Summer 2015: Berlin Neighborhood Style. . .

 A few photographs from our Berlin sojourn this past summer.  We rented an apartment in a quieter section of Berlin-Tempelhof, a few blocks off the bustling Tempelhoferdamm, a major north-south artery in the southern part of the city along the U6 line of the Berlin Underground, the extensive, convenient, and very clean U-bahn.  Here is an old villa around the corner and down the street from our apartment building.

A different kind of post today featuring only a dozen, or so photographs (I promise) from our stay in Berlin during July and August.  I am aware how mind-numbing it can be sitting through someone else's vacation pictures and videos, so I've included only a few specific to where we stayed in the city.  No Brandenburg Gate, DDR TV tower, or, for that matter, pictures of anyone making the goofy and ubiquitous Sicilian horn curse sign with his or her fingers and hanging the tongue out of the mouth, ala Gene Simmons from KISS or Miley Cyrus, to demonstrate how wild and crazy we were while off the leash in another country.  You know the kind of thing I'm talking about.  Anyway, here we go.  I hope you might enjoy browsing through these photographs.

-- Heinz-Ulrich

One of many interesting old apartment buildings in the area.  I am a sucker for older architectural styles especially the kind(s) found across northern Germany.

A nearby Lutheran church dating from 1915 with a still operating school attached to it.

 Another school right across the same street, not in session during the July and August summer holidays.

The old post office on Tempelhoferdamm, now run by DHL.

One of the many nearby parks in which our son liked to run, watch the ducks, and look at the large, ugly fish in the various ponds, remnants of the old moats that once surrounded the Alt Tempelhof village church built by the Knights Templar as they moved eastward during the Middle Ages.  History is all around you in Berlin.  This particular park was just two minutes down Parkstrasse from our apartment building.

The Grand Duchess and Young Master in one of the several Kindercafes we found around the city.  This particular establishment features a climbing and ballroom, so the children can play in a safe area while parents enjoy coffee, tea, or delightful meals nearby without interruptions from the little ones.  We visited several times and met Free University colleagues of my wife's there twice.  On a different note, the Young Master informed me a day or two after our arrival at the start of July that I could speak German to him now because we were in Berlin.  He then went on to correct my grammar mistakes relentlessly throughout our visit!

The living room of our apartment at Parkstrasse 11 seen from the kitchen.  Spartan, but rather nice for the summer.  The two bedrooms were off to either side here with the kitchen, two bathrooms, and entryway behind the camera and off to either side.

The interior of the charming little cafe next door to our apartment building, Muellerskind Cafe, where you can enjoy all kinds of homemade goodies with your coffee, tea, and/or ice-cream.  This photo has been borrowed from the cafe's Yelp page.

The seating area outside of the same cafe.  The photo here has again been pirated from the cafe's Yelp page.  We visited Muellerskind Cafe a number of times during our stay but not as much as we would have liked.  Hopefully, we'll be in the same general area in a couple of years' time and can indulge a bit more often.

Here is Parkstrasse 11 itself where we resided for almost seven weeks in July and the first half of August this year.  The neighborhood was quiet and featured many wonderful old renovated and/or well-maintained apartment buildings dating originally from the 1890s and early decades of the 20th century.  Since so much of Berlin was damaged or reduced to rubble during the end of the Second World War, the Grand Duchess and I speculated that most of the buildings in this area of Berlin were rebuilt at least in part.  Indeed, we spotted a few plaques on the sides of some apartment buildings in the area indicating that they had been rebuilt as part of special building programs during the first half of the 1950s.

 And here is our actual building, which was behind the one shown above, but both shared the same street address.  A tennis club was next  door, and matches were usually underway by 7:30 or 8am most days, but, strangely, the noise was nowhere near as obtrusive as, for example, the disturbances generated by a rental house full of undergraduates across the street. . .  like we enjoyed routinely when we still lived two blocks from campus in Central Illinois.

Here is an interesting shot of the street sign just outside our front door.  The cafe I mentioned above is just to the left here.  All of my photographs here, except the two of the cafe, were taken with my tiny Sony Cybershot.  This last one turned out really nicely if I do say so myself.