Popitzweg!

That’s where I’m living since almost 2 months now. Do you know who Mr. Popitz was? This guy was a Prussian finance minister before the nazi took the power and then he became a member of the German Resistance against the Nazi. This guy seems really interesting but as I don’t know much about him and I don’t want to copy paste Wikipedia, you can find his biography on the Net.

As in many countries, many streets have names of famous people from the country. And the district where I’m living loves this rule! Every streets around are dedicated to electrician, you can see “Siemensdamm”, “Wernerwerkdamm”, “Ohmstraße”, “Wattstraße”, “Voltastraße”, etc. If you don’t know them, you just have to know that without them, you will be reading this blog on a small sheet of papers under the light of a whale lamp! Popitzweg is in the North West part of Berlin, a few minutes in the south of Tegel airport. The location is very quiet, only residential building and … Siemens! Siemens, this great German conglomerate (I will publish another post about this company later)! It is impressive how many buildings from this company you see, everything is Siemens in here! Even in my flat, I’ve got a Siemens fridge, a Siemens coffee maker, a Siemens oven and even a Siemens vacuum cleaner. At least, if anything is wrong with this machine, I can walk 5 minutes directly to the factory to have a new one. They even have their own locality called Siemensstadt! If you want to do something and if you are not working for Siemens or the few others companies here, I think you should go to the subway station Siemensdamm U-Bahnof (Told you, everything is Siemens here in here) and move to one of the many centers of Berlin!

Hold on a minute! If it is sunny and you want a quiet place, there is something you can do near Siemensstadt. When you’re at Siemensdamm, find Jungfernheideweg and walk towards the north during 5 minutes and you will find a big public park “Volkspark Jungfernheide”. You will find beaches (one with deckchairs and a bar and another one all natural) and you can swim in the lake, read a book on the grasp, biking, jogging, feed the wild boar, etc. If you like acting Tarzan in this jungle, you will find a tree adventures course ;-) At first, I didn’t really like this place, when I entered in this park; I was really surprised; this is not these kinds of Anglo-Saxon Public Park such as Hyde Park or American Park. This park has weed, the sand of the beach is attacked by the grasp and some trees are growing on the way I’m biking! And the people, they are swimming or they are walking everywhere in this forest. But now, I like this place. For me, the week-end when many people are there, this park gives you a small first idea of what Berlin’s state of mind is. Everything seems to live its own life, even the nature, and everyone is free to do what he wants or be who he wants, that’s really what you feel when you’re in Berlin!

If you want to see some photos I have made of this location, just take a look at the album Popitzweg! ;-)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/65846682@N06/sets/72157627324036776/