Even though I am rather good at remembering stuff, I am sure that slowly some images, that were once fresh in my mind, will start to fade away. This is where photos come into play, they work as a kind of a ” defibrillator” to get my memory going again. By simply glancing at a pic, I immediately relate it to some memories and experiences. Often it might be that the picture is not that  meaningful even to me, but still I rather have a lot of pictures than too little.
I believe this is one of the biggest reasons why I take a lot of photos, even of objects that seem dull to many. Yesterday my camera was again with me as I was walking through some of the more known places in Berlin. I have to say, I blended in nicely with the tourist groups with my Sony and small Gorillapod.
I found myself on Saturday evening feeling a bit tired after a going away party for one of my Finnish friends. The scorching heat of 30 degrees Celsius did not aid in anyway to get me up and going to actually do something on a Saturday night. As I sat at my desk, browsing mindlessly through different sites, I glanced at my camera and turned my attention towards the beautiful, nevertheless hot, outdoors and decided that I’d take my chances with the hot weather and go walk around the neighborhood to see if I could catch anything interesting onto my memory card.
I felt the heatwave immediately hitting my face as I walked out of my building and I could not help but think that this was not the Germany I was used to. Like an explorer in the Sahara desert, I walked for sometime without seeing anything of interest. I had long planned to go and take pictures of the old Tempelhof Airport, basically next door to me, and seeing that the sun was starting to head under, I ran to the nearest train station and took a train….the wrong train. I ended up back where I had started from, at Schöneberg, only to enjoy a 20minute wait for the next train to Tempelhof, needless to say with the ongoing sleep mode and the oven-like climate, I was not happy.
After fighting my way out of a train that felt more like a cattle transport, due to the amount of people fitted into a single train, Iwas happy to be at my destination, the former airport of Tempelhof, now one of the largest parks in Berlin. Recently, I’ve been trying out creating HDR picture, with success and at times with no success. This Saturday was to be yet another chance for me to learn a bit of HDR photography. As I traveled towards the old Hangars and Terminals, I was excited by even the mere thought of walking on a runway that had once received at peak times a plane per minute and had helped the people of Berlin enormously during the Berlin Blockade.I mean, I know I am a history nut, I get it. On my journey towards the terminal building I also stopped to take  pictures of the usage of the airport nowadays:People having picnics, parties and doing different kinds of sport activities.
Even though I had envisioned that I would get cool pics from the Airport itself, I have to say, the Terminal building was rather hard to photograph, being that you couldn’t really get too close to it and thus the angles for pictures were rather limited. Nevertheless, I took a couple of photos and continued my way along the runways, running into an old reminder of the time when the U.S. Army was present. Some plane enthusiasts probably know the model of this troop carrier, but for me it was merely a nice shiny plane accompanied by some stairs belonging also the U.S. Army. It’s sometimes really interesting to think how much of U.S. influence Berlin has throughout the times had, having so many troops stationed here during the Berlin Brigade times, the Americans also partly brought parts of their culture into the melting pot of Berlin.
For most Europeans Baseball isn’t that familiar, which is why  the two rather old Baseball fields (ok, one was a softball field) caught my attention. Wearing often baseball fan apparel (especially Redsox gear, go Boston) and having tried to understand the sport more and more, I have to admit that this was my first real encounter with a real Baseball field. Now when I say real, I have to clarify that I had seen these fields earlier this year but not yet looked at them more closely. I couldn’t get too close now either, seeing that both fields were fenced thus making it understandably hard for non baseball players to access the fields at night time. I walked around the fields trying to find a place to get my zoom on and perhaps try and take a couple of nice pictures. I managed to stick my camera through a couple of holes in the fences, so as to have a less obstructed view of the diamonds and the field itself.
Having managed to take a couple of decent pictures I left home in hope of trying out HDR editing on photoshop during the late hours of the night. I know that Berlin has a couple of Baseball teams and seeing that I want to learn more about the sport, I have to definitely look up some of their game schedules. Funnily enough, I left my place in hopes of getting a couple of pictures of old historic places and I managed to do so, however I had not thought that the most interesting place to take pics would not be the old airport, but the sport facilities of the people who used to work there, a long time ago.
Stop and contact the Tower
No planes landing anymore, other than miniature ones.
Flight control has gone silent
The fence gave an unwanted frame to an otherwise ok picture
Wars and conflicts are never a good thing directly, even in the case of a city like Berlin, one can still see some indirect implications from the city being divided for such a long time. Â Now, often the implications of war and dividing cities and countries are obviously not good, but the one thing that can be indirectly linked to the city being divided is that the rent prices and living expenses have not risen as fast as in some other areas of the country. Why I bring this up is that I have recently gotten the pleasure of enjoying rooftop parties at my friends place, or their “commune”, if you will. For some people rooftop parties might be an everyday thing, more common than the usage of “like” as a substitute for commas in the speech of some unnamed nationalities, but for me they are still a rarity.
In Finland the only people that can afford rooftop apartments with massive terraces, are usually the people who do not have to look at the floor level shelves at the supermarket when going shopping. Here in Berlin, “regular” people can afford to enjoy the luxury of seeing the sun set far away, creating silhouettes of the city on its way down, atop your own apartment. Even though, it is still very possible to live in a rooftop apartment, there are not enough of them to go around for everyone. However, with good luck you might know someone who has a rooftop terrace place, as I did.
It wasn’t the first time I visited my friends pad, but it was the first time I remembered to bring my camera with me. Even though the night started to fall upon us nearly immediately as I had arrived to the rooftop, thanks to my swift moves and fast camera handling, I was able to capture a couple of these “rooftop moments” onto my camera, before the fat ball of fire that we nickname the Sun could fully dive behind the skyline.
We noticed with my friend,after jumping a fence to another rooftop (for a better pic) that the party seemed to follow us and that we had unintentionally created a gathering of amateur photographers on the roof of a curious neighbour, probably wondering why he hears noises of shutters clicking and people laughing through his roof. Nevertheless, everyone behaved and did the same as we, took memories of this great city that one cannot buy from a gift shop at the Brandenburg Gate.
Once again this Saturday had given me yet more reasons to contemplate on staying in Berlin even longer than merely till the end of this, seemingly short, year.
Even though I had mentioned in the previous post that I would be posting pics of my time in Finland, in the next few posts, I have to break that promise. You see, Berlin is just too tempting to capture on a memory card (wouldn’t it be so much nicer to say on film), meaning that I had to go and take a couple of pictures of the capital of the country that I myself have dubbed the economic lungs of Europe. Oh and on another note, last week I finally started my internship, here in the big B. Having hunted down internships like Robin Hood the rich, I am so happy that I ended up where I did. Each day so far has been filled with humor, fun and even work, which has felt more like my thing than padding down people at the airport (ref. to a previous job).
During the weekend I tried to go and take some pictures while the sun was up. My task was seemingly difficult, seeing that it was often rather cloudy and thus the sun was starting to at times feel like a distant relative who never visits, even though you might like to see him/her. I ended up taking a couple of “quick” photos and to my surprise some of them seemed to have turned up to be rather ok. Â Do check them out and I’ll be adding some Finnyland Fotos (had to continue the F- theme) later on.
Our Bus journey accompanied by the exotic movies and loud neighbours went surprisingly well, although at times it did feel like a never ending journey.  Alongside the rising sound volume of our fellow passengers we had the privilege of enjoying stunning views from the bus as we passed cities such as Bratislava and others that I cannot for the life of me remember at this stage.
From the bus whilst crossing a river in BratislavaNight falls for the travelers
As we began to get closer to our destination the foreign “adventure” films switched to children’s movies, which continued to baffle us, seeing that by glancing through the bus and its passengers there was nobody of that age who could have requested “the adventures of the random German speaking polar bear” (I’m guessing that was the title of the film). Not only had the movie selection seen a change, but so had the status of our neighbours. From that of speaking a hundred words per second, they had gone to the “laid back”- mode, meaning that they were leaning their seats on top of our knees, thrusting the seats to recline more, not seeming to realise that what stopped their seats from reclining any further were my bruised knees. It seemed as if they cared as much of our thumping on their seats as we had cared for the movies shown on-board.
After coming to terms with the fact that our fellow travelers had no interest in our well being, as if a sign from above we heard the on-board speakers tell us through a lot of words that we were indeed only a few short kilometers from Budapest. At long last, with bruised knees, tired bodies and minds we had arrived at some station in Budapest. Having thought previously that the station would be centrally located, we had not cared to browse through maps or make route plans….we should have.
We found our way in the middle of the night to a metro station, hoping to find a map and clear guidance towards the center. After following a herd of people, we merely crossed our fingers in hope of jumping on the right train which would at the least take us slightly closer to our hostel. I am not a superstitious person per se, but I believe it was the luck of the Irish (or better yet my Irish mate) that enabled us to manage our way through all the crossroads and alleyways safely to our hostel, where our two Slovenian friends awaited us with cold beers, that we had most definitely deserved.
The first night went by quickly as we caught up on missed conversations and had a few pints at a local tavern. We did also have time to acquaint ourselves with the local law enforcement. It is pure commonsense that what goes in must eventually come out as well. As we were browsing around the city at night, one of our crew had the sudden urge to relieve himself and seeing that there was not an open tavern nor a portapotty in sight, he ran to the nearest bushes in a nearby alleyway as the rest of us waited for him on the mainstreet. We found a nice bench on the sidewalk and decided to hang there for a moment. It was not long as we saw our friend appear from the alley, hinting to us that “we should move”. We only realised what he had meant, when we saw two officers appearing from the alley with a batman like serious face on. “Passports”, yelled the older one of the partners, and as if trained dogs we did as told and whipped our proofs of nationality and identity out for them to collect our data. Once they had gossiped our numbers and info to their colleagues via walkietalkies, they left us with valid advice “this street, not a toilet”. Needless to say we kept their advice in mind during the remain of the trip.
The next day we decided to be true tourists, eating a continental breakfast (prepared by ourselves) and heading out to explore the city. Now as most people hopefully know, Finland is not a beach holiday destination ergo we do not have extremely hot weather, aside from the summer time. In Budapest already in the Hostel I had noticed that the weather seemed to be awfully warm, but it did not cross my mind that we would be seeing the sights of Budapest in 36 degree weather (Celsius). As I left Berlin, I had foolishly thought to not even pack my shorts with me. I tried to make the best of my situation by pulling up my pants, trying to desperately make them become the shorts they clearly were not. At this stage I have to be frank and admit that there was not a lot of talking done during the sightseeing day, everyone was merely trying to survive the hot weather, thus I will let the pictures do the talking for this day:
Shorts would have been nice..Statues and HousesView from Buda towards PestGoing to Buda
We spent the entire next day laying motionlessly at a lake we had made our way to by car, only returning to Budapest in the evening to change hostels quickly (due to booking issues) and immediately embarking on a pub crawl as we arrived at our new party hostel. Before we had even really settled at our new residences, we were already enjoying beverages in numerous local bars and pubs, being led by a baywatch-style chilled out Aussie, who seemed as calm and cool as a Koala. Enjoying the comparably affordable drink prices we spent the night touring the nightlife of Budapest, which I have to say was extremely good.
Air conditioning, AC, whatever you want to call it – I love it. The first thing that hit me once I entered our room in the new hostel was the wonderful breeze of fresh COLD air, not coming from the window, oh no, but from our airconditioning. No, it did not remind me of home, being cold and chilly, but rather it gave me the possibility to enjoy a good nights rest, without sticking to my bed linen and becoming dehydrated due to the overwhelming heat. Apart from our room, we also took advantage of the round shaped balcony at our hostel, getting to know other travelers from all around the world, sharing stories and beverages with each other. For me the best thing about travelling and living abroad is the social interaction with other people from different cultures. It is always fascinating to hear about different customs and habits or personal experiences of the people I talk to.
The Legendary Balcony of the Party Hostel
We enjoyed one full day on our multicultural balcony, full of hockey,travel, lifestyle and other random talk. To cut things short I’ll just summarize the last few days with a few sentences. We continued to tour the night and day of Budapest (mostly Pest) for another couple of days, before embarking on our loooooong bus-ride back to the big ol’ B. We said our goodbyes to our Slovenian friends and hopped on the coach, with refrigerated coke bottles. My Irish mate was in luck apparently, since he managed to get a bottle that actually contained liquid, whereas I apparently got a limited edition coke bottle that was full of Ice, rather than cola in liquid form to quench my thirst. The journey back was as long as the way to Budapest, but far more enjoyable thanks to the numerous romantic comedies (not my favourite genre) that were played on-board for our enjoyment in English. As a combo breaker among the films was the more than fitting film “Hangover” which seemed to give a perfect ending to a trip that was to be felt physically for a couple of days to come.
Buda shines nicelyThe same Palace without lightsApparently they have some sort of arrangement in Budapest to turn off the lights at midnight…which was not such a good thing for my photography.
Every spring when the sun has started to become a frequent friend and the temperatures are rising like a souffle in an oven, Berliners living in Kreuzberg clear the streets of cars, not in fear of them getting burnt as usual, but to make space for the 3 day street party that is the Karneval der Kulturen.
I could go on and on about how the whole carnival got started, but to be honest my timetable doesn’t really enable me to research the party in too detail. All I can say for sure is that it started in 1996 to celebrate cultural diversities or a multicultural city as it is. The concept seems to be that people of different unifying factors form floats which then parade through the streets of Xberg and spectators walk along the roads digesting culture through every single sense they can.
The Crossroad at Mehringdamm
Whistles, techno, samba, hiphop, punkrock you name it, you heard everything whilst walking behind other people as if you were a big herd of happy zombies enjoying the awesome weather and good company. Since I’ve been here in Berlin I haven’t seen a gathering of people so large except at Brandenburger tor during the Einheitsfest, but even there people weren’t filling the streets in such lengths as they did this weekend in Kreuzberg.
If you happened to have Kohle (trying to be hip and use German lingo for money) there was sure enough places where you could get rid of your excess cash. Cocktail kiosk, beer booths, grills and obviously the most necessary kiosks of them all: the funny hat/wig stands. Personally I only used the services of one grill to buy myself a big ol’ steak in a bun. Sadly though, I ended up having a rather bloody steak which was impossible to eat thus ended up enjoying a mere “steak flavoured bun”, which I kept telling myself was all I actually wanted and didn’t care for the steak anyway.
Vendors everywhere
The numerous “official” parties were also accompanied by seemingly popup house parties on literally every corner, and yes these parties were not invite only! Not only were people jamming to their pop tunes coming out of their home stereos, own grills were also set up on the street or porches near the said parties, giving the mini-fests a nice smokey aroma.
Houseparties Berlin style
If you happen to be a more of a “I know I can dance guy”, there was plenty of room on the streets to get “jiggy with it”, as the Fresh Prince of Bel Air once sung. Probably one of the coolest streets was Zossnerstrasse, just off the main parade road. At times it truly seemed there that we were in a massive outdoor disco, it was ridiculous, in a good way!
Sunny
The fact that people can have so much fun, without causing disturbances or trouble even when enjoying alcohol, is for a Finn almost unheard of. During the whole time I was there (roughly 8hrs) I did not witness a single fight or other violent behavior, maybe it was just luck, but I’d like to imagine it’s something else, it’s the culture. I believe this to be the best part of the Karneval der Kulturen that if it indeed is possible, Berlin felt even just a notch more tolerant than normal which is really impressive seeing that this is by far the most tolerant and peaceful city I’ve been to so far. During these 3 days people could not only come to the streets and be themselves to the fullest, but furthermore they were encouraged to do so, which I can only say is pretty damn awesome.
It’s been a while since I wrote a post, mainly because I’ve been occupied by my University studies and the seemingly never ending task of finding an internship for the second half of this year.
Although I have not written here, I have still been actively carrying my camera around with me, trying to capture pictures of this wonderful city that is the big B. aka Berlin. During the past few months I have tried to do some “tourist” stuff, usually without success, travelling around the city with a s-bahn,u-bahn, tram or bus to take me further away of the areas where normally even my own two feet would carry me. Even though I’ve spent literally weeks crisscrossing this city, I still have not seen most of the common sightseeing attractions, which might be my task for the summer. For now I’ll just consider myself as a “Berlinist”, being a tourist within this city seeing sights that no one else actually might think to see.
Without really rambling on too much in this post, I’ll just sum up one of my numerous weeks spent here in a couple of words and pictures: I went to an old Stasi prison, a football match and ended up witnessing a fire.
Phew, that was concise wasn’t it? Now for the visuals ( you can prolly link each picture to the appropriate event mentioned):
I did actually make one trip even outside of Germany during this spring already, but more on that later on.
We Finns love Saunas, partly because they work as a sanctuary for the ever quiet Finns to speak about their feelings, worries and other issues, however we are also attracted by these “human ovens” because of one simple thing : Warmth. Yes, if you haven’t lived your whole life out of the reach of media coverage and information on my beloved native land, you probably are well aware that  Finland isn’t found on Google searches made with keywords such as; hot climate, warm climate,  beach holiday destination. Nay, Finland is only given a short time of warmth during the year and this period of time is usually referred to as Summer. Since this so called “summer” usually starts around late May in Finland, I have never before in my life had to ask myself the question in the morning ” shorts or slacks?”
Apparently Europe (or mainland Europe to be precise) gets a head start on the Summer and believe it or not I am not complaining! It’s a pleasant change to see on the thermometer a “+” instead of a ” – ” in front of the 20 degrees.  Waking up to the sunlight blazing through my dark blue curtains, I cannot but feel that it’s a sign from mother nature saying to me ” get up and go out you lazy kid!” (somehow I always hear that with the voice of Howard’s mom from The Big Bang Theory http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaeY8N4T7Do ) . The fact of having +20 degrees, sun and plenty of free-time on my hands has lead to me making some small urban ventures within the area of Berlin.
One of these Indiana Jones- like ventures took me even so far as a couple of kilometers from my home in Schöneberg. Initially I had great plans for this particular day, but probably due to the pleasantly shining sun taking away all of my energy, I stepped out of the S-Bahn already at Yorckstrasse, a relatively nearby stop on the trainline, and decided to continue my day by walking around the area of Kreuzberg, in search of something cool to see or capture onto the memory card in my camera.
I walked for roughly an hour without seeing anything worthy of taking my camera out of my backpack and gathering attention by being the ever stereotypical tourist taking pictures of seemingly non-enthusiastic objects.  Even though, I thoroughly enjoy the whole city of Berlin and especially Kreuzberg, as one foot went in front of the other for another kilometer, I began to think  if today I couldn’t actually find anything that would spike my enthusiasm for taking photos. Just as the 7th kid in line for a soda from a 6-pack I too started to realise that I might not get what I wanted today.
As I continued to walk, still with a smile on my face ( partly thanks to a new mixtape going through on my player), I saw a large shadow on the pavement in front of me. I glanced to my right and realised that there was a rather large hill with some sort of monument on top of it. Water ran from top to bottom and everywhere I looked, there were people chilling and enjoying the weather. This was a place I too wanted to relax at and took out my camera and headed up hill.
I walked straight up to the monument ( to be honest I was too excited about the nice view and the weather to pay any attention to what was written on the monument)  and took my time to take in the sights, after which I started to slowly descent back  from the top to the street level. I followed the water running down the hill, in order to see whether I could take some pictures of these “waterfalls” in the midst of Berlin. I was able to capture some simplistic but satisfying enough moments to quench my thirst for pictures. I can only imagine how touristy I must have looked, as I nearly went in the water in effort to get a better photo.
Having taken photos of the same spots by the water for nearly half an hour I decided to call it quits and perhaps  start to navigate back to my humble home in Schöneberg. I packed my stuff, hopped happily down the tarmac leading down the hill and decided to make one more necessary detour before treating my photoshop with some new photos: enjoying a Kebab at Mehringdamm.
Here are some of the pictures from that day, rather repetitive but hey, I did say I spent nearly half an hour at the same spots.
                                      Â
Having originally created this blog to help promote myself, so as to have a better chance of “sticking out of the crowd” whilst applying for marketing/advertising internships (yeah, I know a blog or such isn’t really original, but its the content that matters right? ), I felt it was due time to finally create an advert of myself.
The rather (hopefully) obvious purpose of the picture is to showcase the two sides of me: the hard worker and the fun loving jester, at the same time questioning the necessity to compromise in hiring a worker who is only one or the other. Now, I know the settings for the picture aren’t probably the best ones, but I hope you can overlook that, since I do not have a studio at hand at the moment where to take professional photos, neither do I have a personal assistant (other than my trusty companion Mr. Self-timer) who would devote his/her time to take photos of me. Furthermore, I know the photo is very “homey” as in amateur stuff, but if it made you even smile a bit then I’m already happy with it!
Editing and playing around with this photo gave me a nice break from my daily routine of writing applications to companies in the hope of finding an internship abroad(not in Finland) in the area of Marketing/Advertising/PR, where I could start working in late July after my last semester here in Berlin. Â
Do tell your opinion on the “advert”; what could have been done differently, where to improve on when creating my next adverts? Good tips on internship possibilities are also obviously more than welcome!
Last night I was again bored. Running around within the four walls of my room, without a destination.
I decided to make use of this “extra energy” that I had and enjoy the company of my camera in the form of a short walk around the borough of Schöneberg.
As often with my trips, this one got extended as well and went quickly from being a short walk around the corner to a full blown sightseeing tour, spending two full hours walking around Berlin to the beat of some fresh drum’n’bass songs.
Luckily, at least the weather was on my side this time and I didn’t have to seek cover from rain or snow. I played a lot with the shutter of my camera to make some use of my walk, other than the obvious health benefit of walking for kilometers at a good pace. Mr. Self-timer was also with me during this random tour of Berlin and it makes me wonder if I’ve gotten too used to using a self-timer, when I even tell passing by pedestrian that I do not require assistance whilst taking photos, as they offer to take a picture of me. Perhaps it’s just the simple fact that I don’t trust them to do a good job ( as if I was a professional, right…).
Having come home around midnight, I was already able to edit some of the shots, but left most of them for today, since I was a tad tired and didn’t have the energy to focus on editing. At least now I can say that I’ve seen the “siegessÀule” statue up-close, since before yesterday I hadn’t had the energy to drag myself to take pictures of it.
Here are a couple from last night the rest and much more can be found in the IamMoments section.
IAMJPR 