Out of lines in Berlin

I’ve been thinking about Berlin a lot lately. We just returned from the Urban Sketchers Symposium in Poznan, Poland (more about that in another post) but before that we spent 6 days in Berlin.

I had great plans to sketch all the famous monuments in the city: The Brandenburg Gate, the Berliner Dom, the Reichstag building and Norman Foster’s glass dome. But we were there during a heat wave and by the time I recovered from jet lag, it was way too hot to sit outside.

I suppose I could have pushed myself to go out very early in the morning to sketch, but I didn’t. I had very little motivation to sketch while I was there, and it was only days later, after we left the city, that I realized why. Besides the oppressive heat that made it impossible to breathe outdoors, I think I was rendered sketchless by the weight of history in that city. In the central section of Potsdamer Platz where we were staying, reminders are on every corner in the form of educational posters and plaques, in the remaining sections of the Berlin Wall, in museum panels, even in the cobblestones you are walking on. On one of our first days there we stopped to try the famous currywurst at an outdoor stall on a busy corner. I drew the most colourful thing I could find — the famous East German Trabant car at Trabiworld, and only later did I find out that from our outdoor seats, we had our backs to the former site of Gestapo and SS security headquarters.

As the days went on, I became more and more overwhelmed by the heat and the history. One day I sat at the edge of a park in Kreuzberg and barely managed to eke out a few monochrome sketches.

I think if I go back to Berlin, I will be more prepared next time. I will try to go when the weather is cooler, but I will also be more aware of how it’s not just what you are seeing that colours your view of a place. It’s also what you are feeling, and you have to pay attention to that too.