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Where I live in Prenzlauer Berg

 

Pictures to be added

Prenzlauer Berg is a relatively large district in East Berlin.  Once a place where artists and poor people found a place to live, like so many parts of New York (and Midtown and the Heights in Houston), at least in the area around my apartment,  the yuppies moved in,  is a lovely area.  My address is Belforterstrasse 20.  It is a few steps from Prenzlauer Allee, where the chain discount grocery store Netto is located on the corner.  It is definitely yuppie-ville.  Sometimes I think there are more baby carriages than people.  Nicely dressed women, most of whom appear to be  in their thirties, are walking the children around.  Sometimes the fathers are along.  I heard two voices singing a beautiful semi-operatic song and saw a mother and a grandmother pushing a carriage and singing to the child.  I said that’s beautiful and the grandmother said, it’s the only thing that makes her quiet.  There are also many dogs.

My building is one of the few newer buildings, built after 1990.  It has a modern look, a modern elevator and a very attractive, wide and easy to use stairway.  It was a small clothes washer.  The dryer is the one my mother had on Rosedale and Charleston streets.  I use clothes pins on the balcony.

If I go opposite Prenzlauer Allee then the street on the next corner is Kolmarer Str.,  which is where Wasserturm Park begins.  (The Wasserturm became an SA barracks and concentration camp after the rise of Hitler.  Berlin has embraced its past so well that I don’t feel uncomfortable in the places where such unimaginable horrible things took place.) A short distance down is the intersection of Knaackstrasse and Rykestrasse where the park ends and the main steps up the park are.  For the semifinals of the soccer championship  the neighbors set up a large screen television at the base of the steps to watch the game.  They invited me to join them.  I thanked them and said I needed to get some beer first.  I had lost my Astros 2005 championship cap the day I went to the East Side Gallery so I had purchased a Deutschland cap.  It was appreciated, but Germany isn’t up for nationalistic expressions so you don’t see shirts with Germany on them as you would in the USA with nationalistic.  I walked down Knaackstrasse to KulturBraueri, the oldest brewery in Berlin, joined what seemed like 2,000 people standing in a large area with others standing above from the buildings.  I watched the first half and had two beers and headed back.  It was nice to be with the neighbors.  My guess is there were 50 of them, a mix of families and young people in their ‘20’s, lots of beer, lots of cigarettes and an occasional aroma of marijuana.  I’m told Berlin is quire tolerant of its use.  Ultimately,  there was no joy in Mudville, mighty Germany had struck out.

Facing the park is a series of restaurants, Paskernak and Gagarin for breakfast and lunch, are next to each other.  A few steps from Gagarin is the Rykestrasse Synagogue, the synagogue with the most number of members in Berlin.  So far I haven’t figured out when visitors can enter.  Across from the synagogue is Masel Topf, a restaurant that serves a fabulous dish of Pulke.  And across from Pasternak, also facing the park is Umami, an Asian restaruant that is also very good.  By the name you can tell they are Russian.  The password for the Wifi at Pasternak is perestroika.  I like the food at Gagarin better than Pasternak so when friends from Houston came for a Sunday brunch I took them there.  But my first Sunday brunch was at Pasternak and it ended up being six hours long, visiting with four people one of whom has become a friend.

If I step out of the building and turn to the left, passing Netto, then to the right on the next corner is Metzer, where Hilde’s is where I often have coffee and watched the victorious semi-fimanl game.  In the middle of the street is the place to catch the M2 train (Prenzlauer Allee/Metzer stop), which they call a tram.  It runs on rails and electricity from overhead.  Berlin is a very inviting city with plenty to do and an extensive mass transit system of underground, over ground and street level trains and buses, that can get one around the city quickly and easily and it’s pretty easy to figure out.  It’s so easy I’m having to force myself to walk.  There’s a place called Alexanderplatz, a giant East German built television tower, that looms in the sky and if I can see it, I know that if I can get there I can get home.  I frequently take the M2 to get to Alexanderplatz, frequently to get a S train or a U train to another location.  If I step out of the building and turn right, I walk pass the park and several restaurants, getting two short blocks down to the corner on Kollwitzstrasser I turn left, passing sotres, shop and bars to head to the U Senenfelderstrasse station where the U2 underground train, subway that sometimes goes overground, quickly takes me to places.  A reminder that the neighborhood is a yuppy area is the LPG BioMarkt, a not so small version of a Whole Foods grocery store.

Before I arrived in Berlin, I read about bicycle tours and thought perhaps I would rent a bike.  Nein!!!  The bicycle riders here are more aggressive and dangerous than the cars.  I have to look both ways at all times I am on the sidewalk.  Even though there are bicycle lanes, they think the whole sidewalk is theirs.  Most don’t wear helmets.  And, where there are no bike lanes, they go in the bus lanes helter skelter.

What I call my neighborhood would be bordered by Metzer at Prenzlauer Allee, down Prenzlauer Allee to Knaackstrasse (left turn). Knaackstrasse (left turn) (passing Wasserturm and the café’s at the intersection of Rykestrasse to Kollwitz Str. (passing Kathe Kollwitz Platz) left on Kollwitz Str. To the U2 station then back on Kollwitz Str. To Bellforter Strasse (right turn).  If I get outside the neighborhood, my beacon is Alexanderplatz.  If I see it, I know how to get home.