9 November 2014    

Berliner Mauer    

Twenty-five years ago the Wall came down

1:
That day, 9 November 1989, was so remarkable.  A peaceful revolution changed world politics for ever. The  communist regime in East Germany could no longer control its people. After over 28 years of a divided Germany  the ‘Mauer’  in Berlin was opened and Germans from the East and West could come freely together again. 

The Iron Curtain which divided for decades East and West, the Free World from the Communist Dictatorship in Eastern Europe and the Russian Soviet Union, fell. And that started in Berlin.

We left Berlin before the Wall was put up on 13 August 1961. But whenever we visited our relatives in Berlin, on the western and eastern side of the city, we had to cross the Wall. The contrast of life on this or that side of the Wall, only a few meters apart, was unbelievable. Each time we realised how lucky we were to live Down-Under. Still we felt immensely sad, almost guilty to be free. The joy on that day 25 years ago was overwhelming, although we experienced it all only through the news reports on television. 

On each visit to Berlin we went to the ‘Mauer’, and still go to of the little bits of the Wall left of it now. 

And here are some pictures:

Most of the photos are from the early 1980s.

 It was forbidden to take photos  of the Wall in East Berlin, except the ‘Brandenburger Tor’  at a distance from ‘Unter den Linden’ Boulevard.

1981, Brandenburg Gate from the East,                                  and from the West

 
2:

The Wall along the Brandenburg Gate,    

    

                                                                         
                                                          and along the river Spree

                                                           

     

                                                                
  East German Boarder Guard Watch Tower

    Memorials for people killed trying to cross the Wall

3:   Only people in the West could write and paint on the Wall, in the East the Wall was heavily guarded.

After the Wall fell restoration and rebuilding started in Berlin .

Along where once the Wall was, memorial plagues on the ground remind people of the once divided Berlin.

4:

The few segments of the Wall put up at Potsdamer Platz, as well as the Mauer Museum at Friedich Strasse, Bernauer Strasse and Checkpoint Charlie attract lots of visitors

, 

                                      and of course the Brandenburg Gate is a tourist magnet.

But most popular is the East Side Gallery near Warschauer Brücke. 

 

These are mostly artists' work after the Wall came down.

           Some of the real Berliner Mauer still stands at Bornholmer Strasse, 

                 that is where the Wall was first opened on 9 November 1989.

My Wall Memorial is a piece of the Berliner Mauer which our nephew Lars hammered out of it the day after the Wall fell. I mounted that bit of concrete with barbwire onto a collage of some of our Mauer pictures

August - October 2014

The Big Move

1:  

My life changing project is well underway. 

Stage 1 is completed. We sold the little house in the Blue Mountains. 

And now the one-room guesthouse on the property of one of our children and family in Bellingen is home. 

It is beautiful here, very beautiful. So relaxing, carefree after all the hassle of the big move. 

Stage 2, plans to build a little cottage here are being worked out, but it will be another big hurdle to overcome. 

I have started gardening here on the first day, of course. 

The last few days in the old place in  the Blue Mountain, when all the furniture had gone we slept on the floor. 

The parrots noticed that something was going on, they felt threatened. 

The cockatoos checked up on us when ever they saw us.

 And their worries made them angry, they ripped my beautiful balcony flowerpot apart. 

 I nurtured the plant back and put it in the ground on the last day. I planted the broken-off bits as well, hoping some of them will strike and regrow.

Still, I kept feeding the cockatoos. 

And more and more came any time of the day, not only in the morning and evenings as usually.

2:  In Bellingen on the North Coast, are lots of beautiful birds too. The sunrise concert is fantastic. Here are not so many parrots, and I have not noticed any white cockatoos yet, but lots of black cockatoos, galahs, butcherbirds, whipbirds are there, even a bowerbird. 

Snakes are also around. 

A python is coming down from our roof.

But best of all, on the property and next door are koalas. They are very hard to spot. 

There is  one with a young one. I have not seen them close up yet. Cati took a photo when they were low down a few days before we arrived.

It is absolutely great to have Koalas in the backyard. 

Kangaroos are around too, but I have not spotted any yet. 

Can’t wait till the dream-home is built here.

My 2014 Project

NOTHING FIXED YET                                                              
                                      

Earlier this year I tried to do a lot of catching-up-things, also to do more walks. But no new harbour walks done this year yet. And I miss that a lot. 

No time for long walks at the moment. I am working hard on a very big project, nothing creative but lifestyle changing. More of that later.

But I did something I wanted to do for a while, a picture of a wave. 

Here it is:

I made it by glueing smashed mirror pieces onto a board and coloured the water and sky. 

The beauty of the picture is that with changing light and your position in the room the wave changes. 

  My 2013 Project

THE RIVER WALK 
 ALONG THE SPREE IN BERLIN

In 2013 we went back to Berlin to visit family and friends. 

I felt I had to go on walkabouts again to explore anew the place where I grew up. 

No harbour here to walk around. But there is a river which flows right through the middle of Berlin, the Spree. And that river  was in large part the divide between East and West during the Cold War.   

Yes, it would be good to walk along the banks of the river Spree.

So I did. 

I had to do the walk in stages. I could have walked it all easily in a day. It is about 10 km only to walk from Oberbaumbruecke to Hansabruecke. But I never had that much time to myself. And I wanted to walk alone again. It feels better, one notices more what is going on all around. So I fitted bits of river walks in between visits whenever I could. 

I would have liked to walk a longer distance, from Koepenick to Spandau, from Mueggelsee to the river Havel. But there was just not enough time to do it. Maybe next time I can do that. 

I did my River Spree Walks from end of April to beginning of June 2013

1

I started my River Walk at Oberbaumbruecke,
in the suburb of Friedrichhain. 

It is easy to get there by suburban trains. The S-Bahn and U-Bahn stop at Warschauer Strasse station near Oberbaumbruecke. 

The Oberbaum Bridgre has a long history. It was built in 1896, destroyed at the end of World War 2 in 1945, rebuilt and became one of the few border crossings between East- and West-Berlin when the Wall was put up in 1961 till it fell in 1989.

The bridge crosses the Spree, 

and the Berliner Mauer was right there.

One of the few still standing remnants of the Wall is here.

This over one km long section of the Wall is known as the East Side Gallery. Soon after the fall of the Berlin Mauer artists from many countries painted the concrete panels and creating the largest open air gallery in the world, a memorial to freedom.

                   

 

Tourists and Berliners like walking along this heritage listed artwork in Muehlenstrasse.

Each time I am in Berlin I have to come here.