Fotoeins Fotografie

location bifurcation, place vs. home

Posts tagged ‘Brandenburg Gate’

25T32 Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate: hello, my old friend

E31, B26.

My first visit to Berlin took place in 2002, when I lived and worked in Heidelberg. In many returns through the years since, I’ll usually pass by grand Brandenburger Tor, feeling like the first time. But in the last two visits in 2017 and 2021, I didn’t give the Gate or much thought. But this is 2025.

Afternoon light through variable cloud cover. Victoria and the Quadriga on top of the gate are facing away, to the east. The former East Berlin TV tower’s “disco ball” is visible at left. Behind me is…
…”The Crier” (or shouter) by German sculptor Gerhard Marcks, placed here in May 1989 in what was West Berlin. The shouts are directed towards former East Berlin.
Platz des 18. März (March 18th Plaza), facing east. Through the gate on the other side is…
…Pariser Platz, seen here facing west.
There’s Victoria and the Quadriga, which Napoleon took back with him to France, when the French had one-upped the Prussians. The French lost and eventually left, and the Quadriga returned to Berlin.
Late-spring can bring occasional (thunder-) showers, preceded typically by dark swaths of low menacing clouds. But I also wanted to use this to comment about the alarming rise of the far-right in regional and national politics.
Time to head underground for the trains there.
S-Bahn station Brandenburger Tor, for the north-south S-Bahn lines. The name of the station used to be Unter den Linden (in the Fraktur font) which has been reassigned further east to the recently opened U-Bahn station-exchange for lines U5 and U6. Below the “now and then” signage is an aerial nighttime shot of Brandenburg Gate.

I made all images above with an iPhone15 on 8 June 2025. This post composed within Jetpack for iOS appears on Fotoeins Fotografie at fotoeins DOT com.

My Berlin: Mitte on Christmas Eve

‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the Hauptstadt,
no residents were stirring, not even a tourist …

Well, except me, that is …

It’s little surprise many find themselves where they’re supposed to be on Christmas Eve.

Ever since visiting Berlin the first time in 2002, I’ve always entertained the idea of photographing the German capital city during winter holidays. The city slows down, becomes quiet, and sits back as if to take a deep long breath.

Crammed train stations seem cold, emptied of all who normally stream through the halls. The usual sounds of the city are muted by diminished traffic on the day before Christmas and by the sound-diffusing and -absorbing property of falling snow. City fixtures and Christmas decorations cast bright spotlights down on the ground layer of snow while diffuse glow of colour is scattered up to the cloud deck overhead.

Under blizzard-like conditions and little street traffic, I cannot deny myself this beautiful photographic opportunity.

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