Afternoon in Britz

Once upon a time, I feel I have to go out of my comfort zone and explore carefully those corners of the city with unfamiliar names and maps. As a visit to the Britz Castle was in the cards for a long time - for reasons I will disclose later in my travel story - yesterday I decided to take a 45-minute ride bus and cross the geographical and mental border to a completely new place. I did stop at Parchimer Allee, a street I never been before and start the walking under the very hot sun. 

The first invitation to learn to manage the unknown landscape come from Kunst im Taut Haus, a gallery hosted in one of the 3 floors of a small house whose current Adolf Strübe exhibition was advertised quietly at the entrance of a small alley. The paintings were influenced by impressionists like Pissaro and Degas, and can be bought on the place too. The wall paintings and the sweet lines of the work of art create a mesmerizing symbiosis that keeps you on the spot for longer. 

When I am finally able to get out of the empire of colours, I am captivated by the colours of the famous Hufeisensiedlung, a quarter of building part of the UNESCO heritage for their special colourful facades and the old cherry trees. I take a mental note to be back soon only for a full time architectural exploration of this area.

After another minutes of walking on the very quiet Parchimer Allee - after all, it is Sunday afternoon and everyone looks to stay mostly at home with the family I suppose - I reach the area of Britz Castle, my foremost and final destination. The yard is hosting various institutions, from a music school to a museum and small coffees. An exhibition of agricultural tools and of historical carriages, plus a 1927 Ford A limousine, reminds the countryside past of this area.

For children, a Bauerhof was created, presenting various animals that can be touched and especially photographed. 

As for the rest of my trip, the ambiance is relatively quiet, without too many groups of people around. Maybe this will change the next week, when a Middle Age Festival, Cocomedievale, is expected to take place between 12 and 14 of June. 

The half-timbered Gutshof Britz is open serving various interesting high-end dishes, out of which the passion fruit based sweets seem to be the most tempting calls. 

For now, I prefer to have a look at the exhibition hosted at the Neukölln Museum, presenting through 7 exhibitional spaces the table culture of this very multicultural area of Berlin. Through videos and table objects displayed, it gives insights about changing habits, new mentalities and sometimes even new recipes. 

On the other side of the yard, the white silhouette of the castle is inviting to a different discovery. The current structure dates from the end of the 19th century, following the creation of Germany as a unitary states and testimony of the new mentalities and habits. The bright white facade with stylish intarsia is testimony of the historical and mentalities changes taking place in the industrial area. 

The rooms are big enough to give place to the massive pieces of furniture, on special colourful carpets. Everything seems to be set up to last longer and to create enjoyable spaces for the wealthy third class members. 

But if I wanted for so long to visit Britz Castle, it was for the special exhibition of Biedermeier dolls. It is fascinated how the adults can start molding the children's world from a very early age through games and toys that prepare them for the adult life. The dolls, many created in German factories, are also testimonies of the fashion trends of the time. Overall, all my reasons to visit this exhibition were justified and felt like the entire trip was a good reward after a full day of crazy work. 

My relaxation session continued while walking the wild alleys of the park, in the middle of the green leaves and yellow roses. Although going in and out of Britz took me around 2 hours, the entire excursion was a good choice and with or without a serious reason, I plan to be back at least once again this summer. 

Let me show you my Berlin!

Are you visiting Berlin and curious what you can see and where you can go? 

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Just another busy Sunday in Berlin

We planned for a long time to have a full time day out, with as many activities as we can do together. Despite the cold and the water on the street and even some wind, we decided that should happen today, the 8th of December. As I already decided that this month will be very busy for me, it received exactly what I was looking for with an open heart and a camera ready to take more pictures.

A couple of years ago, I received a nice shawl with a Mucha imprint that is still part of my special wardrobe. I saw some of his works in Prague and on postcards, but was never thinking of a connection between this Art Nouveau master and Manga illustrations. At the Brohan museum, there is a new temporary exhibition outlining not only the connection with the hippie/psychedelic times - the music covers for Rolling Stones, Santana and Jefferson Airplane are the living proof - but also the influence on various modern Japanese pop culture. I was not extremely convinced about this missing link, as Mucha seems for me much richer, generous with the traits of its characters and with a diverse register from the natural world. Maybe the only sure reference is, in my opinion the flying hair of the women. 

With this thoughts in mind, we took the bus for the main point of our schedule: watching Snow Queen at the historical Zoo Palast.

For the sake of the travel writer, we bought tickets for the biggest hall and with the 3D glasses ready, we waited that the small children running around the comfy chairs are getting tired and ready to watch the movie - spoken in German, as we are used already, but the language is very easy. We munched the salty popcorn delivered in very decorative boxes, almost mesmerized by the red ambiance of the room. The advertising lasted only a couple of minutes, after which we watched for a couple of minutes a short black-and-white Mickey and Minnie movie, intercalated with colourful 3D fragments. It followed our Snow Queen: a good animated story, with funny characters and a wise message: know how to control your gifts with love, otherwise the effects can be destroying. At the end of the movie, we had a look at the VIP Lounge with many glasses of champagne at the bar, but we did not have too much time to consider 'should we stay or should we go', as the answer was: the next!

Zoo Palast, whose part of this side of Berlin cultural geography since 1915, just re-opened a couple of days ago after massive reconstruction and most probably there will be many more occasions to attend movies here. 

I was requested to go to see the Altes Museum exhibition, Predators and Prey, featuring the Roman mosaic discovered in Lod, close to Tel Aviv. Since September 2010, the interesting representation of animals brought there by the Romans from far away for fighting purposes, is on a journey around the world, before being brought back and set in a dedicated museum: Shelby White and Leon Levy Lod Mosaic Center. The realistic and naturalistic representation - even the traces of blood from the wounded animal do have their small pieces of stone - decorated the reception room of a large Roman villa around 300 CE. The surface of 7,2x4 m. is made of thousand of pieces of stone and glass, made of multi-layered bedding of mortar and cement, a common technique at the time, apparently. I never thought that a modest mosaic can be so powerful and this kept us busy for around one hour, turning around and trying to make some stories in our mind about those times.

Besides the rush and crowded streets, the good news for this time of the year is that the shops, most of them, and especially the big commercial centers are open. For the rest of the day out, we wondered around Potsdamer Platz, with a generous stop to check if we really don't need something very urgent for our wardrobe - we did the same last evening, but you never know. We tried to keep everything under control though - especially our budget - and went back home late in the afternoon, ready to sip the good coffee that can be prepared only in the home sweet home. 

And this is just the happy beginning of another busy writing book of discovering the city, its people and its tastes.

Enjoying the silence. At the Museum of Musical Instruments.

Only the sound of the photo cameras broke the overwhelming silence at the Museum of Musical Instruments. A Tuesday afternoon, on a very hot day, there were many people visiting the relatively small place gathering instruments from all over the ages and countries. But, somehow, even the little children wandering through the glass boxes were extremely silent. Many were enjoying the audio guided tours, but not few of them, including me, preferred to go from a place to another, have a look at the instruments and set up their own musical stories.

Situated a couple of minutes away from the Berliner Philharmoniker and the busy Potsdamer Platz, the Museum also hosts a research institute and a music library. Almost 4,000 instruments are hosted in the exhibition space. Every Saturday, there are tours and concerts taking place, for children and adults. After almost one hour of visit at the museum, I felt the need of a serious guidance, as the instruments presented - many of them former properties of famous historical personalities such as the flutes from the collection of Frederick the Great or Benjamin Franklin glass harmonica - also had a very important social and historical side that are largely unknown to the non-specialist. The children were enjoying the exhibition as any instrument was like a little world of surprises in itself. So bad that it was not anyone able to play something for them - like it happened at a similar, but smaller museum in Estoril, Portugal, when the guide put out of the glass boxes some of the instruments and showed us how does they work. 

At the first floor, more modern instruments are presented, as well as a very complicated article about models of music perception. I must recognized that I was already a bit tired after many other museums and cultural encounters and did not have the proper mental set-up for such a difficult exploration. At the same level, there are many guitars - the ground flour is apparently dedicated to pianos and organs, as well as flutes and harps - but also a simple explanation about how the instruments are made. 

The visit at the museum is a very relaxing experience. I only need to find a day when I can also be part of a full guided tour. 

A little lesson about Berlin architecture

I wish I know much more about the history of architecture of Berlin. And more than that, about the history of the architects from Berlin. In the last years, I've seen a couple of information displayed in various points from the city that helps a lot of understand the city. What can be a city without the stories of its houses?
Wish I can find a complete catalogue with the more or less recent history of architecture in Berlin and I am sure that I should find it somewhere. While going to see the Berlinische Galerie - a post coming up soon - I passed by the spectacular building of IG Metall. First, my eyes were caught by the Jugendstil writing style, but when I looked up in the sky, I was even more impressed by the delicate balance of the volumes and the courageous sharp lines of the concave roof. 

A couple of information about the history of the building and the architect are provided on a The building was designed by Erich Mendelsohn, that together with Rudolf Reischel won the public competition launched in 1928 by the German Metal Workers Union.

The choice of Mendelsohn was based on his long experience and achievements in terms of designing industrial buildings. Trained in Berlin and Munich - where he went familiar also with the creative works of Blaue Reiter movement - he is the author of various architectural projects in Germany, many of them focused on trade and industrial buildings, such as the department stores in Stuttgart or Chemnitz, Columbus Haus in Potsdamer Platz, or Einstein Tower in Potsdam. Around 1933, there were around 500 Jewish architects in Germany, that from 1 November were banished from practice. Among them Mendelssohn that chose to move to London, where he met among other the next president of the state of Israel, Chaim Weizmann. Later on, he would design the buildings of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem or of the Chaim Weizmann Institute of Science from Rehovot. In 1944, he moved to the US where he spent the rest of his life.

The newly renovated building of IG Metall is hosting nowadays also the offices of the Chamber of Architects. 

Discovering Schinkel, courtesy of Kunstwege Berlin

On a sunny Sunday, two weeks ago, I was invited by Kunstwege Berlin to take part to a tour of Schinkel's works in the capital city. It started at Friedrichswerdersche and ended one hour after, at the Museum Insel with the works of his disciples at Altenationalgalerie and Neues Museum. Through a simple yet insightful approach of both Schinkel's biography and works and the less or more recent history of Berlin, Leslie, our guide, turned the tour into a very interesting intellectual experience. The funny part of the story is that we also had the proper musical background as in the front of Humboldt University, a classical open air concert was taking place during the tour.

Many of Schinkel's architectural works are located in Berlin, but due to the war, there were mostly rebuilt, especially in the last decades after the reunification of the city. The English influences in his architecture can be read in many of his works, including the Bauakademie, built in 1830, where the 'master' wanted to have his own office. A former governmental building during the DDR times, the building hosts nowadays various art performances and exhibitions and has in its front a Schinkel square. Nowadays, only one original corner is left.

The bridge with its 8 sculptures is considered one of the most expensive of his works, part of a wider plan to give to Berlin at least the same glamour as Paris. Almost all Schinkel's idea were in fact expensive. In other words, don't try to be too cheap with an official architect.

Simplicity and glamour. The display of power.

The pupils can b e better than the master. One of my favourite museums on the Museum Insel were designed by Schinkel's disciples.

Reading and learning from art books is an interesting experience, but what it matters always is the guidance of the expert. This guided tour brought me close to the epoch and the personality of the architect and I plan to go to a new tour soon.

The next one will be in one week from now, the 7th of July, at Bruecke Museum.