Thursday, May 19, 2011

Parks, not parking

The weather can be pretty good here depending on the day, and I'm hoping to spend some major time outdoors. Berlin is a city of parks, really big ones too, you can go in and walk for hours and only see people on foot or on bike. And people really flock to these places when the weather is good. I've heard that less than half of all Berliners own a car, and it makes sense: You don't really need one in this city. Most people prefer to travel by public transportation or bicycle here, simply because it's more pleasant to not have to worry about finding an elusive parking spot, paying for parking once you've finally found a place to park, paying for gasoline (which I just worked out using real math* to be $8.59/gallon over here!), et cetera. Walking is also incredibly pleasant, thanks to the relatively low number of automobiles, the presence of wide sidewalks, the blending of residential and commercial zones, and the fact that you are never the only person out on the street (try saying that about anywhere in Texas).
One of my personal goals during the next 2 months is to check out every significantly-sized park and spend at least a half day in each of them. A few of my favorites so far:

1. Mauerpark

This park, relatively normal during the week, turns into a veritable circus on Sundays. There is a massive flea market where you can find just about anything under the sun. People come here to browse, play music, drink drinks, and eat delicious street food. I have only been to the park once, on a Thursday, and there was nothing going on, so I am excited to visit it this Sunday with Erica to take in the madness. There is also something called Bearpit Karaoke that happens here on Sundays, which looks like this.Whoa.

2. Tempelhof

When you go to Tempelhof Park, you might see people flying model airplanes. This is a completely normal thing to do at a park, but people like to do it especially at Tempelhof because this park used to be an actual airport. Berlin had 3 airports at one point, with 2 of them being smack dab in the middle of the city. The government has decided to close the central ones and make the outlying airport the only airport; Tempelhof was closed in 2008, and Tegel should soon follow suit. When they reopened Tempelhof as a park in 2010, they had left everything as it was: runways, terminals, even the control tower. It's now Berlin's largest park, and has a lot of space for everything. The softball team I am considering joining practices at this park.

Former runway, now great for biking

Tempelhof terminals





3. Görlizter Park

 Affectionately known as Görli (to my American ears, it sounds like "girly"), this park is the closest of the three to my house. It used to be a train station, and is now a big wide open space. It's not the prettiest park, but it's a good place to BBQ or hang out in the sunshine.



 4. Volkspark Friedrichshain

Friedrichshain is the first park I visited when I got to Berlin this time around. It is giant and mostly known for beach volleyball and having a constant haze hanging over it from all the BBQing people do here during nice weather. In German, this phenomenon is referred to as a Grillwolke, or BBQ cloud. I tried to take some video footage while tooling around on my bike.





*Conversion rates for real math:
1.61 Euros per liter of unleaded gasoline
3.785 liters per gallon
1.41 dollars to the Euro

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