Europe – Page 2 – Where is Phil now?

Berlin wandering

Berlin – Friday 03 – Tuesday 08 October 2024

We liked the hotel we stayed in back in June, and equally important, we also liked its location on Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz so agreed that as familiarity is a good thing we should stay there again. Knowing where we going allowed a swift trip from the airport, through checking in to the hotel and getting out for a mid-afternoon walk around the neighbourhood.

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We are staying in the Mitte district, which is sort of east/north east of the centre, a bit like where we live in London. There is a bit of everything nearby; shops, bars and a variety of cafes and restaurants; there is also the Babylon Cinema with its lovely neon sign. We’ve been watching Babylon Berlin on the telly and will have to go back and finish it soon.

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On Saturday morning, we caught an S-Bahn (Stadtschnellbahn or city rapid railway), train to the Olympic Stadium; home of the 1936 Olympics, and over the railway line from the Courbusierhaus block from my last post. Disappointingly, the stadium grounds were fenced off and we couldn’t get in, though I think you can visit on an organised tour if you’re inclined to. We had a full day ahead so carried on.

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As well as being a historic Olympic stadium, and the one where African American athlete Jesse Owens managed the ultimate ‘fuck you’ to the Nazis by winning four gold medals at the 1936 Olympics and showing the world that their Aryan superiority message was baseless, the stadium is the home ground for the Herta Berlin football club. There were stickers on every lamppost between the station and the stadium advertising the fact.

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I could be 180 degrees wrong but my reading of the current situation in Germany is that the country is politically on the edge. With Angela Merkel retired, replaced with the less dynamic Olaf Scholz, the influence of Germany in Europe is on the wane and the right wing are on the march, particularly in the east of the country, where Berlin sits. In recent months the AfB, the new right wing party, has made serious political gains, winning seats and entire states. Berlin, again feels like a small liberal island in a much less liberal world. While Berlin appears to me as a tourist to not be shy in acknowledging the horrors in its past I get the feeling if we travelled not too far from the city borders we would see a much different country.

From the Olympic Stadium we jumped back on a train and continued our journey to the western suburb of Spandau. We were interested in coming here ~~for the massive Ikea~~ as it is an old town, with cobbled streets and a huge old fort on the side of a lake. It sounded pretty idyllic for a sunny Saturday lunch and very much the sort of thing we like to do. The theory was sound, the reality less so.

To be fair the streets were cobbled and there was a big old fort. The cobbled streets were big and wide, not the narrow cobbles I like, and it was a bit run down and a bit depressed and not in that ‘nice’ way some areas can pull off. I’m guessing it’s one of the places that doesn’t get a lot of tourists or investment and the young people aren’t hanging round hip cafes, mainly because there aren’t any. I’m not one to cast aspersions (OK, I am) but it felt like one of those places where the AfB would get a unhealthily large number of votes.

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We didn’t stop for lunch but carried on to the fort, which unhelpfully had a juggling and acrobatic festival and it was looking like it was of full of family groups and people dressed in cosplay outfits. I’d hoped to walk around outside the outer wall, but the way was fenced off so we left and caught the train to Zoo Station, in the city centre.

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We wandered around a bit more, ate, and visited the famous KadeWe department store and took their amazing criss-crossing escalators up to the 7^th floor where we found a champagne bar and decided it would be rude to not have a glass. It was very nice.

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We followed this with a visit to the magnificent spire which is all that is left of the 19 century Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, heavily damaged during the devastating allied bombing of Berlin in the dying months of the Second World War. The ceiling was magnificent, as was the blue glass interior of the modernist church built after the war.

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We wanted to visit some of the city’s markets and had put Sunday aside to try and get to three of them, we also discovered a Saturday night market on the rooftop of the Gesundbrunnen Centre, a shopping mall a couple of train stops away from the hotel. We didn’t buy anything but it was fun, very busy with mostly young Berliners and tourists, there was a bar and a DJ, a nice atmosphere and a not unspectacular, but rather apocalyptic sunset. A marker laid down for the Sunday’s adventures.

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We visited three markets, two were a few minutes apart and a thirty minute walk from the hotel; as I said previously there is a lot happening around us. I enjoyed the first and second markets, both had a lot of interesting stuff, vintage, junk, a few records and some decent clothes. Like the night market they both had a nice feel to them and weren’t too crowded and we also didn’t buy anything.

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The third was a train ride away and was definitely more of a flea market, it was busy and I got a bit bored as there was nothing really that interested me. And yes it is all about me. It was a great morning out, doing something different in a different city is what travelling is all about for me.

The first two markets were in the old ‘East’ and close to the Berlin Wall memorial spot just off Bernauer Strasse which we visited in June, right by the station we used to get to the third market. The Wall still evokes quite strong feelings in me, it went up a year before I was born and I saw it in 1987, two years before it came down. It has a presence in my life which I can’t fully articulate. Looking at the less glamorous of photos from the 60s, both here in Berlin as well as in London and elsewhere, things really were in a bad way for so many people, especially in cities.

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Here is a photo from when I was here in 1987, looking over from the west. I’m not sure where this photo was taken, but that strip of land still exists in may parts of Berlin, maybe with a pre-Wall road returned.

Oct 1987 The Wall and East Berlin

On Monday we went to a new photography gallery and walked around a really interesting exhibition of photos of hip-hop artists, primarily US based, but there was a section on contemporary German hip-hop of which I knew nothing about. It was challenging looking at photos of inner-city New York and how terrible conditions were in the 70s and 80s, things didn’t look a lot better than the bombed out ruins of 1960s Berlin. We have treated and continue, in some places, to treat our less well off urban areas so poorly. I suspect given recent news, and more of that at the end, that this won’t change much.

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The gallery is in a very cool building, covered in layers of graffiti; apparently, it used to be full of small bars and venues, and I would loved to have visited and perhaps gone to a gig there. The bar made a very nice espresso martini pick me up as well, and the modernist loo was superb!

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It was our last day in this most favourite of cities so wandered the streets a bit more, stopping for a monstrous and delicious kebab and large bottle of beer at a street vendor before burping our way back to the hotel and preparing ourselves mentally for going home in the morning.

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All too soon the holiday was over and the ‘facing reality’ blues hit as we sat in Berlin airport over a pre-flight relaxer, aka a gin and tonic, and for me; Berlin’s supposed favourite food, curry wurst.

Back to reality and work tomorrow. We’re going to have to come back again and next time we will stay somewhere different and experience a different area. I loved the area we stayed in, but familiarity can breed contempt and I would hate to tarnish the good memories we’ve had in this city so far.

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I’ll end this post with news that hadn’t come out three days ago when I started writing, that the German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has called a snap election for early in 2025. With the terrible news yesterday that the US elected the orange racist, misogynist, homo/trans-phobe as president a drift to the populist right in Germany (and the rest of the world) seems almost inevitable. The world is in a much worse place than it was when I started writing and I’m glad there is red wine.

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A bit of Berlin concrete

Berlin 03 – 08 October 2024

As longer-term followers will have observed, in the last few years, particularly during and post-Covid, the blog took a massive swerve from photographs of landscapes and trees to photographs of cityscapes. I’m not sure if that change of focus was a reaction to the pandemic or how it affected me and my view of the world. I don’t think I’ve become more insular; and this isn’t the sort of place for any kind of diagnosis, self or otherwise. However, it’s still true; trees and nature walking have largely disappeared from my feed and architecture and urban walking has replaced it; especially the more ‘brutal’ type of modernist building that I’ve sort of fallen in love with. So, maybe after saying all that it’s possible I have become more insular and my world view has reduced at the same time as expanding. I must stop the self-diagnosis. I’m fine.

As our last visit to Berlin was with friends and it had a packed schedule there was no opportunity for me to disappear for a few hours and look at some raw concrete, or beton brut as the French would have it. When we planned this trip I factored in a visit to a classic Le Corbusier building on the way to Spandau on the Saturday, as well as a few hours of solo travel to see a couple of other ‘brutalist’ buildings. There will be more on the Spandau visit in the next post; but spoiler alert – it wasn’t worth it…

Unité d’Habitation of Berlin aka Corbusierhaus

Completed in 1957 it was the third building in Le Corbusier’s Habitation ‘series’. The first and best known block is in Marseilles, France. The phrase ‘beton brut’ has been attributed to Le Corb, and it has morphed in its English translation to Brutalism. It describes buildings largely made of unfinished concrete, rather than the harsh, ‘brutal’, often militaristic design generally think of when people think of brutalism. Some buildings obviously conform to that harshness, but the Corbusierhaus does not, it is just a 50s concrete apartment block outside the city centre with some very colourful panelling. It is lovely and is a tourist attraction in its own right. The only quibble I had was half the front was covered over by scaffold and cloth; oh well. If I come back it will be mid-winter when all those interfering trees are shorn of their leaves.

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Bierpinsel

We had put Monday morning aside as ‘do our own thing’ time as I wanted to get out and look at buildings and while Eleanor tolerates this with a smile it seemed unfair to schelp about looking for buildings on holiday. Inconveniently the best ones are out of town and in no way where they close to each other. There was a small wrinkle in my original plan as one of the train lines was closed for engineering works. I made some rapid plan changes and set off to visit the ‘Café Exil’ record cover; The Steglitz Tower Restaurant, AKA the Bierpinsel (Beer Brush). And wow, what a building it is! It is as mad and as glorious as I hoped it would be. Sadly it’s been closed since 2007, but achieved listed status in 2017 and more recent owners have plans to renovate the building. I certainly hope they do. It is properly fantastic and I would love to see it back in garish Café Exil red. I had a go at emulating the record cover, with limited success. I loved it…

Cafe exil Cover

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Wilhelmstrasse 150

With my plans now changed, I caught another couple of trains to WilhelmStrasse 150. A nice looking apartment block with some magnificent curving concrete painted a fetching pink. This has not been on any record cover that has passed my way.

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Band of the Covenant Buildings

With less time in the day due to some poor public transport choices (read this as me missing stations as I was reading my book on the train) and then misunderstanding some messaging about closed lines on the Berlin transport network I headed back towards Alexanderplatz and our hotel to meet up with Eleanor for some afternoon roaming. We had a loose plan that involved walking to a record shop, a photography gallery and whatever else took our fancy, as long as it ended up in a cocktail bar come late afternoon. It was our last day in the city and there is still so much to see, just around the inner north east were we are staying.

When we visited Berlin in June one of the places I was keen to visit was the concrete ‘circle building’ I’d seen photos of on Instagram. I’d spotted it from the train heading west towards the fantastic Teufelsberg on the woody outskirts of the city so had a pretty good idea where it was located. It was only when we ventured into the city centre, near to the Brandenburg Gate and the Reichstag Building, that I nailed down its exact location; right behind the ‘no entry’ tape blocking off a bit of the city sacrificed to the pending European Championship football competition. Oh well, it was something to save for next time; i.e. this time.

And this time there were no restrictive lines of tape or armed coppers making sure no one crossed those lines of tape. In fact, for a series of government buildings there was very little visible security. As a New Zealander and a Brit I still find armed police unnerving, and I work in Whitehall where all the police carry guns, not seeing them here in this almost sterile, yet serene location, was verging on a relief.

I think this small block of buildings on either side of the River Spree is utterly beautiful and not because of the concrete, the design is just so fresh and free and walking around looking at them genuinely made me happy. I think the complex is called ‘Marie-Elisabeth-Lüders-Haus’ and it is made up of an art gallery and the government library, among other probably less public parts of the German government. Construction was mostly completed in 2003 so these are not the post-war concrete rebuilds you see in other cities.

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The ‘gun thing’, and yeah I will put it out there. I fucking hate guns, and everything they represent and really don’t understand this fascination so many have with them. I understand the US is just obsessed with arming everyone, seemingly to keep those who make weapons and all the bollocks that goes with that in the lifestyle they have become accustomed to, but why do the rest of us have to support that? Why do we have to see guns on our streets?

This was brought into stark relief on the opposite side of the river to the buildings above. There are four white memorial crosses wired to a low fence in remembrance of four, mostly young people, who were shot and killed by East German guards as they tried to flee to West Germany, the youngest was 18 and she was shot in 1984. Like the memorial plaques outside of the houses were Jews lived pre World War Two which I mentioned in the previous post, I didn’t take photos of these poignant reminders of humanities capability to be utterly evil.

I can’t possibly imagine what it was like for the Jewish and Roma people, the LGBTQ, disabled and other communities before and during WW2 and for those East Germans who wanted to go west to be so savagely betrayed, persecuted and murdered by their own countrymen. How fucked up was that? And the saddest thing of all is that for many around the world that hasn’t changed.

Berlin

Berlin, Friday 03 to Tuesday 08 October 2024

Needless to say, but I will anyway, that I’m really excited by being back in Berlin, even if it’s significantly cooler and a bit damper than when we were here in June. I loved the short few June days we spent here and returned home with quite a list of other things to see and do, and a plan to come back again. I suspect that I’ll have a new list when we go home again on Tuesday.

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Last time we visited I’d been sound tracking the days before with the ‘Cafe Exil’ album, a compilation of tunes that the compilers imagined David Bowie and Iggy Pop listened to when they lived in Berlin in the mid-1970s. I bought the LP when I returned to London and it’s still regularly on the turntable. Little of the music on that record is music I would’ve listened to in the past, but am much more willing to try new sounds now.

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Before this trip I’ve been listening to a couple of dance music compilations from a Berlin based label and will see how that goes while we’re here. I can’t see us going to a club mind, even if Berlin is one of Europe’s clubbing centres. There will more on ‘Café Exil’ in a coming post.

As I commented in June, 20th Century history looms large over the city. While the cold war and the Wall are the most prevalent; especially in the parts of the city we visited, the Second World War and the events leading up to those terrible six years are not written out of the city’s history either. This was particularly notable in the small brass plates on the footpath outside of houses where Jewish families lived before being brutally removed before and during the war. Over 60,000 Jews were deported from Berlin, many of those to the death camps the Nazi regime created in the east.

This is a city of dark and light, and as middle class, middle aged tourists, we really only get to experience light, and this was particularly so this weekend as it is Festival of Lights weekend; not that we knew this when we were planning the trip. We visited three different outdoor ‘venues’ over the weekend, a different one each night. It was hugely popular, with loads of families out enjoying the light shows, and unlike the UK, the security was all very low key and each location was a very pleasurable experience, the highlight being Brandenburg Gate. I was surprised, pleasantly so, at how many of the light shows included works by street artists I was familiar with; like Thierry Noir on the side of the Cathedral and Otto Schade at Potsdamer Platz.

Museum Island

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Potsdamer Platz

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Brandenburg Gate

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We did a lot of walking over the four days, averaging about 17kms a day, just meandering around with some sort of vague sense of purpose. Berlin is a very walkable city, though it has a very good public transport system which we made good use of as well. Some of the U-Bahn (underground) stations are visual treats, and I planned to take photos of them as we travelled, though really only managed to properly photograph one of them; Schloss Strasse, where the tiles were so colourful.

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I snapped a couple of images at others, though most of the stations and platforms were very busy; and I’m a bit shy when it comes to public space photography. Something I still find hard to believe after doing this for 20 years.

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That is enough for today, over the next few posts I will share more from those very enjoyable four days. And yes, I’m thinking about the next visit!

Vigeland Sculpture Park

Friday 15 to Monday 18 – Oslo, Norway

This is the final post from our fantastic 10-day holiday. I enjoyed every day we were away (even Gothenburg) and still think about it constantly a month later. We’ve already booked a follow up visit to Berlin in early October and I can’t wait to go back and explore more.

The holiday was a reversed version of a similar plan cancelled due to Covid in the summer of 2020 and so was well over due. Eleanor’s sister visited Oslo around 1980 and on return shared photos and stories from a slightly bonkers park with loads of statues of naked people, and Eleanor has wanted to go there ever since. The park was the inspiration for visiting to Oslo, so it had to be number one on the list of places to visit in this lovely friendly city.

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The park certainly lived up to expectation. It is bonkers mad and utterly, fantastically beautiful. I loved it.

Vigeland Sculpture Park can be found inside the larger Frogner Park near the centre of Oslo. It contains over 200 life size sculptures from Norwegian artist Gustav Vigeland. The granite, bronze and iron sculptures were completed in 1949, and took over 40 years to carve. The works were made by a team of sculptures working to Vigeland’s vision and detailed design. Sadly, Vigeland died before his park, and vision were completed.

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The detail in the granite work is just perfect, I took a lot of photos, by my standards at least, but could easily have taken a more. If we were to come back to Oslo I would aim for a more evenly overcast day to visit Vigeland.

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There are three major works that incorporate the individual statues; the Bridge, the Fountain and the Monolith. My photos of the Fountain were a bit rubbish sadly so I’ve not included any (next time!)

The Bridge, is as advertised, a bridge and it includes a number of slightly larger than life bronzes.

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In my view the masterpiece, the 17 metre tall granite Monolith.

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Monolith was started in 1929 and carved onsite from a single piece of granite that in itself was carved from a mountainside especially for the project in 1922. It took 3 three stonemasons 14 years to create this beautiful object. Monolith was officially opened in 1943, but sadly Vigeland passed away shortly before the opening.

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Below are a number of the images I took from the Monolith, which was by no means all of the, I’ve started with my favourite piece from a collection of favourite pieces, the expressions are just so wonderful.

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The Scream

Friday 15 to Monday 18 – Oslo, Norway
Munch Museum

I very much enjoyed the three days we spent in Oslo, and could easily have spent a bit more time there. I definitely want to visit more of Norway as well, particularly some of the more rugged coastal areas. I’ve never wanted to do a cruise, the whole idea of being stuck on a large vessel with hundreds of random people just sounds horrendous; however, a Norwegian fjord cruise is something I would certainly consider. It would be an amazing way to see that globally unique section of coast.

Enough dreaming about a future that may not happen, let’s get back to today when we visited the Munch Museum.

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I didn’t know a lot about Norway’s best known artist, Edvard Munch, though, like many, many others, I’m quite familiar with his most famous painting ‘The Scream’. When we researched this trip and found there was an entire museum dedicated to his life and work, all wrapped up in a quite spectacular building, we made visiting a ‘must-do’.

Edvard Munch (1863-1944) was a prolific artist, creating over 26,000 works over his life. Born in a small village his family moved to Kristiania, as Oslo was then known, when he was very young. Munch spent time in Paris and Berlin before settling back in Oslo in 1897 where he remained for the rest of his life.

There are numerous versions of The Scream; two painted, two in pastels and several lithographs. The museum had a painting, a pastel and a lithograph on display, though they only display them one at a time in a darkened room. I managed to get quite close to the lithograph, getting a nice clean photo, though I prefer this version.

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A very excited crowd started to grow as the time the painting was revealed approached; I wasn’t going to fight my way to the front, electing to take a crowd shot on my phone instead.

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The Munch – as the museum is now called, only opened in 2020 and, as I said earlier is housed in quite a spectacular building. It sits next to the equally spectacular Opera House, with its wide sloping roof which the public are allowed to walk on. It’s surprisingly quite steep in places and there were more than a few people holding onto the hand rails on the side. As it was a Sunday the Opera House was closed, as were quite a lot of the shops. Norway seems to have work-life balance as a priority.

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We stopped for coffee in the museum café, and I had to have a Scream cookie to dunk into the very nice flat white.

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We should have bought tickets before the coffee as we discovered too late that entry to the gallery is timed and we had a 45 minute wait before we could go in. Eleanor and I went for a walk outside and found this lovely modern block of flats nearby, which we both agreed we would love to live in. The ground floor flats had balconies with access to drop a canoe into the harbour as an added bonus. I can’t imagine what they cost.

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We spent a couple of hours browsing the interesting galleries, Munch certainly lived an interesting and occasionally wild life as well as making some good art. I particularly liked this quite disturbing piece, and annoyingly I failed to get its name. A lot of his work was quite disturbing in its way, with the stylised face from The Scream prevalent.

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He also painted a number of huge works including ‘The Reseachers’.

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My favourite part was an interactive room depicting life in the Munch household in the early 20th century. The room had this very cool electronic screen easel, which in my view, made for a great photo.

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Disappointingly the roof bar was closed on a Sunday so we didn’t get to go to the very top of the building, but the view from floor below was still very good. It is a spectacular building both in and out and if you get to Oslo I recommend a visit.

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Oslo, Norway

Friday 15 to Monday 18 – Oslo, Norway

Lakes and steep but low rocky bluffs, stony ground, more lakes, and rivers; I mustn’t forget the rivers. It’s obvious that we’re not passing through England; the trees are different, even the silver birch and pine don’t look the same, the forests seem denser and darker; and you know you’re in Scandinavia when you see those ‘classic’ red wooden buildings.

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It’s cloudy outside the train window and staring into the seemingly never ending forests you get this disturbing feeling deep down that there is something ancient and probably malevolent lurking deep inside those trees. It somewhere you could easily get lost in and are perhaps never seen again…

Does difference always allow dark thoughts to surface? Maybe I’ve watched too many of those Scandi-noir tv series.

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We’re on the train from Gothenburg in Sweden to our final destination on this holiday, Oslo in Norway. It’s a fairly slow train, with stops every 30 minutes or so and as we draw close to Oslo the carriages fill up to almost London morning commute level, though everyone seems much nicer than those I share a 7:30am tube with. I’m glad I’d pre-booked seats, which was more difficult than it should’ve been, and I can now confess to being slightly nervous that the train I booked us on didn’t actually exist until we saw it arrive at the platform. Internet scams for fake transport lines are not uncommon and surprisingly there are few cross-border trains in Europe.

I’ve not previously been to Norway so this is country number 64, and the first time since India in 2016 that I’m visiting somewhere new. Oslo was where we going to start the holiday we had planned prior to Covid arriving in 2020, so I’ve been looking forward this for a while and I’m really happy to finally visit. It is my kind of city; arty and interesting, with good food and the people we met were all really nice. I took too many photos to do one post, so this will be a three parter, with the other two covering Vigeland Park and the Munch Museum, and both were magnificent.

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We did a lot of walking over the three days, particularly between the hotel and the waterfront by the Munch Museum and Opera House. The central station was just back from Opera House and we took a tram from there to our hotel. We used a few trams in Oslo and it’s a nice way to get around.

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We took a 90 minute tour of the fjord which was largely disappointing, I was hoping we were going to go right out of the city into the fjord proper, but the quite large tour boat just puttered around the islands close to the city. It was scenic enough, but the highlight was meeting a couple of other Kiwis and spending the entire journey talk to them and not paying attention to where we were going.

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We also took a ferry to the closest island – Hovedoya, for a walk around and I found a nice ruined abbey; surprisingly these are ruins from a 12 century abbey founded by catholic monks from England.

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The island is five minutes from downtown Oslo, had a couple of nice, small, beaches – and the water was surprisingly warm, and some good green space. There were a couple of small groups of young people enjoying themselves and it looked and felt like such a nice spot near a busy old city.

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It’s a reasonably attractive city, there is a good mix of old and new buildings, a couple of 70s brutalist buildings, though nothing overly interesting that I saw on our walks.

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The Museum metro station entrance not far from our hotel was very cool with this amazing ‘Acoustic Sculpture’ ceiling which had the most fantastic echo. If you stand in the middle the echo was huge, walking outside of the circle meant there was no echo at all. It was very cool and not something you would expect to find in a metro station.

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We ate well, there is a lot of vegetarian and vegan places to eat which suited and I’m keen to go back to the Grunerlokka area when we go back, which I’m sure we will. It’s the Oslo version of London’s Shoreditch, admittedly smaller, with bars and eating places, graffiti and a suspicious looking non-swan in the river. It looked like a decent spot for an evening out.

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We also stumbled on one of Oslo’s heavy metal bars so popped in for a gin, beer is so expensive, for a look around. It was way too early in the day for the place to be rocking; though they were pumping out the Hanoi Rocks at a decent volume while we were there.

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Oslo is a cool city, we enjoyed our time and it’s another place to add to the ‘must go back to list’…

Gothenburg

Thursday 14 June 2024 – Gothenburg, Sweden

The three hour ride from Stockholm to Gothenburg was nice enough, the train was complete luxury compared to the shabby and dirty intercity trains we mostly have in the UK. It was full and I didn’t have a window seat so didn’t get to take any photos out of the window as we travelled from one side of Sweden to the other, though I more than make up for that when we continue to Oslo the next day.

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Gothenburg has been on the list of ‘Places I want to visit before I die’ for quite some time. Ok, I made up the list name just then, but I do have a list of places I want to visit before I die and Gothenburg is on it. I’m not sure why Gothenburg was on the list. Maybe because it has ‘Goth’ in its name and I liked a lot of gothic rock in the 1980s, but probably because it seems like a nice city and it’s popular with tourists.

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It wasn’t on the list because of an interesting historical event or an amazing building I just had to see, it doesn’t have an immediate ‘gotcha’ like a lot of other places do. There was nothing I specifically wanted to see or do, and now I’ve been I know why; there isn’t really anything to see or do; unless you like shopping. It’s one of those rare places that I have no desire to go back to and I found it dull as dish water. As I wrote in my notebook; it’s a bit like Sydney, a nice place but visually boring.

To be fair to Gothenburg it wasn’t its fault. The hotel we stayed in was on top of the station, it was a fine hotel, but I like staying just outside the centre in inner city residential areas; somewhere near a nice bar or café and people.

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Between the station and the city centre was a large square with bus and tram stops and criss-crossed tram lines; it was raining when we went out and it was a confusing place to get over; trams and busses and cars and bikes seemingly coming from all different directions. I disliked it and not knowing exactly where we were going made it all too complex and frustrating. Admittedly I was tired and probably hungry.

The other big negative for me was half the city seemed to be under some serious construction, with many roads and paths closed, which at times made trying to follow directions challenging.

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I like a bit of history so we wandered over to Skansen Kronen, a 17^th century fortification on a small hill with decent views over the small city centre.

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We stopped for lunch in the nearby Haga area and had a walk around the cobbled residential streets; in hindsight this would be the area to stay in. It was the least busy area we visited and was quaint in it’s own way. There were none of the narrow cobbled alley ways that we found in the old town of Stockholm.

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We last minute booked a table at Fiskbar 17, a small fish restaurant with only four or five things on the menu. It was my absolute highlight of Gothenburg; the food was stunning, the cocktails delicious and the vibe was perfect.

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It was a fine evening, though made more interesting on the walk back to the hotel after some fairly intense rain. it was hard to believe it was almost 11pm when we left. This far north the sun sets quite late.

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We had a couple of hours the following day before the train to Oslo so we all set off to do our own thing. Mine was to try and find something interesting to photograph. There wasn’t much to be honest.

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I did find ‘The Lipstick’ building which is part brutalist. Lilla Bonmen as its officially known, was opened in 1989 and was easily the most interesting modern building that I saw in Gothenburg, especially that bizarre thing on the roof. After walking around the outside and taking a couple of photos it was time to head back to the hotel and then onto Oslo in Norway, a country I’ve not visited.

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Sorry Gothenburg!

Stockholm

Tuesday 11 and Wednesday 12 June 2024 – Stockholm, Sweden

I like trains. I like the freedom they bring, the expectation and anticipation that something is going to happen, but not quite yet. This is the journey and not the destination and life should be suspended while the journey works its magic. The rhythm of the wheels on the tracks, the rattle and clangs of the carriage mirror the sounds from the headphones stuck in my ears. A new found love for the motorik beat of 1970s krautrock mixed with the noise of the train turns every train ride into a different soundscape. It’s a time to disconnect and just be.

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Tuesday really started late on Monday when we boarded the 21:10 sleeper train from Berlin to Stockholm. The four of us had a six person couchette room. Thankfully no one turned up to take the other two bunks, it was very tight and required patient negotiating to move around. We crossed the German border into Denmark around 2:30am and then left Denmark for Sweden at 7:30, arriving in Malmo with enough time to nip into the station to get a decent coffee from one of the cafes before breakfast on the train once we were on the way again.

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Between Copenhagen in Denmark and Malmo in Sweden we travel on ‘The Bridge’. For those less familiar with Scandi-noir television, this is the magnificent Øresund Bridge, a road and rail bridge that contains the border between the two countries and was the scene of a gruesome murder in the Tv series. We didn’t have to show our passport at any time between arriving in Berlin and leaving Oslo at the end of the trip.

Our sleeper carriage was, up until Malmo, right at the end of the train, affording a great view out of the large windows at the back. Annoyingly, in Malmo a second engine was added to our train and the view was gone.

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Luckily there was plenty to see out of the side windows, Sweden is a beautiful country. There are a lot of trees and a lot of lakes.

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We arrived in Stockholm mid-afternoon and took a local train to our hotel in Hornstull on one of the many islands that make up the city.

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Like Berlin we mainly used our feet to get around, occasionally catching local trains when we got tired or when it poured with rain – and pour it did…

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I particularly enjoyed Gamla Stan, the old town, and visited it twice, both times in the rain. Rain on cobbles down a narrow alley is one of my favourite things to photograph and one of the many things that Europe has to offer that New Zealand doesn’t. Is that a good reason to live over here? I think so.

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We also visited the modern art museum which was interesting, and at times disturbing, especially the works of Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan.

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I won’t spoil the surprise with this piece ‘Him’ in case anyone is visiting the gallery; but if you read this and do visit Stockholm and like your art modern and mildly disturbing then museum is a must!

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I liked Stockholm and would like to come back and explore a bit more, there is a lot to see that we didn’t have time to check out and it’s cheaper than I expected. I didn’t feel an affinity for it like I did with Berlin but I enjoyed it immensely and the people were friendly and they have that lovely smokey, streaky bacon cooked to a crisp that the English don’t do. Yes, it’s probably carcinogenic but man, it’s delicious!

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We can be Heroes – Bowie in Berlin

07 – 10 June 2024 – Berlin

I think it’s more than fair to say that I love music and have done since I was a teenager. My taste has always verged towards the esoteric and while I think you can safely say that ‘esoteric’ is one of many apt descriptions for David Bowie, the man and the legend, it can’t always be used to describe his music. Which is a long way of getting round to saying I’m not really a huge Bowie fan. I like some of his music, especially the older ‘classic’ stuff and I particularly liked ‘Dark Star’ his final album, the music of the 80s, 90s, 2000s, yeah most of that I can leave behind. Saying that, the world is a less interesting place without him.

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Amongst my social group I am the outlier, my friends love Bowie and a ‘Bowie Tour’ was very much on the Berlin itinerary. An organised commercial tour was out of our price range so as friends of ours had done their own self-guided Bowie related tour, it seemed like the right thing for us to do as well. Given the internet is such a wonderful source of all things I found a few ideas and planned what turned out to be quite a long, but interesting walk. In my view walking is the best way to see somewhere, if there is a plan or not.

David Bowie lived in Berlin from 1977 to 1979 and wrote and recorded, what in my view is his best record, ‘Low’, the first of what is known as the Berlin Trilogy. The second, and much better known album is ‘Heroes’ and the final, though not recorded in Berlin is ‘Lodger’. Bowie and Iggy Pop came to Berlin to escape the coke-ridden excess of Los Angeles, start afresh in a new city. A city that had been developing its own musical identity, an identity not founded on US and UK rock music, grounded in the avant-garde, jazz and the eclectic electronic sounds of the synthesiser.

It was a busy time for Bowie, as well as developing his own material he is also co-wrote songs and played on Iggy Pop’s LP ‘The Idiot’, co-authoring the track ‘China Girl’; which Bowie turned into his own global hit in 1983. It’s a song I hated at the time (and still do) and was a core reason I lost interest in his music for the next 40 years…

Our tour started at the Berlin Wall Memorial, which of course didn’t exist in 1977 as the wall between east and west Berlin was still dividing the city.

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Is ‘Heroes’ Bowies most well known song? I can’t think of anything better known. It contains a direct reference to the wall, so making the classic Bowie track our starting point was a no brainer, plus it was not that far from our hotel.

David Bowie – ‘Heroes’

I, I can remember (I remember)
Standing, by the wall (by the wall)
And the guns, shot above our heads (over our heads)
And we kissed, as though nothing could fall (nothing could fall)
And the shame, was on the other side
Oh we can beat them, for ever and ever
Then we could be Heroes, just for one day.

Bowie and Pop apparently frequently crossed from West Berlin where they lived to visit Brasserie Ganymed a couple of kilometres on the other side of the wall on the Eastern, communist, side of the city.

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Ganymed is (still, and I love this about Berlin, so many of the small things like cafes from the 70s still exist) located next to Bertold Brecht’s Berliner Ensemble theatre whom both Bowie and Pop were interested in. Bowie recorded the EP ‘In Bertold Brecht’s Baal’ in 1982 to coincide with his performance in a relatively poorly received BBC production of Brecht’s play of the same name. We stopped in for breakfast and a quick look around the interior, which I suspect hasn’t changed much since the 70s; or probably the 30s….

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Our next stop was the Reichstag, the German parliament building. In 1987 Bowie played a concert in front of the Reichstag which was right on the border with East Berlin, with the stage speakers pointing over the wall to the east, where decedent western rock was effectively banned. Access to the Reichstag was effectively banned for us in 2024 as the entire area has been closed while a ‘fan zone’ is built for the pending Euro 2024 football tournament that starts soon after we leave.

It also blocked me from getting close to this building, and it’s lovely concrete circle which was on my list of ‘possible modern buildings to see that weren’t too far off the beaten track’.

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Our next stop was Hansa Studios, Berlin’s best known musical landmark; a working recording studio since the early 1960s. This is where Bowie recorded Low and Heroes with innovative German producer Conny Plank, and also where quite a few of the records in my collection were also recorded. It’s an iconic studio.

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We stopped for lunch in nearby Potsdamer Platz, where I had the much desired, and very enjoyable Berlin lunch staple – curry wurst and a beer.

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Potsdamer Platz was referenced in one of Bowie’s last hit songs, the stunning, sad and beautiful ‘Where are we now’. Released in 2013, almost 50 years after the first single, it’s one of my favourite of his songs and probably the one that will remain in my head.

“Had to get the train
From Potsdamer Platz
You never knew that
That I could do that
Just walking the dead”

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We’d walked a fair few kilometres by now so caught a train over to the far side of the Tiergarten to Zoo Station (title of a U2 LP) and walked to the fabulous Paris Cafe, another Bowie haunt and a lovely art filled bar. It felt like a good place to stop for a drink… It was early afternoon when we arrived and I imagine this place has many night time stories to tell if you lived here.

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Out final stop, and another train ride away, was the apartment where Bowie lived while he was in Berlin, and a shrine to his memory. 155 Hauptstrasse.

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The night before we left London I’d been out with some friends and when I said I was coming to Berlin and was going to do some Bowie stuff, Rob said I should check out the album ‘Cafe Exil; new adventures in European Music’ , an imaginary jukebox in the Cafe Exil, which was another Bowie Berlin hangout. I become mildly obsessed with the record (and that cover!) while I was away and pretty much listened to it the whole trip; and I subsequently bought the record.

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We loved Berlin and are already planning a return in September to see more of this fabulous city and check out Cafe Exil and hoping for a good jukebox…

Next stop Stockholm

Teufelsberg

07 – 10 June 2024 – Berlin

The cold war was a period of real tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. It started in 1947, two years after the end of the Second World War and lasted until 1991 when the Soviet Union collapsed. It was, on occasion, a tense time with the potential for nuclear doomsday a constant dangling threat. It was rarely top of mind, but it was always there, lurking like some malevolent nightmarish beast.

Thankfully, it never became a ‘hot war’ with actual shots, or worse, nuclear missiles being fired between the key protagonists. However, there were plenty of hot wars fought, mainly across the developing world, ably and eagerly supported by the main cold war protagonists. All through that cold war period these proxy wars were fought across Asia, Africa and Central America with devastating results for the local populations. You could say these proxy wars have never stopped and you can easily point to most current conflicts and see the dark fingerprints of both America and Russia and their allies on the weapons being used.

Germany was a key front line in the cold war, at least from a political and espionage perspective and with West Berlin sitting right inside East Germany it was a key centre for spying and eavesdropping. For an innocent teenager in the 1970s it was also the scene for some of my favourite novels.

Teufelsberg was a key part of American cold war intelligence gathering as it was listening post targeting radio signals coming out of the east, though, since 2016 it’s been open to the public as a fantastic indoor/outdoor street art gallery.

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Teufelsberg is not a natural hill, it is a man-made 80 meter high pile of rubble. The rubble came from the western side of the almost totally bombed out city of Berlin and under the rubble pile lies an incomplete Nazi era technical college. The initial efforts to destroy the building by explosives were so ineffectual that the West Berlin authorities decided to bury it instead and in 1950 construction of the mound took place. As you walk up the hill exposed bricks and other building rubble can be seen poking out of the ground through the undergrowth.

Construction of the American listening post finished in 1963 and US National Security Agency took over the site. With unification of Germany in 1990 the station was no longer needed and it was abandoned. Numerous options were considered for the site but nothing was financial viable and though it remains privately owned it has been allowed to fall into managed neglect and is a home for local and international street artists; including some, like Hera with the big painting and Otto Schade with the finger, being well known on the streets of London when I was photographing street art ten years ago.

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Teufeslberg is set in the middle of the Grunewalk Park it’s a nice 30 minute walk from the train station. The park seemed to be quite popular on the Sunday we visited and Teufelsberg itself was busier than I expected. There was a great view over Berlin from the top.

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