Over the hills, under the moon - and off the beaten path

Walking into the massive Boros bunker in Berlin’s Mitte is like walking into some ancient, alien tomb. This forbidding concrete monolith, built by the Nazis in 1942, is now the home of a rather eccentric private art collection Inside the building’s anthill-like network of corridors and small rooms, the art on display completely changes how you experience the space.  You encounter everything from strange kinetic sculptures to multimedia installations flickering in the dark. Each room opens like a window into a different creative mind, and to be honest, the story of the building itself is just as exciting as the art displayed inside it.   During the war, the bunker sheltered several thousand civilians from the nightly bombings that hit Berlin. In 1945, the Red Army used the building for prisoners of war, and it later became an East German warehouse for tropical fruit.  After the wall came down, the empty building was squatted by kids. During the nineties, it became simpl...

We started our travels in 2024 at our house in the Ardeche mountains of Southern France. And - we had four absolutely miserable weeks!!! While Northern Europe experienced a lovely spring, we stayed mostly indoors, covered in duvets, while persistent rain and even sludge beat against our windows. Well - this is now rainwater under the bridge. And plenty of it! We survived - and, eventually, we escaped - and yesterday we arrived in a sunny, warm Berlin, where our new neighbors were hangi ng out in some of Kreuzberg's many outdoor cafes. ----------------- o ----------------- Today we used a lovely Ascension day to make our own ascent onto what is probably one of the weirdest places you can visit in all of Berlin - the top of the Teufelberg mountain far out in the Grunewald forest. This rubble mountain turned Cold War listening post turned graffiti wonderland is a strange mix of the last 80 years of German turmoil and rebirth. The approach to Teufelberg is unassuming - a nondescr...