Bear and Marmot in Germany and the Czech Republic
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We woke up and again headed out into the wilds of East Berlin. The TV Tower was beckoning, but we had a small challenge first: finding the entrance. Apparently, various parts of it are falling off, so there's a maze of construction walkways with green mesh coverings to navigate. |
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Once up in the tower, we found Berlin was big. I'd read about Karl Marx Allee, and wanted to see it from the air--and there it was. This huge, multi-kilometer long stretch of apartment blocks stretched to the horizon. Looking at the picture at the left, the street width and the apartment heights look perfectly scaled. And they are, if you're 30 feet tall or so. Chris and I left the tower and walked down to the street, and then the massive scale of the street hit us. Each of those apartment buildings is 10 or 12 stories high, with maybe fifty apartments per floor. So each could house maybe 2000 some-odd people. Now count the number of similar buildings in the picture... I counted at least 20 other buildings. So that's 30,000 to 40,000 people. Yikes, that's a lot. If you still can't imagine the scale, Karl Marx Allee is a eight lane boulevard (four lanes in each direction), with a double row of parking down the middle. That low white building in the center of the picture is a very large movie cinema. There's one thing, though, that wasn't planned for: there aren't any parking lots or garages. To me, the whole setup reminded me of good old American college dorm architecture. |
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On our next stop, we visited the war monument erected after World War II, and yet another great example of Socialist Realism architecture... or just big heroic completely over-the-top design. The monument just screams "Soviet", from the overuse of Lenin to the red stars and brown granite geometric monuments. |
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This is one place in Germany where history still hasn't been fully sorted out. It's fairly obvious that it was built either to appease Stalin or on his orders. And the glorious appeals to fight Western decadence and decay sound quaint these days. |
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After our weekend in Berlin, we headed south. Next... onto the exciting city of Görlitz. |
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