After taking my time getting up and breakfasting in my north-Berlin apartment – I am supposed to be on holiday, after all, and having my own front door here is a new experience – I walked out into the cold and the gently falling snow at 09:30. A four minute walk to Osloer Straße U-bahn, two stops to Gesundbrunnen, then a rather slow S1 down to Brandenburger Tor, as the old Unter den Linden station is now called.
There were no photos to be had of the Brandenburg Gate in the snow as there were some delivery vans parked in otherwise deserted Pariser Platz, so I walked straight through one of the arches, turned left into Ebertstraße, and trudged down past the US embassy to the Holocaust Memorial. The snow on the pavements was packed.
The Memorial was thought-provoking, as always. Last time I was here the sun was strong. Now, fresh snow lay on the tops of the stelae and in the walkways between them, with almost no footprints. The sky was dull and grey, and new snow was blowing in from the east. I approached a fellow photographer with my best German and found that he was American; I tried to keep the snow off my lens as we chatted.
With 45 or so images in the camera I realised that one hand was completely numb due to the cold, and I thought it would be sensible to move on. But it was tough to realise that the inmates of the camps had tried to survive in far lower temperatures than these, without the benefit of a down-filled coat or fleece gloves. I stuffed my gloved hands into my coat pockets and carried on down Ebertstraße to Potsdamer Platz to find a coffee.
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