A walk through east berlin

After enjoying our unintended east german architecture tour in Postdam, I decided to actively seek out some of east berlin's architectural horrors (to quote our guide book, loosely).

The area we went though was heavily damaged in WW2, and almost all the building were constructed by the DDR, most of which were huge housing complexes. It was described in the tour book as not worth the long and boring walk; they advised us to hop on the subway to skip to a more interesting part of town further along the street.Some of it was actually quite nice, such as the tree lined sidewalk show here.

 There were also a lot of fountains, some more aesthetically pleasing than others. We also saw lots and lots of DDR housing. Huge, almost identical buildings lined the road. Apparently they manufactured them in factories and then assembled them one after another, on site. I think we must have walked 10 minutes without seeing more than one style of building. For once, my camera got a break: one picture was enough! Eventually we got to the subway stop where our guidebook said the architecture got more interesting. Guess what: modern with a light neoclassical facade. Bleh. The part we were advised to skip was much more interesting, if you ask me. Architecture is all about fads, I suspect.  All in all a very interesting morning walk. Here are a few choice photos.

We saw this building 10 or so times on our walk. 

We saw a photo of 'this' building in a museum later, though now I suspect that there were multiple instances of it spread across Berlin. I find this one quite pleasing to look at, in truth. The background is another one of the tile mosaics.

An example of the more 'worthwhile' buildings our guidebook advised us to skip directly to by taking the subway. I find the fake and pointless detailing much more ugly than the (admittedly monotonousness) housing developments that preceded it.

My biggest complaint with the architecture after our morning tour was that each building was repeated over and over again. I think we saw about 4 different types of DDR housing buildings on the whole, in a couple hours of walking. I still come away appreciating the overall style, but I too would grow tired of living in the same  building style as every single one of my friends and relatives, and seeing that same building street after street. I think even the floor-plans were all the same. Can you imagine?

At the same time, it seems silly to direct the tourists away from such sites: it's a much more interesting side of Berlin than the fancy buildings with their silly detailing that has zero significance.