Throughout the city of Berlin are these little colonies of garden areas. This family owns a nice apartment on one of the busiest streets in Berlin, but retreats to their garden home most weekends. This same behavior is mimicked all through the city. The citizens go to a small plot of land which has been set aside as a green area and tend their flowers/trees/shrubs... whatever. Some of these plots have a full-fledged house on them, others just have a shed for holding garden tools.
Our friends had quite a large piece of land and a small house up until about five years ago when they built a regular-sized house on the plot. The original house still stands and now is a shed. This is a picture of the back window of the original house.
After cake (served mid-afternoon, consisting of a variety of sweet bread and cake alongside coffee or tea --- probably what the Brits would call "having tea") we went for a walk to explore the area around their weekend home. The area is called Köpernick and if I'm right it is a borough of Berlin. Below are a few pictures taken during our walk. All pictures can be viewed using Flicker or just click on them to see the larger image.
This one looked like some sort of a bunker to me. When asked, our friends didn't know if it was a real bunker dating from the wars, but she did say that now it is a bat refuge and a major reason by their area has very few flying bugs.
These two pictures depict a huge dragon wall that went around one body of water. If you look closely you can see the noseholes, teeth, eyes, even the tongue! The second image shows the continuation of the thing. Throughout the whole thing were small tile pieces constructed by the local children and placed within the dragon wall.
Quite a nice way to start a summer!
2 comments:
The little garden plot villages in Germany totally amuse me. The first time I saw some from a train, I thought it was a shanty-town...
You're not kidding! They look really crowded and kinda trashy. I had the same first impression!
N. says that it is mostly "rednecks" that live there all the time. The weekend families are more respectable. All I know is that it is really interesting to walk through the little streets and see the different small houses and each person's idea of gardening... is it flowers, trees, or vegetables... or maybe some kind of mix.
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