Ribblesdale

Stokesley Photographic Society recently held a workshop in the Yorkshire Dales led by Leigh Preston.  We all had a great time and managed to fit a lot into the weekend.  Weather was mixed but we were only caught out in one sharp shower, with hailstones, when we were on the limestone pavement above the Ribblehead viaduct.

Berlin Buildings

Berlin must have been a beautiful city before World War 2 when it was almost completely flattened.  Some of the present buildings were only built at the end of the 20th Century but they are copies of the originals.  Both the French, Huguenot, Cathedral and the German Cathedral in the Gendarmenmarkt were originally built in the early 1700s.

The French Cathedral which was built for the Huguenots in the
early 1700s was rebuilt from 1977 to 1981

The German Cathedral also built in the early 1700s was rebuilt
in 1996

What remains today of the Anhalter Bahnhof

The Brandenburg Gate which did survive

The famous Quadriga, a chariot drawn by four horses driven by Victoria the Roman goddess of victory, which Napolean famously took to Paris.

The Reichstag.  You can just see the famous Norman Foster dome, which we
had hoped to visit.  Be warned, if you want to go inside, you need to apply
beforehand and it takes 3 days to process after which you are sent dates and times to choose.  This can only be done on the internet - no other way!

Schloss Charlottenburg, one of the lovely buildings which did
survive the bombings

The Soviet War Memorial in the Tiergarten.  Built to commemorate
its war dead, particularly the 80,000 soldiers of the Soviet Armed Forces
who died during the Battle of Berlin in April and May 1945.

Checkpoint Charlie is still in place but the soldiers don't look very authentic!

There is no danger of going hungry when visiting Berlin with plenty of restaurants and cafes of every international cuisine. Currywurst is a Berlin speciality fast food snack.  This delicious one was found in the Gendarmenmarkt.

4 Days in Berlin

We had a short city break in Berlin last month.  Not a lot of photography but plenty of history.  The Berlin Wall is the biggest tourist attraction but there is not a lot of it left.


The East Side Gallery at 1.3 km is the longest stretch of preserved wall with large paintings which were original done around 1990.  A lot of these were re-painted in 2009, either by the original artist or as a copy by another artist.

I liked this one which clearly depicts Japan

A lot of the paintings appear to be either surreal or political

The 'coach party' tourists love to have their pictures taken by the wall

I was surprised to find that the wall wasn't particularly thick
and that it was a lot shorter in height than the wall in Israel/Palestine

More remains of the wall at the Topography of Terrors

This part of the wall shows how it looked when it started to come down.

Where the wall has completely gone a double row of
slabs marks the route it took

It's not only the 'Berlin Wall' that gets painted.  This is
on a block of flats

Another memorial.  This time on Platform 17 at
Grunwald station, notorious as being the place from
where the Jews were sent to the concentration camps

The very difficult to photograph Holocaust Memorial

A few more to follow soon I hope.