wo ist die mitte der republik?
i’ve just been at saturn electronics store on alexanderplatz, a place i like for many reasons. first there is the building itself that completely ruined the urban set up that was original planed. if you’re sensible enough, it gives you an idea of what would happen if the latest, newerst plannings would have been implemented and to push that sensibility, trying to make a neo-prussian-high-rise-blockrand imaginable, i tell everybody who agrees to listen, that saturn as first building block was built with pillars big enough to carry a sky-scraper later to be added. honestly i never investigated if this myth is true and i don’t remember who told me, so i cannot even say if it was a reliable person…
else i have, as on hardware stores, a crush on electronic stores. today, except of some freezing tourists warming up, there was barely no one than kids who wag school and men between 30 and 55, slightly overweight, wearing track suits and long coats, out for this little plastic boxes with the credit-cards for games that i don’t know but imagine all to be like what i think world of warcraft must be like. barely no one? – there’s quite a lot of them…
typical forenoon business, most of the salespersons haven’t had much to do. a saleswoman trying to look like a salesgirl was strolling around in the hifi department, carrying a tablet as remote control to test the sound of each and every system by playing queen’s “i want to break free”. wow, some very good systems in here but none of them made it possible to make that song sound like a rockband’s. saleswoman looking at systems, kids looking at phones, men between 30 and 55 looking at saleswomangirl…
another thing i quite like there is the amazingly overdesigned circulation allocator, maybe a hint that the myth is true. it’s located at the corner of the building, completely glazed and offers some of the best views onto alexanderplatz and it’s surroundings. i’m not one of the persons who photographs everything that comes my way, but everytime i pass that view i think, wow, i’ve never seen the alexanderplatz from that perspective. maybe due to the fact that everyone who would enjoy such photographies just like me, would refuse them in the same time because they were made out of building that ruins everything. a fact i’m getting more tolerant with each and everyday because i started somehow to accept it as part of the setting, maybe because it’s not trying to be architecture at all. but that’s another story.
the interesting thing today was, that just when i was thinking again of this wonderful photographies, there was someone photographing there. i observed he was putting himself into the picture and thought, aw common, as saturn ruins alexanderplatz, you ruin the picture. but than i noticed another detail. he was not only putting himself in the picture, he was also showing his passport, a german passport.
a person, self-portraiting himself with alexanderplatz as background with his new german passport? many thoughts crossed my mind concerning citizenship, naturalization, rubber boats or the riots in kreuzberg the last days…
last thought in mind, before the saleswoman put the system from zero to eleven again was, hopefully he doesn’t put the pictures on facebook. after passing that unbelievable naturalization test, that most of the germans wouldn’t be able to pass, it would be so sad, if the authorities check him on there, find the picture and take the passport back, because he obviously misses target when it comes to the question “where is the center of germany”?
may my cynicism be forgiven!
(pic comes via wiki commons, is free with a cc-by-3.0 license and was shoot by a user called “Dguendel”…)