the shady bear business © Lilly Schwartz 2011

From the window in the living room of my quiet apartment in Moabit I can see the sun disappearing behind the roofs and the leaves of the chestnut tree in the courtyard are blowing in the wind. The window is open, but one hardly hears cars go by, and the entire area makes me think of a quiet Sunday afternoon, especially on Monday mornings. My street is in a speed restricted area with cobbled streets and many trees, benches on the corners and old-fashioned water-pumps that still work. There is also an old market hall that has a nice flair about it and a rather useless supermarket inside. I like it a lot and sometimes go inside even though I don’t need anything from in there. There is also a catholic church which sometimes annoys me with too much bell ringing and two schools that have never bothered me in the 2 ½ months that I have been living here. Today’s picture is of the entrance of one of these two schools, namely the Carl-Bolle-Grundschule which was built 1903 by the architect Ludwig Hoffmann. The highlight of the building are for me the statues of two bears reading together with a boy and a girl. Why bears? Well, the bear is a symbol associated with the city of Berlin. What I find rather amusing is that for Ezequiel and me one of the bears looks a bit perverted, maybe because he can’t keep his paws to himself. Can you guess which one? Leave a comment if you know which one I mean!

It’s the fourth day since I have had the idea to publish one picture each day and I am beginning to wonder when the day will come on which I have nothing to show! These days it has been easy because I have been out and about in the city with Ezequiel. Well, Ezequiel sadly left for Spain today after 3 fantastic weeks together and the past few days it also hasn’t been raining so much. Well, I guess those rainy days in which I will focus on my MSc project will be the ones when I will actually need the extra motivation provided by my blog! Until one of those days comes along I will just enjoy taking pictures around town or in my neighbourhood whenever I go and explore a bit more of this big beautiful city.