Exploring Berlin sans Internet

As an international student, I am often glued to google maps while travelling to any city in Germany. So it was an enthralling change when I ran out of mobile data and had to impel myself to explore the neighbourhood aimlessly. There were varying factors that guided my navigation-less walk. Some streets grasped my attention through the melodious sound of a music group casually playing by the curb, some streets for the voice of its buildings amidst the silence of human activities, and some streets reeled me in with the sight of food. It made me reminiscence of how I would walk around back home in Mumbai - absorbing the city not just through the tangible offerings of places but rather through the intangible observations of how people engage with the neighbourhood. It reminded me that sometimes one must allow themselves to be lost in a place so as to discover the inherent soul of that place.

This Bahnhof funnily reminded me of street food stalls outside Mumbai's local train stations. A public transit point would appear safe and lively to me based on the nature of activities in its vicinity. These inserts are also in a way coaxing one to experience the area around the transit system as a locality and not treat these points just as "to and fro" destinations. It would be interesting to come to this same street at different times of the day to see if there is any cyclical change in the nature of activities surrounding the Bahnhof. The food stalls also make the train underpass appear as a warm space that would rather be grey and deserted without these shops.

A music group enlivening the street near U-bahn

There is something just mysteriously calming about traveling in empty trains and absorbing the city vignettes around..

Replenishing myself with some juice at Berlin Hauptbahnhof. Here I also got reminded of how sometimes I would just casually have discussions with my fellow travellers back home. Didn't seem possible to do that over here in Germany. There is a layer of formalness that feels slightly different from back home. One could easily spend hours walking around this huge central station. The platforms are divided into multiple levels and that just simply blew my mind.

I did get enticed into using DB wifi at the Bahnhof to just take my mind off the plethora of things I was witnessing around me. But then I eventually stepped out of the bahnhof and walked towards the river edge. It was interesting to see people just simply chilling on the river's edge. It reminded me of sitting and chit-chatting at katta's back home. I have totally missed doing this during the recent cold and gloomy winters. I guess sitting out in the public space in one's own private circle also is an intermediary way of personalising one's experience of the city.

It somewhere made me happy to see so many people out and about just soaking in the sun and smiling! The positive vibe here was infectious and immediately made me more eager to walk around the river edge

And just as I was strolling through the river edge, I spotted a rickshaw type tourist sight-seeing vehicle. Back home when I traveled to different cities in India, I would come across so many local stories narrated by the drivers of these spunky vehicles. I hope to take this ride once over here and interact with the drivers so as to see the city through their perspective

A quiet corner on this promenade area which actually spoke quiet loudly..

It was so much fun to see a young girl waving to the driver of the boat

Tumultuous building reflections on a quiet street

I had previously heard a lot about this museum and was finally glad to actually visit it. The scale of the building and the articulation of the street leading to it resonated with introspective energy...

I am not posting the internal content of the museum. However, the space was truly informative and after 2 hours of absorbing all of it, it was time to reach Berlin Hbf to have some food and catch my train back to Dessau

This was all that I could manage in 6 hours of my time near Berlin Hbf. But I will surely engage myself in more such walks in the near future. Drawing some parallels of experiencing the city here as compared to back home somewhere informs me as an architect; of the intricacies of various layers which overlap for a rich urban fabric to evolve. There were so many more moments that bought a smile to my face as I was walking around and some of the very few highlights have been covered in this blog...