When in Berlin I live a five-minute walk away from Alexanderplatz. The square has had a tumultuous past. Its glory days were in the early twentieth century when it was one of the busiest intersections in the city. Completely destroyed during the war, Alexanderplatz was rebuilt as a Socialist model square. Today, and quite synonymous with Berlin as a whole, there’s a lot of confusion over the future direction of urban planning.
Alexa shopping centre
We hit the road yesterday and visited a few places in the vicinity of my parents’ house in the countryside. The trip took us to Doemitz, birthplace of my mother, Ludwigslust, where my parents went to school and my sister was born, and a whole lot of villages in between. Herewith a few impressions.
I got married in Lenzen, a small town in the northwest of Brandenburg. My grandparents lived here, and my parents have now settled permanently nearby. Lenzen is situated near the river Elbe with its stunning national park. The town itself has a medieval centre that is slowly left to decay, a fate shared with many towns in this rather poor and depopulating part of Germany.
The Hague used to be my home for two and a half years. Altogether I lived in the Netherlands for almost four. I took a trip down Memory Lane last week and visited my former colleagues and some friends here.
We spent an afternoon with friends two weekends ago, first to see an exhibition in the Wellcome Collection near Euston Station followed by a stroll around Hyde Park. Here we walked past London’s possibly most exclusive real estate address (1 Hyde Park) on our way to this year’s Serpentine Gallery Pavillon, designed by Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto.
Serpentine Gallery Pavillon by Sou Fujimoto
This Art Deco building on Commercial Road near Shadwell DLR caught my eye when walking the area recently. Cheviot House was built in 1937 for textile merchants called Kornberg & Segal. The local Tower Hamlets borough apparently has plans to demolish the building and earmark the plot for new residential development.
Back from Burma and en route to Germany and the US, we’ve stopped by London again. I am staying with my in-laws in Woolwich Arsenal and they have splendid views across the Thames. Come to think of it, a chunk of my recent London exploration has had a connection to this river in one way or another.
Margate, where the Thames has long completed its journey to join the ocean. May 2012
The old colonial architecture (I wrote about it here) is one of Yangon’s greatest assets. Everywhere in the downtown area you are surrounded by the crumbling jewels from the old days, setting you off on a trip back in time. Alas, there does not seem to be a decent effort out there at making an appealing visual document of this amazing heritage.
One of our trips inside Burma took us to Shan State in the country’s north. Starting off in Pyin Oo Lwin – or Maymyo as the British called the city – we made our way towards the princely town of Hsipaw. We took the train to get a change of scenery.
I briefly passed by Seven Sisters this weekend to catch the Victoria Line. The Wards Corner Building below is a former department store that has been slated for demolition for some while. A regeneration project is bound to transform the whole area.
