This is the Panke, a creek that originates in the town of Bernau north and east of Berlin then runs into Berlin’s main river (the Spree) via a canal near the center of the city, in the process passing more than once through the divided sectors of both city and country back in the day, I believe. This is for now our farewell photos of this lovely bit of the natural world in the heart of this great city, which we’ve also shown you in one previous post.
Großfürstenplatz & the Tritonbrunnen in Berlin’s lovely central Tiergarten park…for those of you viewing this in email or on small screen who thus don’t see the metadata categories and tags :-).
Returning to Berlin in July for those work meetings gave me a chance to visit neighborhoods where the city was once and is now no longer divided. Yes, I still cry when I walk past these places and remember my own crossings of that wall when it was really rather scary, because you knew armed border / wall guards were watching you. These photos are all from an evening walk in and around the Berlin Wall memorial park along Bernauer Strasse, one of the streets along which the wall itself once ran. The lovely murals in the gallery below were on an apartment building in what was then East Berlin…I’m fairly sure…my dear brother, for whose book on the period right after the wall was finally breached I will give an unabashed plug right here, might correct me if he sees fit.
A blue moon is the second full moon in one month. This image (above) was taken at 5:27am on Thursday the 31st of August. The one below was taken at precisely 06:16:16 the same morning, and no I didn’t time it that way, I just happened to be up between “sits,” of which the first each day this week has begun at 5:45 and the last has ended a bit after 9pm – ideal at this time of year to view the setting and rising of both sun and moon when skies are clear. In all of the images in this post, you’ll find the full moon or the moon one day past full. All were taken either late in the evening / at night, or early in the morning, on the 30th and 31st of August, with a few also early on the 1st of September – yesterday, my last full day here on Star. Advantages to living (if only briefly) on a very small island include that it’s quite easy to watch both the sunrise and the sunset over the water, which means lovely reflections in the water and even possibly-nice panorama shots that show both the rising sun and setting moon, etc. In some of the latest-morning shots, you may need to enlarge the photo to see the moon still holding out low on the horizon even after the sun has risen above the water opposite it. This post celebrates these blessings on the day I’ll boat over the mainland then by various means convey myself back to Amsterdam, where I expect land early Sunday the 3rd and plunge directly into a full work week on the 4th. I’ll try to keep the daily posts going, I promise :-).
Returning to Berlin in July for those work meetings gave me a chance to visit neighborhoods where the city was once and is now no longer divided. Yes, I still cry when I walk past these places and remember my own crossings of that wall when it was really rather scary, because you knew armed border / wall guards were watching you. These photos are all from an evening walk in and around the Berlin Wall memorial park along Bernauer Strasse, one of the streets along which the wall itself once ran. The lovely murals in the gallery below were on an apartment building in what was then East Berlin…I’m fairly sure…my dear brother, for whose book on the period right after the wall was finally breached I will give an unabashed plug right here, might correct me if he sees fit.
(so much world, so little time....) 