Along the Spree

The weekend of Pentecost is a major holiday in Germany. Everyone gets the Monday after Pentecost off, and many take the Friday before off as well. This year Pentecost Monday coincided with Memorial Day in the US. That was an accident of the relatively late date of Easter.

Since the week-end was theoretically relatively free, Joan and I took a walk along the river Spree, which is a 3 minute walk from our door. Much of the architecture along the river reminds us of the splendid variety in Chicago. Both are fundamentally nineteenth century cities, both had industrial pasts that are now gone, and both lost a lot of older buildings (for quite different reasons), which they replaced with new ones designed often by notable architects.


The Spree wanders a lot. Our Hansa Viertel lies in a northward bend. The next northward bend contains an old factory that has turned into a kind of shopping mall. Some buildings has striking colors, such as the orange one in the photo. Others had interesting facades, jutting triangular balconies, or a corner shaped like a ship's prow.


Out of roughly 30 buildings from the 1957 Interbau competition in the Hansa Viertel, four were for sale when we were looking last autumn. That number has fallen to one, in part perhaps to the 50 year celebration, which has brought a lot of public attention to the area. Everyone in our building received a flyer from a company asking if we might be willing to sell in the near future. Purely in investment terms, we seem to have bought at the right time.