On Friday noon we will meet in Bremen at the main train station, from where we will start our trip towards the capital. With a change in Hanover, we arrive at our hotel in Berlin around 4:30 p.m. We deposit our luggage in the room and set off straight away with our cameras in hand to explore the city.
Our first destination on the to-do list is the East Side Gallery, famous for its street art on parts of the old Berlin Wall. After the first pictures have been taken, I come to the second point on my list – Eating an original Berlin curry sausage. In the menu with fries and a “Pils” (beer) the whole thing is of course much better.
After refreshment and the slow sunset, we go to the Kurfürstendamm. At the intersection of Kurfürstendamm and Joachimsthalerstraße we look at pictures by international street photographers, which are projected onto the street as part of the “European Month of Photography”. After we stop at the Brandenburger Tor and the Potsdamer Platz train station, we go back to the hotel in order to be able to attack again the next morning.
Before we hit the streets again, we first enjoy the good breakfast in the hotel. With a full stomach we start towards to the Charlottenburg train station, where more street photos are exhibited. Then we go to the government district, where we want to photograph people in connection with architecture.
But we are not completely satisfied with the yield and move on to the Holocaust memorial, which is definitely not uninteresting in terms of photography.
After a pizza we go to the Alexanderplatz. This is where I get my best shot of the whole tour. The light falls on one of the stairs to the subway and promises some good photos when a person passes by. I wait quite a while, but somehow it just doesn’t fit. At some point I give up and go back up the stairs when I notice a “Hello Kitty” balloon floating over the wall.
Together with the “Alexanderplatz” sign and the skyscraper in the background, it makes an interesting composition. I don’t hesitate and press the shutter button several times. In one photo, the balloon rotates perfectly in my direction and it looks as if “Kitty” is looking straight into the camera.
We have to go slowly to the main train station. We stroll through an art market, have a beer in a pub and try our luck one last time in the government district before we go home with almost 1000 photos.
The trip was a lot of fun, but it was also quite exhausting because the city is damn big and you actually need a few days to get there first. But at least we have a reason to go to Berlin again at some point.
