Walks and Storms

I am guilty of blog-neglect again. It is in fact hard to find much free time at this point in a semester when I am working on grant proposals and the university is about to receive a review panel visit to determine whether it ranks among the "excellent" universities in Germany. It does, of course. We merely have to prove it convincingly.

On the Feast of Ascension, which is a holiday in Berlin, Joan and I took a walk through the Hansa Viertel where we live. Buildings from the architectural competition all lie south of the elevated train tracks, but the river Spree is the district's official boundary. We walked down Klopfstock Strasse, which has many of the low-rise winners from the competition, including the building by Walter Gropius, and the Giraffe restaurant (where we later had a pleasant dinner). We turned back at the Tiergarten train station and walked along its northern rim between the tracks and the river. We saw what looked like a minor embassy along Bachstr, but could not see the sign or the flag clearly enough to recognize it. The building is lovely, though. Then we crossed the river and walked along its northern edge.

Yesterday and today we had quite spectacular thunder storms and discovered that we have a small leak in the bedroom window that needs to be fixed. The storm pelted down hail as well as rain, which may have caused some disruption for the planned football (soccer) rally at the Brandenburger Tor. It also disrupted the efforts of our neighbors in the opposite building to pull something (we couldn't see what) up with ropes to the top floor. The building has an elevator. Presumably the object didn't fit.