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• Bike hire in Berlin - (1)
  
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• Oh no! John! - (2)
  
• “Bells and Smells” Mass - (1)
  
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Germany

They say that:

Heaven is a restaurant where the chef is French, the manager is German, the waiter is English and your eating companions are Italian. Hell is the same place with the same people, but they occupy different roles. The chef is English, the manager is Italian, the waiter is French and your eating companions are German.

The sculpture in the photograph above is in the general vicinity of Potsdammer Platz. I ate dinner this evening next to the sculpture, at a restaurant which is located somewhere between heaven and hell.

They do it properly here in Berlin. Here are some of the notable differences with Surrey and London:

1. The lane doesn’t end or suspend when an intersection or bus stop is reached. The cyclist can continue safely at these features along a clearly defined route.
2. The available space on the road and pavement is allocated fairly to car, cyclist and pedestrian. Each group is catered for in the same proportion even where the road and pavement narrows, such as on a bridge.
3. At the traffic lights there are three phases and separate lights for car, bicycle and pedestrian.
4. The cycle lanes are safe and widely used.

Of course some parts of London are worse than others.

This is apparently a (deformed) pitman, which is some kind of connecting rod on a steam engine.

Someone has put it in on display in my hotel in Berlin.

I don’t think I’ve posted since my return from Berlin on Wednesday night. I noticed on this trip (there was a 20 minute walk from the hotel to the workshop venue) that they don’t share our phobia of cyclists on pavements. Indeed they draw a line down many pavements and share the space quite amiably. On the first morning we were wallking down the cycling section and a cyclist behind us waited patiently for us to notice and make way.

Some streets had the cyclists going one way on the pavement and the other on the road (both via dedicated cycling lanes). This allowed for best allocation of all available space between cycle, foot and tyre. Why can’t London and Surrey be more like Berlin?

I didn’t want to risk it, so I used the stairs. I’m spent another night in this hotel in Berlin.

The workshop went well. We finished everything yesterday but our last session ended ate yesterday evening. I will go back to the UK today and return in two week’s time for the next installment.

From my hotel window near Potsdammerplaz in Berlin there’s a view of an old railway station that was bombed. All that remains is the front of the building.

I am back in Berlin today to run a two day workshop with a client. I’ve some last minute adjustments to make to my materials, then will be ready to roll.

The photo is of that famous Berlin crossing between East and West. Apparently at busy tourist times there are “soldiers” in uniform (American, Russian, German) who will pose with you for photographs (for a fee). 

After the revolution, when Buckingham Palace becomes a similar historic relic, London students can dress as beefeaters to pose with tourists.  However they will not be allowed to wear real bearskin hats.

This is the history Brandenberg Gate, where Barack Obama is reported to want to make a speech during his forthcoming tour of Europe. This is news which has divided German politicians along party lines (no change there then).

Here’s another more intact section of the Berlin Wall. Looking at it, so low in comparison to say the Palestinian Wall, one is surprised. My colleagues told me that originally there were two rows of walls and the ground between them was mined, and of course watched by guards. Nevertheless this wall resulted in 80 officially recorded deaths in 28 years, and possibly 200 according to unofficial sources. Without belittling this, this is the same number killed over just a few years at the electric fence built between South Africa and Mozambique in the 1970s in order to keep the “communist revolution” out. Of course South Africa has a great history of separation barriers, and possibly the earliest was the almond hedge planted by Jan van Riebeck in the 1660’s. According to The Cape Town Pass it was “to protect the cattle of the Cape colonists”. (From the people who were living and farming there before the settlers arrived). This hedge (although it still exists in part today) quickly fell into disuse when the colonists rapidly expanded out from the settlement at what is now Cape Town.  As distasteful as these separation barriers are, it is also interesting to note how many of them there have been through history: Hadrian’s Wall, Offa’s Dyke, and The Great Wall of China to mention a few.

Link: The Berlin Wall at Wikipedia.

Seems like a good idea. I’m going back to Berlin in a few week’s time so I might have a chance to hire a bike.

They also have these quaint looking but not so quaintly priced cars for hire. The luxury model has rear window heating so you can warm your hands when you are pushing it.

After our meeting we walked around Berlin and had supper. I asked for a small beer and the waitress brought this. I queried this and she clarified “Yes, 500 ml”. This is what I call the egg size or pop-corn carton size descriptive framework.

There’s nothing striking about this, except for the characters with diacritics.

Walking back to the hotel on Thursday night in Berlin we walked into this film set. According to the usher who steered us around the action, they were filming a commercial.

The British Embassy in Berlin must be one of the ugliest buildings in the world. The high security means it is inaccessible and unfriendly. Why does it have cold war level security? The French Embassy around the corner doesn’t and is slightly less ugly. It doesn’t have any visible security outside.

Walking around after our team meeting and before supper we came across these remnants of the Berlin Wall, preserved in this cute state. This is just around the corner from Checkpoint Charlie. Berlin feels to me like the other German cities I am familiar with. Comfortable. The little German I know is dangerous, but one does not need it. In any case although none of us are German, I am with four fluent German speakers.