For the second time I visited Berlin during Christmas time. This year my friend Beat and I planned a Christmas Photo Trip (... besides shopping :-).
Said so and flew to Berlin for 3 days. We had a pretty tough programme, since Berlin is a BIG city and we had a hard time deciding what do do and what not. It all started off at Dunkin' Donuts:
Breakfast, Lunch or Dinner??????? Or in between???
We chose the afternoon snack.
Full and happy we took the underground to Schloss Charlottenburg, where they had a Christmas market and the castle beautifully lighted. But this time we decided wrong.... to be exact: wrong way. We ended up riding all the way to the final station, wondering why we missed our stop? Well - it was because we where headed in the wrong direction.... But who cares? We didn't, happily listening to the street musicians "Jingle Bells" the then-thought-to-be-the-only-time.
Arriving at Schloss Charlottenburg, the weather had changed and a cold rain/snow mixture awaited two crazy Swiss eager to take some good pics. We strolled trough the beautiful market (ignoring all the market stands with dreams of sweets, hot soups, Currywurst and yummy Kartoffelpuffer....) and headed through the gate of the park to set up our tripods. We then sunk into colors, shades, sharpnes, edges, angles and creative ideas - not realising the pouring rain/snow. The castle is beautifully lighted in different colors during annual Christmas time.
After taking pictures for a while (we lost control over space and time...) we both had to bring back our feet and hands to body temperature (...by having a hot pizza in a nice restaurant). You can see all the pictures from the session in
GALLERY.
The next day we headed towards historical Brandenburger Tor. We took some pictures of the gate and the nearby Bundestag, but decided that taking pics in the dark was better. So in the evening we once again set up our tripods to catch some good moments. Taking pictures fearing to get run over by some crazy car driver any second produced a very special kick of adrenaline... Well, it did not help for me. I was overwhelmed by crappy pictures, freezing and hurting feet and an unbearable hunger.
So overwhelmed (by then Beat was too) that we headed to the nearest undergound station ending up at the main train station. From there a loooooooooooooooooooong journey back home to bed....
We spent our last day feeding our cultural/historical minds. Starting off with a real Berliner Currywurst and then taking a bus tour through Berlin. I was absolutely overwhelmed by the diversity of architectual creativity in the embassy district. Only one building stuck out: The Swiss embassy. A simple cube, looking like a safe (how matching ;-). It was designed by Diener & Diener Architects from Basel, who won some prize with it. He? Guess my architectual niveau is not really meeting basic needs....
We finished of our Christmas Photo Trip with a session in the underground station. Trying to catch the train in full speed and make it look semi-transparent. Well, can't post a picture because I did not like a single one of them. It still was a funny session, trying to time our cameras to the schedule of the trains....
All in all: some cool pictures, some not so cool pictures and a whole lot of fun in BERLIN!!!
.jpg)
Jenny
