Zehn Fotos, Juli
What is up, friends?
I can’t confirm this as I’ve only studied German inside of Germany, but I imagine that if you walked into a typical high school or college German class and said, “Wat los, Freunde?” you’d be quickly corrected. “Wat los” is a colloquial “was ist los?” that means, roughly, “what’s up?”
What’s up over here is that we’re in the dog days of summer. I’ve not been riding my bike since dropping out of Taunus Bikepacking last month but have been walking around the neighborhood a lot. Walking with a camera gives me a good opportunity to drop into an Art of Noticing style vibe and, hopefully, see something interesting.
I have a standard route, which is about 6km long around the Landwehrkanal. I get to see plenty of dogs, table tennis, bocce, skateboarding, and people enjoying being outside. It’s a great palette cleanse after a long day in the corner of my living room/office staring at two computer monitors and waving a stylus around. Having said that, only two of July’s photographs come from the standard route.
Three are from a photo walk/train trip my buddy and I took the other day. There’s a train line that encircles Berlin, the Ringbahn. It’s the S41 and S42, one running clockwise and the other counterclockwise. There was a time when one heard a lot about living “inside the ring”, with the implication being that inside the ring was better/cooler/more Berlin than outside the ring. I suppose it’s one of the many versions of “eastside vs westside”, “NYC vs LA", “hyperlocal region X vs hyperlocal region Y” that surely exists everywhere and serves as a way of defining oneself.
I hear about inside vs. outside the ring much less lately, which could be because I’ve no imminent plans to move, or because rents outside the ring are now just as high as they are inside.
And finally, Clyde.
He’s now been in two months in a row. Don’t tell the other two.