Europe 2007 party

There was a rather small party at Berlins biggest party spot, the Strasse des 17. Juni which is known for the Love Parade or the Soccer World Cup Finals Party. They claimed to have 100.000 visitors this time but it looked like 5.000.

Some funny creatures jumped around and Joe Cocker performed in the evening, both was not really attractive to me :-)


Remarkable was the presence of so many police cars from all over Germany. The policemen were dressed like they expected a riot. I don't know what the reason was, maybe it was because of the European heads of governments gathering in the city...

Ubiquitous once more :-)

Another picture showing these ubiquitous sightseeing ships (ok, that's enough usage of this funny word:-).

Berliner Dom

Still on museums island here's the probably most beautiful old building of Berlin, the Berliner Dom. (It's not as tilted as shown in the picture, I simply forgot to adjust the photo)
The cross at the peak is dismounted for repairs so it looks not so perfect but still great.

Here are some detail pictures...


Of course one of the ubiquitous sightseeing ships came in sight (Kyle, thanks for teaching me this amazing word 'ubiquitous' :-)

Alte Nationalgalerie

Returning to one of my favorite spots in Berlin here's another one of the famous buildings on the museums island: the Alte Nationalgalerie (old national gallery). It shows great old paintings including the Monk by the Sea by Caspar David Friedrich, maybe THE most melancholic painting.
In front of the Nationalgalerie is a beautiful garden surrounded by a colonnade. During the summer months it's an open air cinema with a special athmosphere. Here I saw a couple of great movies including Amélie or The Big Lebowski(!!).
One of the sculptures in front of the building...

The miracle of spring

Only a few weeks back there seemed to be no life in any of the trees and bushes around. And now all of these plants are resurrected by the sun. Well rested, they show the finest pieces of art in design and color...
This one should be a magnolia...

...and this one...I don't know...

Two towers

Well, after some trouble with Blogger I'm back with a couple of photos :-)

Here's a nice picture which was taken last week showing an old and a new tower very close together. The church is the good old Marienkirche which is more than 700 years old (but still looks great :-).

And here's one of the two tv towers of Berlin. This one is named Fernsehturm and is a townmark of the eastern part of Berlin, built during the period of the German Democratic Republic.

A night in spring

Today is the first day of spring, according to the calendar. Here are some pictures of how it looks. It's a terrible backslide after the fine sunny days...

Just a try

Day....

...and night.

Just a try to change the look of the picture...maybe I should make the eyes glow. Thanks to Rike, the dog model!

Sunny days

Life is so much better when the sun shines...:-)

Train stations

Actually I prefer to travel by train to flying. There's more space for your legs and you don't have to bear the bothering check in procedure. Just enter the train, sit down, relax and watch the countryside flying by. Also it's possible to read or to use the computer without having close physical contact with your neighbor.

Only the good old train stations are starting to disappear. Modern train stations look more like shopping malls. However, this has also some advantages, you don't have to wait in a small area with usually not enough seats as on air ports.
This is Dresden Hauptbahnhof:

This is Leipzig Hauptbahnhof:

This is Berlin Hauptbahnhof:

A night in Chemnitz

A very interesting city in Germany is Chemnitz. Heavily bombed in the second world war, rebuilt by the communists and then a second time after the reunion one can see old, communist and modern architecture next to each other in a very small area.

The monument of Karl Marx, after whom the city was temporarily named, is still a townmark of the city. I'm not sure if he would have agreed to this use of his name and body :-)

My hotel room was nice.... (please notice the small ashtray on on the table, there was a small "no smoking" sign in it. Strange, why don't they simply remove the ashtray???)...

..and I had a great view from above on poor old Karl's head.

The next morning I had breakfast in the 26th floor and watched the sun playing games with the clouds.

Another sunset

Another sunset shot, again slightly enhanced as a HDR image (actually made from three pictures). There are lots of details compared to the original shots which are over exposed from looking right into the sun. Unfortunately it still looks sort of artificial..I need some more practice.

First signs of spring

Happy and thankfully I noticed the first signs of spring today. The trees still don't have any leafs but on the ground there's something happening. Very tiny blossoms start to sprinkle the grass with color. Absolutely beautiful...

This one is called crocus..as far as I know...

And these ones are named Schneeglöckchen in German (at least I think so) which sounds much better than the English name snowdrop.

No sports please

I hadn't known that there are places in Berlin where sport is strictly forbidden until I came across that sign! ;-)

Melancholia

Last year I saw an exhibition about melancholia in art in Berlin. This photo reminds me of it somehow...even though I actually don't want to compare my simple photo with these masterpieces of Duerer or Caspar David Friedrich :-).