Virtual suburbs

The tree-lined street with cars parked in front of free-standing houses with big lawns and long driveways -- it could be East Lansing or almost any US suburb, but I am describing Zehlendorf in Berlin. Berlin is big. It has high rise districts, districts with apartment buildings of 5 to 10 stories, districts with long, massive, Soviet-era apartment blocks, and it has areas like Zehlendorf, which was in the old US sector. Perhaps that is why it looks so American.

Or does it? The initial image is a bit deceptive. The houses have a slightly different look to them. The architecture tends to be more solid and massive, not the socalled "baloon" frame US standard that is more or less a wooden tent with occasional bursts of decorative brick siding, but fundamentally cardboard (called plasterboard) within.

Our apartment in East Lansing has a fire detector and a sprinkler in every room. I have yet to see either in Germany, perhaps because the post-war building codes make it hard for fires to spread. Almost every internal wall would count as a firewall in the US. Perhaps that is what comes from being fire-bombed repeatedly during the war.