Berlin – May 31, 2024

The Hotel (Part 2)

For those of you who may not have seen this before, elevators are numbered starting with the ground floor as either zero or E (for “Erdgeschoss”). The first floor is the one above the ground floor. If there’s a parking garage under the ground floor, it gets a -1 as its number.

Supposedly there was a film crew here today, but I didn’t see them.

Sign says 31.5.24 / 12-20h / Filmarbeiten

The front of the hotel. (No, the car isn’t parked inside the hotel; that’s a reflection.)

Today’s Adventure

I randomly chose the Julius-Leber-Brücke station in the Schönberg area to visit. I saw these on the way to the main station and on the train:

Poster of Nefertiti statue. words: Gott sei Dank bin ich deutsch! / Europe nicht den Leyen überlassen

Thank God I’m German! / Don’t leave Europe to Leyen (a reference to the EU Commission president

How crowded does it feel on this train? (With QR code)

They even put subway maps on the ceilings of the cars!

Distracted boyfriend meme; new woman is Sana, man is Du (you) and current woman is “Dein jetizger Job” (Your current job)

Sana is the name of a company; “Du” is “you”; “Dein jetizger Job” is “your current job”.

There’s a lot of graffiti at the station:

I almost missed these marvelous mini-cartoons along a storefront at nearly ground level:

“Huh?”

Ostrich sticking head in ground to see a mole on the toilet. It says “Ick hab’s satt!”

“I’m fed up.”

Old woman asking graffiti artist who is tagging a subway car “Und die Räder?”

“And the wheels?”

Man wearing very long sombrero; two surveillance cameras have ? above their lenses.

Two tin cans on a string; in the middle a third tin can labeled NSA Agent

Middle can says NSA Agent

Man hopping through grass and smoking large marijuana cigarette

Grasshopper

Owl opening one eye to look at woodpecker; says “Ruhe!”

“Quiet!”

Cactus squatting down and pooping a small cactus fragment.

The area is fairly residential; I also passed an elementary school as I walked along. These are in the order that I walked; no particular theme.

Art Window

I was surprised that there are Baptists here in Germany.

Word KUNST written horizontally; the S starts the word SCHAUFENSTER written vertically

Art Display Window (Kunst Schaufenster)

Had to put this in for all you “Young Frankenstein“ fans.

This one and the next one were on unoccupied storefronts.

whimsical figures with vegetables on their heads

A tagger with literary pretensions.

David Bowie lived here.

Food

Went to a great Persian food place: Bahar Restaurant (web site in German). They had a €9.99 lunch special. I decided to get something a bit “extra” to celebrate a certain occurrence of 34 decisions that happened in the US.

I had the koobideh.

And a chocolate gelato cone for dessert!

Kleist Park

Who was Kleist? Heinrich von Kleist was a poet and dramatist. Old joke: he was not the Chinese messiah. (Can I join the diversity committee now?)

In any event, he has a park named after him, and it’s unfortunately not well kept up and is quite the target for taggers.

Die Wahl (The Election)

Not sure why I have so much interest in getting photos of these; they’re pretty much ephemera—in less than month they’ll all be out of date. I guess it’s because some of them have messages that make an impression. I’m not sure we have posters like this in the US.