Kevin's Photoblog

This is one of numerous displays for the tourists near Checkpoint Charlie – Old uniform parts, helmets, gas masks of the period, you name it.

I meet Kate at the airport in Berlin for a ten day tour of capitals in Eastern Europe – Budapest, Brataslawa & Vienna (capitals of Hungary, Slovakia, Austria).  And we start in Berlin, capital of Germany of course., at least since The Wall came down.  We have a few hours before the plane to Budapest so we go to … Checkpoint Charlie, the old Cold War crossing between East and West Germany in the Bad Old Days.  This is now a tourist attraction, with people dressed in period American Uniforms (your picture with him for 3 Euro) and so forth.  Second picture is of me at a preserved section of The Wall.  I am facing the eastern side, and a MacDonald’s.

And another beautiful building, this one is between the other two, and is a very typical structure for the area.

Another pretty building.  In taking these pictures, one has to be sure to lean back to get the spire into the shot.

I (we, actually) have been to Warsaw and Poznań, which are big tourist hubs with old city centers, but I have long maintained – and made believers of some visitors to Szczecin – that Szczecin is prettier than either Warsaw or Poznań.  The old historic central area (Stare Miasto) was not rebuilt in Szczecin as elsewhere, but Szczecin has a lot of the old German architecture, which is beautiful and scattered throughout the city.  Here we will have three days of pictures of buildings that were all taken as I stood in one place.  These buildings look out onto a small park and tram stop.

Christmas markets are a big thing in Europe.  Here is one at the Szczecin Galaxie Mall.  The Mall has a planetary theme, you might notice the “Pluto,” “Uranus” and “Mars” in the second picture.  The Multikino is the major movie theater in town.  I will get a picture of that and say something about how that works at a later time.

News kiosk, also near the farmer’s market.  These are fairly common.  Small, packed with newspapers, magazines, some eats and tram tickets (bilety).

This is the pavement at the farmer’s market, market of cubed cobble-sized rocks.  Such pavements are all over Szczecin, and throughout much of Europe.  The time and expense to do and maintain this must be considerable, but it does add something to life that asphalt does not.  I do notice, however, that asphalt is becoming more common.

The Farmers market has Christmas-themed items for sale.  The fruit/veg displays are getting rather lean, mostly apples (Jabłka) and nuts (orzechy, the ‘ch’ is sort of an extended hhh).

Poland is a catholic country and patron saints is a big deal.  For older Poles, “Name Day” (the day of the patron saint for whom they were named) is a bigger event than their birthday.  The patron saint for miners and geologists is St. Barbara, whose day is December (Grudień) 4^th.  The University of Szczecin Geology Club has a meeting with various talks presented (on a visit to the Arctic, two mineral collecting trips to Southern Poland) and then beer (pivo) at the Cutty Sark.  Here I am with colleagues.