Last week the weather was finally sunny so I decided to take a walk in my neighborhood. Due to the fact that I live next to the old city border (from 1860 to 1920), my neighborhood includes a lot of cemeteries. And as I am my father's daughter, my walk through the neighborhood turned into my walk through this cemetery:
I found it interesting to see the differences between this cemetery (and maybe European cemeteries generally-I haven't been to enough to know) and American cemeteries. Namely, most of the cemetery consisted of fairly high walls with gated family plots in front of them as opposed to the typical American single stones for couples (although there were also newer sections laid out this way). The family name and information was placed on the wall while the plot was usually planted with flowers. Mostly, I just found the cemetery really beautiful-albeit in a slightly melancholy way. And thus comes the title of this blog post, as I'm fairly certain most people wouldn't use the word beautiful to describe a cemetery. Anyway, I wound up taking a bunch of artsy cemetery photos. Here's a sampling:
In particular, I love this one-especially with the sepia tone.
In more traditional touristy fashion, I also visited the East Side Gallery last week.
The East Side Gallery is a 1.3 kilometer long portion of the Berlin Wall that was painted on the east side in 1990 by artists from all over the world. Unfortunately, many of the paintings have been destroyed by graffiti or wear during the past 20 years. However, some of the pieces were restored or repainted (although controversially) in 2009. To fit with the theme of the blog post, I think the East Side Gallery was a great way to make the wall, a symbol of division and the fear of the Cold War, a place of artistic beauty. Not unsurprisingly, many of the pieces deal with the fall of the wall, division of Germany, Germany's historical past, the Cold War, etc. Here are some of the pieces in the gallery:
The most famous works in the gallery include this series of faces by Thierry Noir:
and "My God, help me to survive this deadly love" by Dimitri Vrubel, which depicts the kiss between Communist leaders Leonid Brezhnev (head of the USSR) and Erich Honecker (head of the DDR):
This piece, commemorating those individuals who died attempting to cross the Berlin Wall, was also particularly moving:
It was also the largest part of the wall remaining I had seen thus far (it might be the largest intact section overall) and I found myself trying (and failing) to imagine what it must have been like to live with this barrier running through the city. Here's a photo of a larger section (from the western side):
We're enjoying your blog. Kevin and I had similar observations of the cemetery that we visited in Reykjavik last Spring. It was very different from what we see here and much like the one you showed. The photos are terrific! -Liz
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