If you haven’t been looking for a while into the christmas-photo section of my photo album it might we worth going there again. In recent times I have been discovering some new festive illuminations in downtown Berlin. So in addition to the old material there are some new photos to look at.
To get some good insight on how Germany looked centuries ago you do not need to drive far when you are in Berlin. About 2 hours away the town of Quedlinburg surprised me with it’s perfectly preserved medieval look. I heard a lot about this town before, like that the downtown part was declared UNESCO world heritage but I did not expect that so many streets and buildings looked like no time has past since medieval times. When I walked through the narrow streets of Quedlinburg, I wondered how it is to live in this big “museum”. What are you allowed to change at your house if you buy one of those old houses in the downtown part? Since I can imagine, that almost everything there is under monument conservation. So the options to change anything are probably strictly limited. Nevertheless, this town looked marvellous and very romantic. Additionally I had a nice view of the Harz mountain range too.
Closing my trip was a short visit to the city of Magdeburg. It reminded me of my former hometown of Muenster. Not only because of its size. It certainly – like Muenster – had some very nice historical (rebuilt?) sites to offer too. So all in all it was worth visiting.
More photos of Quedlinburg and Magdeburg can be found here.
It is somewhat amazing to see how many Berliners own a tripod. Now that the festival of lights is happening (see one of the last posts) it seems that everybody who owns one got out and is walking around downtown to make some photos of the illuminated buildings. There was such an enormous traffic for instance on Unter den Linden, it seemed like during rush hour. On the one side this is understandable since this is the only weekend during the festival where people have a chance to make photos, on the other side I wonder if this is the only time these people go downtown to look at interesting sights there. Because there are many other interesting things to see too and there is always something new there.
I am not quite sure but I guess this lightcube here near the Dom Aquaree is not a part of the festival, it is new and hopefully it will be permanently there. I like it a lot especially since it changes its colors all the time. So, come on guys, visit downtown from time to time and just look around and you will find something else interesting.
Here are more photos .
Addition, 28th of October 05: Yesterday I saw that sadly the lightcube is gone. If it was a part of the festival of lights and why it couldn’t stay – I understand that the different lighting of the buildings had to go away – and who designed it I don’t know. So I asked the people who organised the festival in an email. When I have answers I will add that to this post.