Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Teufelsberg - Listening station turned echo chamber

You are facing another massive photo-overdose. If you thought the ruins of Spreepark* were creepy, weird, derelicte, fascinating, fairy-tale like or out of this world, it gets better. Brace yourselves for a montain built of ruins of - according to an estimate in Wikipedia: - 400 000 buildings destroyed in the World War II, and an old falling-apart US listening station. Welcome to Teufelsberg.

*) For Spreepark scroll down below to the previous 2 posts.

This is the hill built of war waste from up above.
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And this is where I took the picture from: The US listening station from post-war times aswell.
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The walk was long, and in the end we found out no-one's allowed in. "Allowed". There were people inside the fences, and helpful Berliners showed us the best hole in the fence.
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Then we climbed into the buildings and towers. You go girl.
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The staircase wasn't that well lit.
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But it still beat taking the lift.
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See - it wasn't really "closed down" at all. They'd even built new walls for painters. But I guess they need to lock it down, cos the floors are full of holes, there are practically no proper walls, and otherwise someone'd have to take responsibility for all the junkies that trip and fall. Literally.
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On the edge.
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First landscapes.
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Then up even higher, darker, and louder. The wind was pretty intense up there. And the acoustics in the giant golf ball, man, you could hear your breath up there like it was Darth Vader!
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And from this clip you can hear what it sounds like in a giant golf ball. And what it looks like when you could just walk out of the door to a free fall of over 100 meters.
Turn up your speakers, guys.



Here's a Wikipedia fun-fact (especially 'fun' now that I read it afterwards)! "Wild Boar, which American soldiers nicknamed "grunie pigs," roam free on the hill. Visitors are advised to stay on the paths at all times." LOL. happy we didn't run into those.

Another fun-fact:
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These two pictures made my day:
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All sources and picture of Scooter from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teufelsberg
Other pictures by me.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi, long time stalker, first time poster. :)

This is so cool! Berlin is so full of history - old and new. I can't wait to get over there and explore these places.

Fi

Unknown said...

cool üics! awesome place, but i think we should go back in sommer

TiiaL said...

Someday, when we finally come to see you guys in Berlin, we must go there! And to some other, weird, historical places :) I demand it!

avara maiju said...

Filacupcakes: Well thank you! How great to hear from a mysterious reader... :) You've got it right, Berlin is the place to be. At the same time it's so cheap, humble and human, and there are crazy amounts of unique things to see and do.

Rene: Ja genau! <3

Tiia: I demand you come here immediately!

Unknown said...

Wow! Had no idea they still got those tubes up there on the hill. I thought they would have done the wrecking ball thing once the wall had gone down and the economy was banging again.

Anyway, I, too, would love to visit that place. It's magic.

Meri said...

let me know when you're going back there - I'll join you!