Nov 8, 2007

Germany again - Berlin this time. I only gave myself one day here before I head to Zum Trebelgrund, farm number three. On the night train here I again had many seats to stretch out on, which was nice. Alongside the tracks as I arrived in Berlin, I noticed many tiny houses the size of camping trailers. Many of them were quite beautiful, and they all had well tended gardens. I initially thought that they were houses built by poor immigrants or something, but it turns out that they are garden houses - part of a tradition that started during the soviet years.

After the second world war, there was a great housing shortage. The soviet government solved this problem by very quickly putting up large numbers of efficient, blocky, prefab concrete apartment blocks. The prefabricated nature of the housing, and the lack of decorating material made many of these spaces feel anonymous and uninviting. People began to look elsewhere to create places that felt like home. At the same time as people were moving to apartment living en masse, many food items became difficult to obtain.

Thus many people set up gardens on unused land. Friends would help each other build and furnish sheds that became weekend getaways from crowded apartments and the drudgery of work. Not that different from here, eh?

The GDR museum explained that these gardens were looked on with suspicion by the government. They represented individual property and expression perhaps a bit too much. However, the gardeners were mostly left alone. The government decided that this outlet was far better than having their citizens escape to the west.

Posted in Uncategorized, just one more eurotrip blog |

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