best of berlin

It snowed on and off all night last night in Moscow. Snow in May is wrong! Furthermore, I gave away or sent home all my winter gear, so I'm now going to have to go out and stock up on warm clothes. Grrrr!

So I'll share my favorite pics from Berlin, where it was in the 80s. What I love so much about Berlin is its dynamism--the city has changed so much since my last visit less than three years ago. The empty space that was once the "No Man's Land" around the Berlin Wall is now almost fully developed, showcasing ultra-modern glass office buildings.

This is new too--also in former No Man's Land just south of the Brandenburg Gate. It's the memorial to the "Dead Jews of Europe." It's supposed to convey a sense of loneliness and emptiness, which it does, but it's kind of weird. I'm still trying to figure out how I feel about it.




Another big change--the Soviet-Built "Palace of Culture" at the gateway to East Berlin has been demolished. The plan is to build in its place the Kaiser's palace destroyed in WWII and finally blown to pieces by the communists. You see the foundations of the palace in the foreground. I'm sad to see the Palace go--it was just a great monument of the very peculiar Soviet culture of the 70s. But the place was loaded with asbestos, and the Germans decided that it had to go.



Full panorama of East Berlin, old and new.


But some things never change: Marx and Engels still contemplate the TV tower.