Tag Archives: Victoria zu Berlin

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Hamburg/Helgoland/Cuxhaven August/September 2024

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Primary purpose: annual meeting of AIACE Deutschland and an opportunity to perhaps connect with old friends and definitey with friends made last year in Dortmund.

Afterwards quick visits to Helgoland and Cuxhaven which have both been on my bucket list for a long time. And to see the sea! The North Sea Wattenmeer is my favourite region in the whole world. And of course an opportunity to reconnect with friends made last year in Dortmund.

I also can’t wait to get away from the neighbours from hell – Cresco Real Estate’s inifinity project with the pompous and ridiculous name of “Victoria zu Berlin” – the world’s ugliest building and longest-lasting renovation project which has basically rendered my balcony unusable for the last seven summers.

Day one: Arrival in Hamburg, welcome reception and dinner

On the ICE on the way there: What the train driver sees. Something I have never seen before: A (lockable) glass door to the driver’s cabin, and my seat was right behind. That must be incredibly annoying for the drivers.

Day two: Bus tour of Hamburg, lunch in a restaurant in the fish market, more bus tour. Evening free.

Great bus tour with an amazing guide. Lunch in Restaurant Elbspeicher on the harbour front.

The first photo is of a converted bunker. Later the oldest semi-detached housing in the world. There is also a bit of experimenting black and white vs colour, and two cases of double exposure.

We also visited the plaza of the Elbphilharmonie. This time, I had more time and opportunity to walk all the way around and take photos (rather than being there for a concert). I tried my hand at some panoramas for a polyptych. I still have a lot to learn in terms of aspect ratio etc., or I could be less ambitious with the number of panels, but I like that format.

And an attempt at a multipanel panorama of Hamburg as seen from a walk around the Plaza of the Elbphilharmonie. I still have a lot to learn in terms of aspect ratio etc., and I guess I could be a litte less ambitious with the number of panels, but I like this format.

Already tired of bland German/northern European food morning, noon and night (less than 48 hours away from my spice rack at home and my local Indian and Vietnamese restaurants :-)), I found two viable alternatives within a very short walk from our hotel in Altona – one Indian and one Vietnamese (Vina Haus, Mendelssohnstraße – don’t seem to have a website), so one for tonight and one for tomorrow night. Mood considerably improved :-).

Day three: AIACE-DE meeting, lunch, and a programme which I shall skip and go to the Henri Cartier-Bresson exhibition in Bucerius Kunstforum instead.

The meeting went according to plan until it did not. I had been wondering how we were supposed to elect people for several posts on the board, a.o. a new chair, without knowing who the candidates were. It turned out that if you belong to “the inner circle”, you know such things, but I do not, and I did not, so the beautiful weather started to draw me outside like a magnet and I figured a long walk for the rest of the day would be a healthier way to spend my time.

I started by walking to the Bucerius Kunstforum to see this amazing exhibition of works by Henri Cartier-Bresson.

I then proceeded to the area by the Elbphilharmonie and along the harbour front to Dockland and from there up some stairs and through a very nice area of Altona with lots of little cafés and restaurants and back to the hotel.

Bonus tip: Near Dockland, on the left side of the street when walking back towards the centre and JUST before the stairs leading to the upper level and Altonaer Balkon ist Café Schmidt with good coffee and delicious-looking cakes. Also, if you need a reward after the treck up the stairs, go left in the direction of the Altonaer Balkon and find a small beer garden called Hafenmeisterei in a very idyllic location.

Day four: Bus tour, lunch, bus tour, and farewell dinner

Guided tour of Hamburg City Hall (in four groups in two buses – very well organised). I skipped that. The weather was too nice and I cannot imagine that it is much less ugly inside than outside.

Afterwards a lovely two-hour harbour cruise. Always nice to be on water. I love Hamburg’s maritime flair, which my overdose of photos illustrate (but oddly enough, Berlin still feels more like home). The two megayachts in the drydock are the Ali Baba and the Luna.

And finally, a buffet dinner and the end of another very well organised annual meeting.

Day five: Moving on to Helgoland …. continued in this post.

The Balcony that "would not be affected"

Only in Berlin …

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does it take a spring and a summer, and by the looks of it also an autumn, and so much noise, to landscape such a small piece of land: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3k7t5ApDEQ.

Of course there would be no fun in preparing the tiles BEFORE transporting them here, because then you would miss a golden opportunity to continue, in year eight, to make life a living hell for a large area around you, and rendering our balconies unusable for at least as long, and that would be no fun, would it?

Berlin

Lies, lies, lies

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Best advice to people who have just moved to Berlin? Trust nobody. Or at least keep your bullshit detector on high alert. Lying is a favourite Berlin sport.

What is it about Berlin that people here lie, more or less blatantly, more often than they tell the truth, and that lying is apparently considered completely acceptable?

I started to notice that the minute I moved here, and it is only getting worse. People in all walks of life, for whatever purpose or reason. From Hausverwaltung (in one instance that nearly landed me in real trouble) to Cresco Real Estate who when starting their what would turn out to be a typical Berlin infinity project next door promised me my balcony would not be affected, to an HNO doctor I consulted recently (who tried to perpetuate a minor issue rather than solve it immediately), to so-called friends (even those you thought were different). And many other examples in between which I have chosed to forget so as not to clog up my already limited brain space.

The problem is, that when you start to not find any reason to believe anything anybody says, you end up not wanting to communicate with anybody about anything, because – why bother? – once you know a person has lied about one thing, you know they have most likely been lying about more things, or even everything, especially in emails and on social media.

I am assuming that most people who grew up somewhere else were raised to know that lying is never an option, and therefore it is probably one of the reasons why so many people say Berlin is a hard city to live in.

The Balcony that "would not be affected"

Timing is everything in Cresco’s infinity project

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I have to say that Cresco’s, and Victoria zu Berlin (I still think that is hysterically funny) sense of timing is breathtaking. From physically halving the area of my balcony for a couple of years at the height of the pandemic when it would have been really good to have the full use of that space (and they had promised me that my balcony would not be affected, also described here: https://www.hellemoller.eu/category/the-balcony-that-would-not-be-affected/), to always making more noise every summer than every winter, basically ruining all summers for us since about 2018 to now when it is worse than ever.

They are, supposedly, landscaping the garden behind the building, on a piece of land adjoining ours. Not that anything ever happens. Most of the time they just switch on the machines, but the place has been looking more or less the same for months. Why this “work” had to take place in April, May, June, July, ….. is beyond me. After all, those machines can be switched on and left to make an infernal noise any time of the year.

But at the height of summer, to make sure everybody in the area have to keep windows and balcony doors closed. Thanks again, Cresco Capital Group or Real Estate or whatever it is they call themselves, and “Victoria zu Berlin” (sorry but I have to laugh every time I see that silly yet pompous name).

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Weimar and Buchenwald 3-5 July

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IN PROGRESS

Main purpose: to get away from Cresco’s infinity project next door, with its incessant noise which has now ruined every summer for us since about 2018. And now I don’t think Victoriahöfe, or Victoria zu Berlin as they now pompously call it, will ever be finished. Nobody seems interested in ever finishing it. Then rather continue to make life an eternal misery for everyone living in the area. As if the fact that it is one of the ugliest buildings in world is not enough to ruin the day for everyone looking at it.

Secondary purpose, to visit this exhibition in three parts:

“Together, the three parts of “Bauhaus and National Socialism” present a new, often uncomfortable history of the Bauhaus and its legacies. For, long after 1945, the illusion of modernism—and the Bauhaus with it—as uniquely “good” and “persecuted” persisted. As the fates of many Bauhaus members show, an innovative artistic attitude alone does not protect against the seductions of fascism. Therefore the role of art in a liberal and cosmopolitan society is a question that animates the exhibition in all three of its venues.”

But upon arrival in Weimar, I started with a visit to the Buchenwald Memorial.

I have lost count of the number of people who have asked me why I “keep visiting those places”. First of all, since the fall of the wall (1989), I have now visited a breathtaking total of three concentration camps: Ravensbrück, which can be visited on a daytrip from Berlin, Sachsenhausen, likewise, as part of a walk with Empor Berlin, and now Buchenwald, since I was visiting Weimar anyway. Hardly a matter of “keep visiting”.

I always ignore the question, since I do not feel that I have to justify anything to anybody, but if I were to, one of my reasons would be that “those places” are a significant part of the very recent history of the part of the world in which I have always lived and worked, and the country, in which I was a frequent tourist for many years, and where I have chosen to live since 2016.

Since I do not wish to hear their answers, I never ask people to justify them trying to pretend that that chapter never happened. It is a bit like with anti-vaxxers – I really do not want to hear what they have to say on the subject.

I do know that some of them would say that a visit would depress them. Oh dear. Or that it would make them feel queasy. Well, boohoo. Scarred for life then, are we? Newsflash: It is not about you.

Anyway, a strange thing happened this morning when I was trying to find the bus from Weimar to Buchenwald: The bus station in Weimar is being renovated, stops relocated, and the place is confusing, so:

Me, to a friendly-faced lady, around my age, perhaps a little older: Do you know this area well?

Her: Lived here all my life.

Me: Would this be the right direction to the Buchenwald Memorial?

Her, looking a little puzzled: Is that near here?

Me, feeling more than a little puzzled: Apparently a twenty-minute bus ride away.

Her: But surely, the bus stop would not actually be called THAT?

True story. Talk about being in denial.

PS: Actually it is (called THAT).

The mind boggles. But anyway, here are some photos. What always strikes me during my “many” visits to “those places” is the idyllic surroundings.

Day two and three:

On the way to the first museum, a name which is familiar in Berlin, too:

Museum Neues Weimar

“The Bauhaus as a Site of Political Contest, 1919-1933, illuminates artistic and political conflicts at the Bauhaus. These began with the founding of the art and design school in Weimar and continued unabated when the Bauhaus moved to Dessau and Berlin.”

Bauhaus Museum

“Removed – Confiscated – Assimilated, 1930/1937, focuses on the “Degenerate Art” confiscations in 1937 and the campaign that preceded it in Weimar. As early as 1930, authorities had ordered the removal of over 70 works by artists such as Lyonel Feininger and Paul Klee from the Weimar Castle Museum. In 1937, more than 450 works were confiscated – a cultural loss to Weimar’s collections that is still felt today.”

Bonus tip: a nice café inside the museum (downstairs), and a good Vietnamese restaurant on the corner of the same square.

Schiller-Museum 

“The core of the exhibition deals with Bauhaus members “Living in the Dictatorship, 1933-1945″. It addresses the balancing acts they performed in the face of the new political circumstances after 1933. Many Bauhäusler had few choices; under an anti-leftist and racist regime, they lost their jobs and were forced into exile. At least twenty-one Bauhaus students perished in ghettos and concentration camps. However, the majority were not targets of the Nazi regime. In fact, they participated in propaganda exhibitions and design fairs, and they designed film posters, furniture, household goods, and even busts of Hitler.”

This, for me, was the most interesting of the three Bauhaus/Nazi-related exhibitions. However, the other two museums were interesting because of their other content and so should not be missed in this context.

Random photos from walking between museums and around Weimar: