The Streets of Berlin

Today's theme is the sights on the streets of Berlin. Not the big famous ones, but more just a few of the small everyday things that stand out to me as slightly different and unexpected. Let's start out with my morning walk to work. Here's a picture of a street:


Note that it is paved with cobblestones! That seems to be really common - most non-major streets are cobblestone, and almost all sidewalks are paved with even smaller stones, with different tiles or colors separating the "bike lane" sidewalk from the "pedestrian" sidewalk. It took me a while to figure that out - bicyclists were always coming up behind me and angrily ringing their little bells (trust me, that cute little ring-ring-ring noise can sound angry) because I was walking on the wrong sidewalk. While I'm sure the cobbles are a pain for pushing strollers and rolling grocery carts, I really like them. They give the city a slightly older, more permanent feel.

At the corner of every street there is a street sign. They all look the same, like this:


They have little numbers hanging below (this one says 16-23) to tell you which number buildings are on the next block. This is needed, because the streets are numbered using two different methods - either all the odds are on one side and evens are on the other, or they go in order, starting from one end of the street, going up one side, then going back down the other. That makes it a little difficult to find an address - first you have to know how this particular street was numbered.

Street signs also have a funny letter in them: the ß in the word "Straße" or "street" - this actually a double s, as in "Strasse" - the normal German "s" sounds almost like an "sh" in English, while the "ß " sounds more like the English "ss" in "class." Using the Greek Beta symbol seems to be a compromise on the older form of the letter, which doesn't appear on the normal keyboard. If you've ever seen a copy of the US Declaration of Independence, you've seen a similar letter that has now disappeared from English:


See the "s" in "self-evident"? That's not a capital letter, or an "f", but a different letter. I don't understand the rules for when it is used versus the normal "s," but you can see the funny "s" in "necessary" as well as "secure" and "happiness". The German "ß" would be used in "necessary" and "happiness" - where the first "s" is written like an "f" and the second, like a normal "s". Cool, huh?

Another common sight on the streets of Berlin are the crosswalk lights. Here are the "walk" and "don't walk" lights:

Apparently when Germany was split in two and the Wall ran through Berlin, the East used these symbols for their crosswalks, while the West used something a little more boring and standard. When the Wall came down and Berlin was unified again, this was one of the cultural icons from the East that really survived and spread. I personally really like this cute little man in his cute little hat.