© 2012 Patrick Wilken
I have been trying to reconnect to Berlin since my return last summer. It’s strange. For many years, Berlin was the city I wanted most to live in. Now I am not so sure. I feel disconnected in some fashion. … Continue reading
© 2013 patrickwilken. All rights reserved.
For me the visits to this city over the past twenty years have been the only genuine experience of Germany. History is still physically and emotionally present here… —Wim Wenders, 1987 Last week, seemingly out of the blue, came the … Continue reading
© 2013 patrickwilken. All rights reserved.
Facade of an old veterinary school, near the Charité hospital, in Mitte.
© 2013 patrickwilken. All rights reserved.
I woke this morning to news that property developers are going to tear down part of the East Side Gallery to make way for a luxury high-rise apartment block. Not only will this destroy part of what little remains of … Continue reading
© 2013 patrickwilken. All rights reserved.
This is in response to a piece by Lauren Oyler, which appeared over the weekend in the Berlin English ex-pat blog Überlin, which was itself an earlier response to a piece by Julie Colthorpe, which appeared in the Ex-Berliner. Apparently, … Continue reading
© 2011 Patrick Wilken
Dreams of Summer.
© 2013 Patrick Wilken
We are subletting an apartment in Rixdorf, out near the edge of the Ring. It’s an old plattenbau. What someone in London would think of as a converted estate flat. Sound tends to leak from the neighbours. We hear their … Continue reading
© 2013 patrickwilken. All rights reserved.
Swan tracks left in snow and ice on the Landwehr canal, Alt-Trepow, Berlin.
© 2013 patrickwilken. All rights reserved.
Welcome to 2013! This is my first blog post in six months. In case you have been wondering I am still very much alive. Last time I blogged we had just arrived in Berlin for a Summer visit; as you … Continue reading
© 2012 patrickwilken. All rights reserved.
Back in Berlin! My blog writing has been a bit sporadic of late. About two months ago I started another (hopefully final?) push towards learning German (see previous post). It’s working well, but it’s taken up all the time I … Continue reading
© 2012 patrickwilken. All rights reserved.
I am married to a German, and have lived and worked on-and-off in Germany for several years. First in Magdeburg, and then later in Berlin. You would think given this that I would already be speaking beautiful Deutsch, but despite … Continue reading
© 2012 patrickwilken. All rights reserved.
We woke Sunday to the sound of rain. The morning was spent in bed reading the newspapers, drinking black coffee, and eating toast. Sometime after noon we decided we had to get up, but what to do? We were vaguely … Continue reading
© 2012 patrickwilken. All rights reserved.
I just watched a very interesting panel discussion around the term Photo 2.0, organized by Andy Adams who runs the website Flak Photo. The Internet has been hugely liberating in allowing people to bypass traditional publishing bottlenecks and transmit their … Continue reading