Where does Saturday morning quality-time with your kids ever mean spraypainting walls in all legal splendour? Mauerpark of course!! This morning I just had to stop for a chat upon seeing this sight. “They are like Jedi knights with spraycans for lightsabers. When they are done, and tomorrow, when they’ll wake up, it will be another world” He tells me. It looks so liberating, I want to saber the wall too now…
I misanthropically shunned Mauerpark after my first visit there about a year and a half ago, as it is the Sunday rendez-vous par excellence in Berlin, and on a sunny October Sunday it choked and disappointed my desire for green space as every inch of grass was occupied by hoards of beached berliners, the excentric, vintage-wearing types that I usually love. In small doses. I vowed only to return for the flea market. Someone once told me the strongest realtionships are those that start as dislike and migrate to like, and in that respect I am now lovingly over-protective of Mauerpark. All week long it has its moments, and moods and changing demographics. It is the theatre for so many of the city’s outdoor activities and I have so much I want to say about it that I have decided to do a focus on the park in future posts, especially in light of the changes it faces in the coming months.
As I write, Mauerpark is at the centre of a battle that represents the changing Berlin: gentrification. This is a huge topic that fascinates me, and one rock I definitely stand on is the crucial role of green spaces in any capital. In the top 5 reasons for my love of Berlin, one is without a doubt the abundance of green. The Tagesspiegel today features an article about the compromise that is being reached over planning permissions around Mauerpark, and as I understand the park is to become… bigger!!! I’m keeping an eye on this, I hope Berlin will confirm its place in my mind as the capital city that thinks. That is, if it is ready to make decisions that are not solely led by real-estate developpers.
You can befriend Mauerpark on Facebook and checkout what’s going on online here.
Filed under: architecture, outdoors
