The Wisdom of the Berlin Wall
Along the Spree in Friedrichshain district a stretch of the Berlin Wall, the so-called East Side Gallery was preserved and painted by artists as a memorial. Over the years, the painting have cracked and faded, and tourists and Berliners alike have added their own little graffiti - quotes, names, greetings, the usual. I love the way that those inscriptions have made it a bit of a memorial to the many different people in this city as well, and when I heard that the city was planning on restoring the original paintings, I kept meaning to go to the Gallery and take some pictures of my favourite graffiti, before they were removed. Last night I had an hour to kill in the area before meeting up with paraka*, so I went down there. Sadly, half of the wall has already been cleaned, but I want to share some of what could be found on there. Image-heavy!
Just for reference, this is what it used to look like at the Gallery:
And this is what half of it looks like right now. I'm not even going to go into the whole thing about building the O2 World and cleaning up the banks of the Spree, because it makes me angry and it's mostly local politics anyway.
Now for the graffiti. Some want to solve the questions of life -
Others want to remember -
There are greetings to friends and families -
(This is a message for Mothers Day.)
While others are lonely -
Or happy with themselves -
And yet others are just completely random -
(Translation: "the fictional detonation of the Hamburger Bahnhof (or the Hamburg train station, depending on whether they mean a local museum or the actual station)"
There are lots of traced handprints; here are two of my favourites:
And inscriptions in all possible languages. Here is just one to represent all of them:
Also, more Beatles quotes than you can shake a stick at. Possibly my favourite:
One last impression -
In conclusion:
*Meeting paraka is a whole different story, because she's one of my oldest LJ friends and getting to meet her was awesome. ♥
Just for reference, this is what it used to look like at the Gallery:
And this is what half of it looks like right now. I'm not even going to go into the whole thing about building the O2 World and cleaning up the banks of the Spree, because it makes me angry and it's mostly local politics anyway.
Now for the graffiti. Some want to solve the questions of life -
Others want to remember -
There are greetings to friends and families -
(This is a message for Mothers Day.)
While others are lonely -
Or happy with themselves -
And yet others are just completely random -
(Translation: "the fictional detonation of the Hamburger Bahnhof (or the Hamburg train station, depending on whether they mean a local museum or the actual station)"
There are lots of traced handprints; here are two of my favourites:
And inscriptions in all possible languages. Here is just one to represent all of them:
Also, more Beatles quotes than you can shake a stick at. Possibly my favourite:
One last impression -
In conclusion:
*Meeting paraka is a whole different story, because she's one of my oldest LJ friends and getting to meet her was awesome. ♥