Blame the Buddy Bears for popularising the notion that Berlin derives its name from 'Bär', German for 'bear'. These colourful sculptures were born in Berlin in 2001 and hundreds dot…
Was it the princess in the lake that drew me? The Müggelberge's mysterious lake and moors transfixed me when I explored the area.
Of all the German words that I encountered when I first moved to Germany, it was 'pflegeleicht' that struck me. I first saw it on the washing machine. Then stamped…
The venue was so heavily 19th century European it seemed the most unlikely place to hold a celebration of the end of the Muslim month of Ramadan. The Museuminsel was…
I was determined not to miss it again. After stumbling upon a magnificent giant portrait by street artist Vhils in 2012, I tracked down all four works that were in…
I noticed him whilst I was hanging around a Bahnhof entrance in Neukölln, waiting to photograph the station disgorge passengers. Was he Vietnamese, I wondered, and was he selling contraband…
As a new arrival in Berlin and being of Asian extraction, I somehow expected 'foreigner' to be stamped on my forehead for all to read and react to. Instead, no…
Immediately after WWII, women shouldered the bulk of clearing the tons of rubble in bombed cities. These Trümmerfrauen (rubble women) impacted gender roles in Germany.
The sculpture was huge, shaggy and up on a tree. We were delighted to immediately identify it as something from home – an orang-utan – and whipped out our camera…
The name of the U-Bahnhof Südstern (literally, south star) references the station's location at Berlin's erstwhile southern boundary, from which roads leaving the city radiated in a star shape.
