
Back towards Lindenstraße, in the building to the right of the Blumenthal Academy is another new café, a branch of the bio bakery and café Beumer & Lutum. And finally, a photo of “Neighbours from Hell” as seen from the street.
