Teufelsberg and more autumn guests

Vika and Tim are visiting us from (well - many places actually)... here are some snaps from dinner and ... well ... trolley.

Last Sat we all ventured out to Teufelsberg (Devil's Mountain). Something that Jack and I were meaning to do all summer. It is a man-made hill in the former west, where all sorts of rubble from WWII has been collected and piled up. Ironically since Berlin is naturally very flat, this hill is the tallest in the city.

Walking there along the Gruenewald forrest was very nice, as the path was covered in golden oak leaves. On top of Teufelsberg there were lots of people with kites, small model planes and gliders. And even a couple of people with paraliders. Those were not terribly successful and didn't really make it further than the bottom of the hill - a bit disappointing, considering that after a short flight like that they have to take all their equipment back up the hill again. It was fun to watch though.

Following Teufelsberg itself we made our way to the adjacent hill with the former US listening installation on top. On our way there we stopped and looked at a bunch of guys doing some downhill mountain biking - some of it looked a little extreme, but they were all wearing very big helmets and looked like they knew what they were doing.

The station has been abandoned after the fall of the wall, but I heard from a friend that you can still get into it, even though it's behind three (in some places) sets of fences/enclosures. The outside fence has been patched up in a lot of places, but without much effort we found a hole to get through it. The material left over covering the buildings is ripped and made very strange sounds in the wind - almost sounding like fireworks. There were quite a few other people there, too... the place is pretty unique... very surreal... lots of grafitti... lots of broken glass around (I think people who get up there throw down bottles from the top). We only went inside at the ground floor - briefly, as it was already getting dark, and you couldn't really see much of what was on the floor. So even though we didn't climb all the way to the top, it still made a very strange impression.

All in all - a very interesting day!