Stalinallee

We took a walk this afternoon down Stalinallee (renamed Karl Marx Allee in 1961 once dissing Stalin was safe). East Berlin held an architectural competition for the buildings there in 1951. The intention was explicitly anti-modernist and anti-Bauhaus. The Interbau competition that build the Hansaviertel where we live today was a direct response (ours is a Bauhaus architect).

The Stalinallee buildings have a real grandeur. Many have statues or panels with workers and peasants, hammers and sickles, and symbolically virtuous things like loaves of bread. Shops inhabit most of the ground floor of the buildings (unlike the Hansaviertel) and we saw only one vacancy, ironically the Karl Marx bookstore, which appears very recently to have closed (lots of handsome shelves and a beautiful tile floor, but no books).

The Frankfurter Tor (see above) is not quite the end of the architecture, but after the Frankfurter Tor the buildings mostly seem mainly unrenovated -- tiles missing, brickwork exposed, parts of balconies crumbling, and paint missing from the windows. Yet the buildings all have signs indicating historic protection status. Presumably the cleanup operation will reach them soon.

The area just behind Stalinallee had slaughterhouses and was home to a somewhat rough crowd for a time. Now the slaughterhouses are gone, new housing is coming in, and the place is becoming almost trendy. There is definitely some new and interesting architecture.

Shopping at Galleria

We spent much of Saturday afternoon at the Galleria Kaufhof in Alexanderplatz. It reminds me of the big, handsome, full-service department stores of my youth, places like Hudsons in Detroit or Marshall Fields in Chicago. Both are now gone and the whole concept of a big store with helpful staff seems to have vanished with them, at least in the US.

This Kaufhof is not quite as big as Hudsons (13 stories) or Fields (two buildings and about 8 stories), and it does not have quite the range (no furniture), but it does have the service concept and relatively nice goods at a more reasonable price than KDV (Kaufhof des Westens -- Berlin's really upscale store).

I was supposed to get a new winter coat yesterday, since coats from last season were on sale, and I did try on dozens. Trouble is, the ones I liked were not in my size, which is a typical sale problem. If only I were very fat or very tall. ...

We did use the opportunity to have a cup of tea (or in Joan's case espresso) in the top floor cafe, where we could look out the window at other buildings on the square. I practiced drawing there too, with the goal of doing a better job including the surroundings. (See drawing at the right.)

Spam Magnet

I am amazed at how much spam my last post about graphic novels has attracted. This has not been a problem in the past.

Spring has more or less come to Berlin. Earlier in the week I was about to post a note about people sitting in outdoor cafes for the first time in months -- admittedly they were sitting in their coats, but still outside. Even I, who hates the cold, had an espresso outdoors with a friend the other day. ... Today it is gray and rainy again.