I had so much planned this weekend, but we were grounded in our flat as the first typhoon of the season skirted Hong Kong, and brought lots of rain. Luckily, winds weren’t that strong, and no one got seriously hurt.
We had two inches of standing water on our kitchen balcony though. The rain came in almost horizontally and the drain was blocked. To prevent damage to the Korean wonder machine, I mopped up three buckets of water. So, despite of being indoors all day, I had plenty of exercise.
I also sorted through and uploaded pictures from a stroll through Mong Kok last week. Mong Kok is said to be the most densely populated area on earth. It’s a wonderful mixture of old and new, touristy and original, and - yes - it is very busy, even on a weekday afternoon. There are lots of shoppers, tourists, and people living and working in the area squeezing by along sidewalks, markets, and outdoor restaurants. I hope it will always stay as lively as it is today. I think it would be a real shame if street life gets sanitized and moved into shopping malls.
I started in Sai Yeung Choi Street South, which is a shopping street closed to traffic that runs parallel to the more famous Nathan Road.
School had just finished.
Looking for takers.
Hungry shoppers.
Entrance to Ladies’ Market, which is a bit of a misnomer. Tourist Market would be more appropriate.
Recently built apartment high-rise. One is fine, but my fear is that the whole area will look like this in a few years.
This shop is helping to fuel one of Hongkongers’ greatest passions. It’s wonderful to walk through streets and back alleys, and suddenly hear the clicky-dee-clack of Majong tiles and people chatting.
The Ladies’ Market in Tung Choi Street.
Chongsams in all sizes.
If you want to get lots of offers for “Tailored suits” and “Rolex”, wear a Stars and Stripes visor like this lady did. My strategy was to hide behind her.
They are probably not the safest buildings around, but I love how Hongkongers extend their living space by encasing roof terraces and balconies. And then, when the roof terrace looks like a proper building floor, why not build another roof terrace on top of it, and then encase it, and then build another, and another… ? Looking at this building it’s hard to see were the original building stops, and the upward extensions begin.
Bamboo scaffolding being set up. I got vertigo from just watching.
You’ve got mail!
“Toothpick” buildings are another Hong Kong way to deal with lack of space. My guess is that the building in the middle has a footprint of under 400 square feet.
I felt so lucky to have found these old market buildings on Reclamation Street. I had never been to the area before. As I rounded the corner, on the opposite side of a very busy road, there they were, row upon row of wonderful market buildings, run-down but full of charm. I did a bit of research on the internet afterwards, and learned that the buildings predate the second world war, and are still used for a wholesale fruit market.
When I was there, I assumed that the old white building was a market building as well, although I asked myself why it had received special treatment. It’s shiny white walls gleamed in the dark. It’s in fact the oldest surviving cinema building in Hong Kong. The “Yaumati Theatre” was built in 1925, but sadly had to close its doors in 1998. According to Wikipedia, there are plans to reopen it has a theater for Cantonese opera.
The wholesale fruit market.
Afternoon faded into evening, and suddenly there was a corner of golden light in front of me.
It was a store for altars and religious figurines, all carefully wrapped in plastic, which made them look like apparitions.
Once in a while, I like to get lost, stroll around and discover new things. Well ok, you have to make a real effort to get lost in Hong Kong, because there are street signs everywhere, and signposts pointing to the next subway station, but I didn’t look at them, and just walked. And then I rounded a corner and saw the stall selling vibrators, and I knew I was in tourist territory again. Then another stall followed, selling Nepalese bags and jewelry, then another, selling stickers (five sheets for HK$10 with Spiderman, Transformers, and other superheros little man loves), and so it became impossible to continue to pretend to be lost, because this was clearly Temple Street, Hong Kong’s famous night market.
I ate a big plate full of greasy noodles to celebrate the end of my adventure. Yes, that really is a roll of toilet paper on the table. I suppose it does the job of wiping people’s mouths just as well.
We should be inside a plane heading for Hong Kong at the moment, but little man has fever and I have a cold, so we decided to stay in Berlin for a few more days.
Which gave me time to sort through pictures I took at our previous travel stop, located at the beautiful Adriatic coast in the south east of Europe.
Little man has school holidays at the moment, and we have been exploring the city during the last few days. He likes to shop, so I thought we go to Wanchai market, before the place meets the fate of Paper Lane…
…which is was located right next to it. Paper Lane, from beginning to end, had printers for personalized greeting cards, table decoration, business cards, calendars, and lai see packages. If you had anything to print, you knew were to go.
My guess is that the whole area will look like this in a few years…
… the old renovated building looks nice (the only one in the area), but the real “urban renewal” reason is the high-rise apartment block next to it… money, money, money.
First we went to pay hommage to the God of plates, bowls and cutlery in Queen’s Road East. He was watching over a dizzying array of household items on two levels, and I finally found what I was always looking for.
In Wanchai market proper you can get anything. There are hundred of stalls and little shops, and, yes, you can stock up on undies as well. Just duck behind a stall when trying a bra ;).
Tiffany has a stall as well…
We, however, continued the household theme…
But you can only buy so many household items with a five year old in tow. “Mama, where are the toy shops?”
Here…
…there are half a dozen toy shops next to each other. Above is the entrance to one. There are like toy caverns. Relatively small, but shock a block full of toys, on walls, on tables, in boxes, and even hanging from the ceiling. One of them has a very special treasure chest, a glass vitrine packed with old-style metal toys that move when you wind them. Little man became the proud owner of a walking robot and a chain of UFOs… mommy UFO with three little children UFOs in tow. We also bought a doctor’s suitcase. I have been getting immunization shots ever since.
On the way home, we watched a bit of football…
… and were mighty glad that we didn’t have to take the same bus as the people lining up in front of our restaurant window…
Hong Kong’s remaining street markets are under constant threat to become the next victims of “urban renewal”. Yesterday, I had some errands to run in Central, Hong Kong’s business district, and afterwards did my bit to save one of them.
The Central Street Market is located on Graham Street, which runs between Queen’s Road, one of the city’s busiest shopping streets, and Hollywood Road, which hosts a lot of art galleries and antique shops.
I bought cucumber and tomatoes…
… delicious pomegranates…
and very fresh shrimps…
Even drive-by shopping is possible ;)…
If you live in Hong Kong, or even if you are just a potential tourist, who thinks that street markets are an essential part of local flair, go here and sign the petition… please :).
When I was a little girl, my parents used to take me to East Berlin on day trips, to see the other half of the city. We also visited friends and family in East Germany, but most of them lived in little towns some distance away from Berlin. Sightseeing visits to East Berlin were rarer, but they remain very vivid in my memory.
East Berlin was so different from the western part of the city, where we lived. It was gray, run down, and quiet, but it also had Berlin’s historic city center, and because very little had been done on the old buildings it always seemed like a journey back in time.
Yesterday, we went to Prenzlauer Berg, which I had seen for the first time during one of these visits. Then, getting to the Eastern part of the city took lengthy preparation and a long wait at the border, yesterday it was a simple subway ride.
Prenzlauer Berg is a beautiful inner city neighborhood, north east of the Brandenburg Gate. Like the name “Berg” (mountain) suggests it lies on a hill, and most of the buildings from the late 19th and early 20th century still exist. The neighborhood is one of the few inner city boroughs that was not heavily bombarded during World War II. When I saw Prenzlauer Berg for the first time during GDR times, most of the buildings were in terrible disrepair, now they have been renovated.
Prenzlauer Berg was a popular neighborhood for artists, students, and intellectuals during GDR times, and some of them began to organize opposition against the socialist regime in the 1980s. Zionskirche, pictured below, served as a meeting place for them, and was later closed by the Stasi in an effort to stop the movement.
After the fall of the wall, a lot of young people from the west moved into the derelict buildings in the neighborhood, and it was quickly established as the place to live and play in Berlin. That’s still the case, but the whole neighborhood, now restored and very pretty, has gone up-market and many of the original residents can’t afford the rising rents. It’s still a young neighborhood and very popular with young families, but you need to have a well-paying job to be able to live there.
If you would like to see the pictures larger and with captions click here.
Yesterday evening, I began scanning family photos, which my parents keep in various albums and boxes. There are hundreds of images, and I won’t have the time to scan all of them while here, but I would like to save at least some, especially those with fading colors. While most of the black and white pictures are in very good condition, a lot of the color photographs have developed a red tinge over the years.
The oldest photograph I found is this christening picture of my grandpa. There is no date on the picture, but he was born in 1896, and I am guessing that the photo was taken not much later.
My great-grandparents had an agricultural machinery business, and could afford to bring their kids to the local photographer once in a while. On the other hand, we have not a single turn-of-the century photo from my father’s side of the family, which was working class, i.e. poor as church mice, and could barely feed and cloth their off-spring.
My grandpa a few years later, posing in his sailor suit.
In 1914 World War I started, and the picture below was taken shortly before my grandfather had to leave for France. The story could have ended right there, but instead of dying in Verdun for the follies of the Kaiser, he was captured by the French and brought to a POW camp in Calais, where he spent the rest of the war.
My grandma’s brother, fifth from right below, was not so lucky. He had just gotten a coveted position as a violinist in a spa orchestra, when World War I started. He boarded the train to France, and must have been killed shortly after his arrival. My grandma’s family never heard from him, nor did they get any information on what happened.
But my grandpa did survive World War I, and eventually met the young Fräulein sitting on the left, my grandma. The young woman standing next to her was her best friend. The friendship lasted until my grandma died in 1986.
My grandparents married relatively late, and my grandma was already thirty-five when my mom was born. These days thirty-five is normal child bearing age, but then it was considered very late. And guess why it happened so late… yes, my grandma thought of her career first ;). She was a tailor and went to “Meister”-school to be able to open her own business. Until the nineteen-sixties she owned a tailoring business with half a dozen employees.
Red riding hood on the very left is my mom. There are very few pictures from the years afterwards, when World War II even came to the small town my mom and grandparents lived in. Fortunately, my grandfather was too old to be drafted, and my mother too young to serve in any of Hitler’s ridiculous youth organizations. So they just had to get through the hunger and the bombings, which where not as bad as in big cities. My dad, on the other hand, grew up in Berlin, where the going was much tougher. Still no pictures from his side of the family.
That’s my mom in the mid-fifties, shortly before she left her hometown in East Germany for richer pickings in West Berlin. At that time the border was still open, and East Germans were leaving by the hundred thousands for the West.
In Berlin, she met my dad. My mom was standing in front of a newsstand, studying the lottery numbers, when my father asked her if she had won… not a bad pick-up line, if you ask me.
My parents tried and tried and tried to have children, and eventually after much trying and waiting little Cosima was born. Notice the smile on my grandma’s face? It’s the same as in the picture above, that shows her as a young woman. (Btw, the spots are on the photograph not on my grandma’s sweater.)
That’s me with my best kindergarten buddy. I am the one holding the pen in the left hand, something I inherited from my grandma.
Oh… since it’s half-nekkid Thursday, here is a topless bonus pic. I am the half-naked … on the very left. Obviously, male …, right before my eyes, hasn’t shocked me from an early age.
[I decided to take this pictures of my blog and photo site, as my statcounter showed that people who searched for pics with very troubling search terms were directed to it. It was a pic of me, five years old, and friends at the pool. I also deleted words that were part of the search term.]
Mannekin Pis at the BerlinZoo …gives me a chuckle whenever I see him… aah… the small joys in life. He is peeing on a big toad, which is just mean, because the toad says “kiss me, kiss me!”
Feeding the lion with fresh meat
This one is for CeeCi’sbear collection. There are bears like this all over the city in different sizes, and they are painted on by different artists. This one was created by an American painter. The bear is the heraldic animal of Berlin, and is a symbol for the people. A bear holding the flame of liberty makes for some nice symbolism.
I am slowly learning how to shoot pictures with a macro lens, I bought recently for Cosima Inc. The lens is for a Nikon D100 camera, that we had for a long time, but which I have not used much. It takes much better pictures than my small point-and-shoot camera, but is so heavy, that I seldom take it with me.
The goal is to become proficient enough to shoot product pictures for Cosima Inc that look professional, but I am discovering that it’s also a lot of fun to just take the camera outside and capture the little things that often go unnoticed. Like snails and daisies in little boys’ fingers, and beautiful feathers, barely an inch long. Also, tiny ants and petals, all found in my parents’ wonderful garden.
