Wow! We have just enjoyed a few fun-packed days in Berlin with friends. We walked miles, exploring the wonderful city and the surrounding forests, finding new sights, revisiting old favourites and marvelling at the changes in the city since our last visit eleven years ago. We found culture [more of this in a later post], multiple layers of history and good food and beer.
We had timed our visit to coincide with the Reunification Day celebrations and public holiday. We were also there during the Festival of Lights which is held over ten-days in October and uses some of Berlin’s spectacular landmarks and buildings as a canvas for light and video films. As well as the buildings, there are boats that are decked with lights making circuits around the river. The festival makes wandering the streets on a fine evening even more awesome; we stood in the Pariser Platz and watched the key events in Berlin’s history drawn across the magnificent facade of the Brandenburg Gate and joined the crowds to watch an amazing and ever-changing selection of colourful pictures projected on to the cathedral.
I hadn’t taken a tripod as we were travelling with hand luggage only and so my photographs of the light show are not perfect but give an impression of the vibrant and imaginative lighting that transforms a building into something quite distinct. The building is both a canvas for the light-art and enhances the images, while the light show alters the relationship between the people and the buildings, making people stop and look up, the bustle of the daytime stilled.
This link will take you to stunning photographs of previous years [the festival is in its eleventh year], as well as tips for taking great pics of the night-time scenes.
Back on the road again 