Utopia in Kreuzberg

I spent part of the day this past Saturday exploring the southwest part of Kreuzberg, a hip neighborhood not far from the historic Templehof airport. Kreuzberg was part of West Berlin, but as it was surrounded by East Berlin on three sides it was somewhat isolated. The result was that the rent was cheap and many immigrants and artists moved here, which lead to the neighborhood becoming quite hip. Following the re-unification of the city, the hard-core hip artists have moved further afield, leaving a large number of people of Turkish background mixed together with a slightly gentrified "alternative culture" scene. Picture a street where independent coffee houses full of people reading important books are interspersed among falafel stands, organic food shops, and veiled women selling fresh baklava. It's quite a fun scene.

My primary reason for visiting was to check out an indoor market hall, which was fun - a good place for lunch. I also visited Victoria Park, the hill (berg) which Kreuzberg is named after. But then I arrived at the Hallesches Tor and discovered some modern architecture which was out-of-this world...

As is the case in many parts of Berlin which suffered heavy damage during the last days of the second world war (in Europe), there are many post-war buildings of questionable taste. Sometimes it seems that the West-Berlin architects were trying to compete with the communists in building large compounds which I call "utopias". The scale of these large projects can be astounding. If one looks at a satellite image of the neighborhood just north of the Hallesches Tor U-Bahn stop, one sees two co-centric circles of buildings, each circle is several city blocks in diameter!

Here are some pictures of different utopia complexes:




There is also a lot of graffiti in Berlin, some of it quite elaborate. Here is what appears to be graffiti advertising a radio station.



Rarely does one actually observe graffiti being made, but I caught this guy working on his signature on the side of one of the utopia buildings.