Berlin - Kreutzberg

On Saturday morning we took a 3 hour foot tour of Kreutzberg ("Kreu" rhymes with "boy"), one of Berlin's boroughs with an especially large immigrant/punk/artist population. As you can see from the pictures, it's a pretty interesting place, but not really the part of town you would want to hang out in at night. Despite the poor appearances, Kreutzberg is in former West Berlin.

The "We so cool like New York in the 80's" spray captures Kreutzberg's culture completely

This is part of one of Kreutzberg's many parks, which was built where a canal once stood. The big open space in the center is an iced over "pond".

ever-present graffiti

The only building I saw in Kreutzberg without some form of graffiti on it, St. Thomas Kirche

inside

the organ

inside an art school

the door to the school

A former train station which was decommissioned after the city expanded/the U-Bahn was built. There is now a park where the tracks used to be.

An abandoned playground - apparently they built it out of porous stone that couldn't handle the winter so the stones cracked and the place had to be closed.

A view of the streets. Because of it's large immigrant population, Kreutzberg has a lot of Turkish/Arabic/Indian restaurants. I had lunch at a falafel place that was delicious and incredibly cheap - a cup of coffee and a falafel for 4 Euro. I'm not sure why they have a Mexican restaurant.

Speaking of Turks and Arabs, here's a mosque.

a church

cool graffiti

more cool graffiti

and finally, some militant Ampelmänner