May 24: Berlin – Tiergarten

After Unter den Linden I just kept going west.

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I'm just a sucker for inlaid rotationally-symmetric masonry compositions.

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Back at the Brandenburger Tor! While I had found certain parts of Berlin-Mitte surprisingly wide-open and sparse, even desolate, I was surprised by how close other buildings press up against the Tor and the Pariser Platz in front of it (whence I snapped this shot).

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Warm sunlight/cool sky light.

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Some heavy column palimpsest.

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A glimpse past the Tor's palimpsestuous columns back north to the Reichstag. There was some kind of Event being set up for right there as well.

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Just south of the Pariser Platz is the expansive Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, with its undulating field of concrete stelae, designed by Peter Eisenman and Buro Happold. Side note: both the Platz and the Memorial are adjacent to the former course of the Berlin Wall.

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Sky stelae.

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A textural closeup.

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Tons more lindens!

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So many bracts.

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The lindens were along the eastern edge of the Tiergarten, which I subsequently ventured into (on the other side of the Wall's former path). Also near the edge was this mystery box that looked like one of the memorial's stelae turned occupiable. (I might have determined what it was at that point, but if so have long since forgotten, and have not been able to figure it out online.)

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Just by virtue of being tilted forward and to the left a bit, the block seems to be straining to move forward.

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"What? Where?" "Too late, you missed it."

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A lushly framed glimpse back to the memorial, durch die Linden.

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Sky stream.

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A tree with a shrubby yet magnificent habit.

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A perplexing arrangement of posts.

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Some prevalent tree species in the park, I think, was producing lots of whiskery seeds.

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Sometimes the seeds clumped together into pillowettes like this one.

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While in some places they just covered a long stretch of ground entirely.

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The sun shining through small gaps in the canopy produced some curious optical effects; the bright cluster here almost looks algal or something.

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I was walking west along the Bremer Weg, a main path paralleling the Straße des 17. Juni. Here it crossed the bucolic Bellevueallee, which recedes toward the southeast. I'm not sure I've seen such a long, narrow grassy stretch before or since; it's rather enchanting.

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A similar spotlight-sun effect to certain points at Nuuksio.

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Wood pidges!

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Mmmm, fresh.

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A dash of color in the midst of the otherwise near-universal green.