Conveuropean

The Victory Column is a monument created to commemorate the Prussian victory in the Danish-Prussian War. It's possible to visit this monument and climb the the stairs to get to the top of the column where you can find very interesting views of the capital city.

The 3rd of October is a national holiday when the German celebrate their "Unity Day" (Tag der Deutschen Einheit). This is normally a really good day to walk along the "Straße des 17. Juni", since it''s open only to pedestrian traffic. I did that walk last year, visited the column and shot the picture you can observe above.

Yesterday I started waking from Prenzlauer Berg, all the way to Postdamer Platz and when I was crossing the museum island I noticed the Humboldt-Box and I remembered I never went there before so I decided to make a short stop. This temporary construction, created by the Humboldt foundation, serves as an exhibition space and viewing platform for the Berlin Palace - Humboldt Forum reconstruction project.

I you have been following this photoblog I think you are not going to be surprised if I mention Berlin is one of my favorites cities in Europe. A couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to visit it once time more and since I stayed with some friends living in the south part of the city I got to see the area around Templehof including the former airport that now it is a huge open green space. In a truly Berlin style, it has an Art minigolf in the middle of the park where we got some water and this is where I took this picture. During the weekend I was visiting Berlin there was a referendum to keep the tempelhof park 100% public and it passed with around 65% percent of the votes in favor of the initiative. Therefore the Berliners will keep enjoying this huge and popular park in the city. Well done!.

Everytime I go to Berlin I'm very quickly reminded why this my favorite European city. As soon as I’m getting close to Alexanderplatz, I feel excited to realize that I’m again visiting the German capital. The first time I visited the city was 7 years ago and it’s amazing how the city have changed in that short time: The palace of the republic is gone, the hauptbahnhof is completed and the area around the parliament is getting nicer and nicer. Each time I visit Berlin I get the opportunity to see something new I haven’t seen before and this time it was not an exception: When we were walking near to Postdamer platz we saw a small flyer talking about a watching tower and indeed we found hidden by a tree one of the last remaining surveillance symbols of the GDR.

The first trip of this year 2010 was to Berlin to visit my aunt and uncle. I'm sorry it was such a short trip because I really like that city!!. This time, when I was passing near the Brandenburg gate I notice the path of the former Wall and I followed it all the way to Postdamer platz where I took this picture. As you can see here it was snowing a lot!.

Last Christmas (08) I had the chance to go to Germany and to spent a wonderful christmas with L. and J. They were wonderful hosts. In this second visit to Berlin I really wanted to visit the Reichstag and I'm glad I did it, but it was not fun to queue outside in the "Berliner Winter". That's a lesson I learned :).

The first time I went to Berlin back in 2006 I noticed there was this ugly building "under construction". I was curious and I took a picture that was buried in my hard drive. Today when I was cleaning up my computer I found this picture again and I realized they were not building anything, but it was actually the other way around: They were dismantling the "Palace of the Republic". This building was the seat of the parliament of the German Democratic Republic. A couple of years later I visited Berlin and the construction was gone. Berlin will always be one of my favorite cities in Europe.

The first I visited Berlin in the summer of 2006 I fell in love of that really interesting city. I like history and you can breath 20th century history everywhere in this city. When we were walking around with some of my colleagues we passed next to this statue of Marx and Engels and that was a good reminder that once this was East Berlin, the capital of the GDR.