A Look on the Inside

Living room

When we found out that we were to move to Berlin, a nice place to live was high on our list. We considered the options of Craigslist or an Airbnb-like service, but finally settled on a Makler, that is a realtor who finds apartments and takes a monthly cut of the rent. It seemed like a raw deal for the renter, but the safest option. And with James wanting to start work two days after arrival, we did not want any surprises.

Several websites of varying degrees of customizability offered their services - but how close would the photos on the website be to reality?

Living room - dining area

We had a fairly short list of things that were very important or important: Close to the TU, not too small, a desk and Internet, and a bed that was suitable for a 6 months stay (a surprising number of apartments had only one full-size bed, and we needed queen size or better).

Large bedroom

On the nice-to-have list was a second bedroom and a balcony or garden. We were also worried about a hot summer, so top floor or west-facing windows made a place less desirable.

Small bedroom

After looking at different place for literally hours - and after we had missed out on two places - we finally found a promising apartment. By then, time was running out, so I decided to call the owner, who was very nice. I told her our situation and she said she'd be interested in having us as her renter.s We worked with the Makler to get the contract in place, and moved money into the owner's account.

Office

The place looked good - larger than most places than we had looked at, with several desks and two full bedrooms. But what would it be like for real? In early April, I was relieved to hear from James that he was quite pleased with the place. The location was even better than expected, with two natural food stores and a yoga studio just down the street, minutes from public transportation, and a large pedestrian mall not far away. Restaurants, a movie theatre, and, of course, the Kudamm were all close by.

Eating area in kitchen

When I finally arrived last week I was happy to discover that, if anything, the place was even more attractive than the photos. Everything was attractive and uncluttered, with nice-looking furniture and lots of space. The wood floors (Dielen) were old and creaky but just living in a place that old is charming.

Wood floors - note the different patterns

The high ceiling will hopefully help on warmer days - regrettably, the place does have 2 west-facing rooms. Interesting old-fashioned decorations also show the age of the house.

Door and ceiling

The kitchen is small but functional - and besides, there are so many good restaurants, we're not sure yet how often we'll eat in for dinner.

Most charming is the fact that the owner is an artist who makes tiffany lamps and other art with glass, and here pieces are found throughout the apartment.

View toward apartment house across the street, and glass art

I am, quite frankly, amazed that someone would just rent out a beautiful place like this for a whole summer to total strangers. But James and are are thrilled to have the place, and will certainly take care of everything (we even promised to water the plants).

Glass art

Around Brandenburg Gate

Posted by James

Renate finally arrived on Fri. and today we did what we usually do when we take a vacation in a new city - a hop on/hop off city tour on a double deck bus (though of course we really aren't here on vacation). Despite their reputation for being touristy, these city tours are actually good value. You get a feel for the city's geography and learn something about the sights, so you can come back later and see them in detail. We hopped off the bus at Potsdamer Platz and the Brandenburg Gate.

Because Berlin was about 70% destroyed during WWII and for more than 45 years after that was divided between east and west, many parts of it are new construction. Around Potsdamer Platz, for example, almost everything is new and was built after the wall came down in the 1990's. Walking around, we found the original house where the Brothers Grimm, who collected folk tales in the 19th century and published them, lived from 1840 until their deaths while they taught at the University of Berlin. But it is surrounded on both sides by new glass and steel structures. The effect was somewhat jarring, stone house fronts with intricately sculpted Jungendstil statues tightly packed next to glass and steel storefronts.

In some parts of the city, the urban architecture of Berlin reminds me of a city in Asia, like Tokyo , and less of a European city, like Stockholm, Paris, or London. Large areas of the city around the train station are still undeveloped, and many buildings show the style of urban planning popular in the 60's and 70's especially in the socialist bloc, where buildings even in an urban setting are surrounded by large lawns (see previous post for another example of this style).  The effect is as if large parts of Berlin are still a work in progress. The urban architecture lacks the densely packed 5 and 6 story houses with retail establishments and restaurants on the first floor that most European cities have. Glass and steel skyscrapers with indoor malls hosting small shops seem to be the rule in many places. There are neighborhoods which have a more traditional European city feel to them, for example, the neighborhood where we live in Charlottenburg. A small square near the intersection of Wilmersdorferstrasse and Mommensenstrasse just steps away from our front door beckons for hot summer nights, and it feels a little like a square in Paris.

The other place were we hopped out was at the Brandenburg Gate, which you can see in the picture above. A bit of history. The Brandenburg Gate was commissioned by King Fredrick Willhelm II of Prussia in the late 17th century after his wars against Denmark and France as a sign of peace, but was not completed until after he died. It was build on the site of an old customs gate (Berlin prior to the 1700's charged duties on goods that entered the city) from 1788 to 1791. When Berlin was split between eastern and western halves during the Cold War, the Brandenburg Gate existed in a no-man's land between the two halves and was inaccessable from either side. The gate's design is based on the Polyphoraea, the gateway to the Acropolis in Athens, and reflects the style of neoclassical architecture popular in the 1700's. Many events important in German history took place around the Brandenburg Gate, from Napolean's triumphal march into the city after he defeated Prussia during the Napoleanic Wars to Nazi rallies during the National Socialist period.

Of particular interest is the Quadriga, the sculpture of on the top showing a Roman chariot drawn by four horses and guided by a woman, Victoria the goddess of victory. Here's a closeup:

Since the Quadriga faces east, the details in this picture, which was taken in the afternoon, are a bit difficult to see because it is lit from the back.

The street leading eastward from the Brandenburg Gate is Unter den Linden, "Under the Basswood Trees" in English, named after the trees that lined the street in the 19th century. This street was the most famous street in Berlin in the late 1800s. Now, with the Brandenburg Gate closed to traffic, the part between Friedrichstrasse and the Brandenburg Gate has little traffic and is mostly populated by tourists. The area around the Brandenburg Gate to the east is called Pariser Platz, "Paris Square", and in fact the French Embassy has been traditionally located there and is located there today. You can see it in the background behind the tulips (and my thumb):

On the other side of the street is the back side of the American Embassy:

It's the building in the middle of the photo behind the horse carriages waiting to carry tourists (and my thumb again). Further down the street on the same side as the American embassy is the Russian embassy, and on the other side is a museum about Willy Brandt's life, which we visited. Brandt was the mayor of West Berlin from 1957-1966, and from 1969 was the West German federal Chancellor until he resigned in 1974 due to a spy scandal. Brandt was responsible for introducing many social reforms into West Germany.

On the west side of the Brandenburg Gate (the part that was in West Berlin during the Cold War), the street changes its name to Strasse des 17 Juni ("Street of the 17th of June"), quite a mouthful to say even in German. Before WWII, the street also used to be Unter den Linden, but it was changed during the Cold War to commemorate the uprising against the DDR government on June 17, 1952. To the right looking out from the gate, you can get a glimpse of the Reichstag building with its transparent dome:

The Reichstag building is the seat of the German federal legislature, the Bundestag.

I'm not sure why they didn't change the name of the building when the Bundestag moved in in 1999. "Reichstag" sounds so pre-WWI. And the name certainly doesn't capture the spectacular effect of the transparent dome on the top, which you can see peeking out of the corner in the picture above. The picture below, taken from a street further away, shows the full dome:

The design for the remodeling of the Reichstag building was done by the famous British architect Norman Foster. The original building had a stone dome on the top, like the US Capitol Building in Washington, DC. But the dome was heavily damaged during WWII and removed during an abortive remodeling attempt in the 1960's. Foster's original design did not include the transparent dome, but I've heard that it was added as a symbol of the need for transparency in the operations of government.

I'm sure we'll get back to this area again during our time in Berlin, if only to climb up into the dome on the Reichstag building and have a look out over the city. But for now, the afternoon was well spent, and we have a better idea about the layout of Berlin beyond the confines of our immediate neighborhood.

Walking to Work and a Minor Mystery

Posted by James

One of the best things about living in the city is that I can walk to work. Our apartment is about a 30 minute walk from the TU. Today, I took some pictures of interesting sights on the way there, and a couple on the way home, so I thought I would do a short guided tour of my route. In California, I drive 10 minutes on Route 237, a freeway, and the experience of walking could not be more different.

Above you can see one of the lovely ladies that adorn the wall at the base of the staircase leading up to our apartment. She's clearly from the early part of the 20th century, or maybe even from the 19th. Our apartment is in a building that's protected under Berlin's historic preservation ordinance, which is why she's there, since they sure didn't put that kind of sculpture on the entryway of apartments built in the '60's and '70's.

Out the door and onto Mommsenstrasse, I turn left. On the corner of Mommsenstrasse and Wilmersdorferstrasse, we see this purple pipe crossing over the street:

What could it be? Probably a district heating line. Like power, water and gas, Berlin used to have heating lines that were run by a utility and delivered hot water to buildings for heating in winter. That was when a hot water boiler was the size of a room and powered by coal. This one has been painted purple, but it's now not functional, as you can see by walking further up Wilmersdorferstrasse:

It's been disconnected and now serves as a mount for the solar panel (behind the fitting on the end) powering the pay parking ticket dispenser below it (not shown). Perhaps a comment on the changing energy technology between the early part of the 20th century and the early part of the 21st.

Across the street is Bio Company a grocery store like Whole Foods in the US:

They have a great selection of fruits, veggies, cheeses and also various other food products, in addition to cleaning supplies, soap, and cosmetics. Not nearly as big as the Whole Foods selection, but all certified organic according to the EU regulation, and the prices are not much different than at the regular grocery store. I do most of my grocery shopping there.

Ahead of us on Wilmersdorferstrasse, just this side of the beginning of the pedestrian mall, is the S Bahn overpass leading into the Charlottenburg commuter rail station on the left:

The overpass is the night home of a couple homeless guys. Sometimes I pass them on my way to work if they happen to be sleeping on my side of the street, but I never see them when I come home at night.

Continuing on down Wilmersdorferstrasse, I come to the Wilmersdorferstrasse U Bahn (metro) station:

As with all European cities, Berlin has a well-integrated public transit system with metro and commuter rail having stations that are right next to each other.

This time of day (7:30-8:00 in the morning) the Wilmersdorferstrasse pedestrian mall is deserted:

Usually, I end up dodging street cleaning machines and trucks driving on the mall to make deliveries to the stores in preparation for the day. Most stores open at 8 or even later, including Starbucks unfortunately. In the US, they open at 6. So if I want to bag a venti coffee on the way to work, I need to start out my walk at 7:50 at the earliest.

At the corner of Schillerstrasse and Wilmersdorferstrasse, I turn right onto Schillerstrasse:

Many of the streets in this part of Berlin are named after famous German poets (Schiller for example) or philosophers (Kantstrasse) or mathematicians (Leibnizstrasse). Further down Schillerstrasse, you can see the crossing over Leibnizstrasse:

There are no cars here now, but in the afternoon, this intersection is packed with people driving home from work in both directions. It has no pedestrian crossing zebra stripes, so drivers are not obliged to stop for pedestrians or bicyclists, and they don't. If you are on a bicycle, you can zip across just slightly ahead of an oncoming car, but as a pedestrian, you are too slow. Fortunately, there are two lights a couple blocks apart on either side of the crossing, and sometimes the traffic backs up and stops, so you can cross between the cars .

But wait a minute, what's that thing up there on the streetsign for Leibnizstrasse:

It looks like a little man with his arms outstretched. I wonder what that could be? Hmm.

Anyway, looking across the street is a playground:

Walking to work in the morning, I often see moms and dads with kids on bicycles or with a baby in a small trailer on their way to school and work, and coming home, there's often kids playing on the sidewalks along Schillerstrasse.  Today, I meet groups of teenagers coming in the opposite direction carrying books, on the way to school. One building along Schillerstrasse looks like it's a school too, with a playground in front, and at the end of Schillerstrasse is the Schiller Gymnasium (high school).

We continue down Schillerstrasse and pass by the back entrance to the state opera (the state in this case being Berlin, which is a state in its own right, like Hamburg):

The opera is located in the Schiller Theater.

Down a bit further and around the corner, we come to Ernst-Reuter Platz, a huge roundabout with busy roads leading in all directions:

We can see some bicyclists queued up to cross the street as in my previous post on bicycles. The road west out of Ernst Reuter Platz eventually comes to the freeway leading to the airport, the road east goes through the Brandenburg Gate and into the center of the city, a third road, Marchstrasse, leads past the building where I work and to the Landwehr Canal, then there are yet a couple more. I need to cross three busy streets to reach Marchstrasse 23 where my office is located.


On the west side of Ernst-Reuter Platz, we see the TU advertised on the side of a huge building, with the Deutsche Telekom (T-Mobile in the US) pink T and dots logo on the top:

This building once housed the Telekom Innovation Lab but now I think most of the people have moved downtown to Winterstrasse.

Crossing Marchstrasse and continuing on, we come to my building. An elevator up to the fourth floor and we are at my office:

The route home is basically the same, except there are more people crossing the streets at Ernst-Reuter Platz because it's around 4:30. Here's the crossing at Hardenbergerstrasse, the last one I cross before Schillerstrasse, and the light is green:

The pedestrian crossing lights in Berlin have very evocative artistic characteristics. Not only is the light for "go" green, but it also has a little man, complete with a fedora, striding confidently across the street, so you know what to do. Not just boring old "Walk" and "Don't Walk" like in the US.

Here's the crossing at Marchstrasse, the first one I cross on my way back home. I'm not so lucky and I have to wait:

The pedestrian light for "don't cross" has a man with arms outstretched...but wait a minute! This guy looks like the little man I saw at Leibnizstrasse this morning! I guess somebody put him up there to remind the kids not to simply run into the intersection but rather to stop and check traffic first. A typical Berlin solution to a problem: creative, a bit whimsical, and fun.
 
Usually, the Wilmersdorferstrasse pedestrian mall is considerably more lively on the way home. The other day, I saw a truck with a gigantic pig on top advocating for a vegan diet. People were giving out leaflets. There's also a Tibetan monk who sits near the Karstadt department store, plays a small drum and sings. Well, at least he's dressed like one and has the gear, who knows if he's really a Tibetan monk? Tonight, on my way home, I saw this guy looking like he was suspended in the air, just holding onto a staff:

He's probably got a platform fastened to the staff that he sits on, but it looks kind of cool anyway.


Something new and interesting always pops up on the walk, it changes every day, and I always look forward to it. Even if I get a bicycle, I think I'll probably still walk, because a walking pace keeps you more in touch with your environment and gives you more time to notice things. Plus you can always stop and check out something interesting, or, on a whim, stop and pick up a coffee without having to lock up your bike or car. It's a more leisurely pace and I come to work refreshed from the exercise.

I'm tempted to say walking is somehow "better" than driving or biking, but in reality, it's just different. I get more exercise walking than driving so I don't feel the need to go to the gym and run on the treadmill for a half hour every night as I do when I drive, but there are equally interesting things to see when driving as the seasons change. Since I have an electric car powered by solar PV, driving isn't much of an environmental burden. I'm sure I'd feel differently about walking in the winter, when the sun doesn't come up until 8:30 and its cold and snowy, and even in the spring, summer, and fall when its pouring rain. Then I'd probably be grumpy by the time I get to work, and wish I had my electric Leaf and a 10 minute commute on the freeway.

Bicycles in Berlin

Posted by James

Unlike San Francisco but like Amsterdam, Berlin is very flat, so it is excellent terrain for riding a bicycle. Above you can see an example of the kind of bicycle most people in Berlin have: a basic three speed with a built-in light powered by a generator, and the brakes are caliper type. The frame is typically steel, nothing high tech, but it is sufficient for people to get around. Some people have fancier bikes, but then you run the risk of having it stolen. The U shaped chromium steel bicycle locks which are impossible to break and are common in the US are more expensive here and bigger, so most people have chain or cable locks, and these are susceptible to being cut with bolt cutters. Some people have even more basic bikes, one speed with coaster brakes, where you just pedal backwards to brake, like the kind I had on my bicycles when I was a kid.  These kind of bikes, known as "city bikes" have seen an increase in popularity in the US in recent years.

If you are a half an hour from somewhere walking, on a bike, you'll typically be 15 minutes or less, depending on traffic. And if you take the public transit system, which is excellent, it cost you 2.7 euros per ride. If you take a car, you have to put up with the traffic and German drivers are very impatient, especially during rush hour. To say nothing of this:

These prices are in euros per liters, so the price of regular is around $4.92 a gallon, the euro currently being about at parity with the dollar. Note also that diesel is cheaper, which is why diesel cars are so popular in Germany.

Bicycles are very inexpensive, about half or less the price in the US. A medium to high end "hard tail" mountain bike with an aluminum frame, disc brakes,  front shock (called a "Federgabel" in German, translated as "feather fork") and 24-30 gears , and good Shimano components goes for between 500-1000 euros, again about the same or a little cheaper in dollars. This would cost between $1200-$2000 in the US. There's even a bicycle superstore, kind of like Home Depot but for bicycles, called Stadler. They have an outlet nearby in Charlottenburg and I walked out yesterday:

It was amazing, they had bikes in all price classes, from around 100 euros for used to around 6000 euros for a high end mountain bike with full front and rear suspension. They even had bikes with electric motor assist, if you are unable to pedal.  In the back, you could try out a bike on a small moto-cross circuit. The store was packed with families, some having kids. The smallest ones were trying out "Rollers", small scooters which the store also sells. Naturally, Stadler has accessories: clothing, locks, lights, whatever you need to get up on a bike. They have two stores in Berlin, the one in Charlottenburg that I visited, and one in Prenzlauer Berg in the eastern part of the city.


To accommodate the bicycle traffic, the city has built bike paths which are mostly separated from the motor vehicle lanes, except on the smaller residential streets:

The bike lanes are on the street side of the walkway, and are made of red brick so they are impossible to miss. At intersections, the bike crossing is often painted in red, as in the picture above,or separated from the pedestrian crossing by a separate dotted line. As a pedestrian, you need to be careful that you don't walk in the bike path. If you end up having to because you are trying to pass someone and the walkway is congested, you run the risk of having a bicyclist come up behind you and start ringing their bell furiously to get you to move off the bike path.

Some intersections even have a special stop light for bicycles:

This level of support for bicycling is unthinkable in Silicon Valley.

The lane separation, stop lights, and other amenities make people feel much safer. As a result, everybody bikes even in cold weather. In the photo above showing the bikeway, you can see a young woman bundled up in a heavy coat biking (the temperature here right now ranges from 38-55, but it's usually sunny). Business people, students, moms, kids, you name it. Here's a couple photos of what the intersection at Ernst Reuter Platz, a  busy roundabout near where I work, looks like during bicycle rush hour on a weekday:

The top one is in the morning and the bottom in the evening.


I can imagine that the bicycle action slows down in winter when there's snow and ice on the roads, although maybe not all that much. When I visited Montreal on a business trip several years ago, I went out to dinner with my colleagues and was surprised to see one of them show up on a bicycle, even though the temperature was below freezing and there was a few inches of snow and ice on the ground. If you are a Berlin native, you're probably used to cold weather and prepared to bike in it if you normally commute by bicycle.

On my way back from Stadler yesterday, I passed Sophie Charlotte's castle and took a quick picture in passing:

Hopefully, the next time I visit the castle, it will be on a bike.

The Country in the City

Posted by James

China Mieville wrote a detective fantasy fiction novel called The City in the City about a fictional Balkan city that was divided between two different countries, kind of like Berlin during the Cold War. But instead of the land area for one of the countries being a convex polygon, in other words being a closed area like West Berlin was, the city was divided up arbitrarily between the two countries. In some cases, the boundary between the two countries ran down the middle of one street and changed again the next street over in a kind of fractal fashion. In the book, Mieville explores notions of identity and the boundaries between self and other in a creative way, and I highly recommend it if you like fantasy fiction.

I felt a bit like I had landed in Mieville's novel last week when I had to do my "Anmeldung". Anmeldung means something like "report in". Within two weeks of moving to a city or changing apartments in Germany, you need report your new address to the civic office (BurgerAmt) of the city. When I lived in Germany in 1978, this was a pretty relaxed procedure. I went to the civic office of Karlsruhe, sat there waiting for about a half hour or something, and gave my reporting in form to the official. In fact, the procedure was so relaxed I don't even remember in detail what happened, just vaguely that I did it.

Not this time. I found out that most of the civic offices in the city of Berlin no longer take walk-ins, you need to make an appointment. Berlin has over 100 civic offices, since it is a big city, and a quick browse of the city services Web site showed that the civic office in the Neukoeln did take walk-ins. Since Neukoeln was far away from the center of town unlike Kreuzberg and Mitte which also take walk-ins, I figured not many people would show up. If I got there a half hour after the office opened I would have a good chance of getting in, even if I had to wait a few hours.  One day last week I set out around 8 on the metro for the civic office in Neukoeln, with a good book in my backpack to handle the wait.

When I got to the city hall, where the civic office is located, I saw that there was about a 30 minute line waiting outside in the cold. I moved to the end of the line and waited. 20 minutes later a young guy came out of the city hall and told me that they had no more numbers left, so I should come back the next day no later than 10. Since the civic office opened at 11, my strategy of picking a civic office in a remote part of the city to avoid the wait had seemingly failed.

That afternoon on my way home from work, I stopped by the civic office on Wilmersdorferstrasse near my apartment. I thought maybe I could plead a hardship case, but the woman at the desk would hear none of it.

"The earliest appointment I have is June 4," she said.

"But I have to report within two weeks and I arrived last week on Wednesday," I replied, "And I need the form for my visa extension."

"Well, I can't help you. You can try calling the civic services hotline or try one of the walk-ins", she said and gave me the number.

The next day I called the civic services hotline. The woman on the phone was more sympathetic.

"I can't give you an appointment any earlier either," she said, "But you might try getting on the appointments Web site and refreshing it periodically. People do cancel and you might come up with something."

"Thanks," I replied and hung up. I immediately brought up the appointments Web site and started clicking. Periodically, during the day, I would take a click pause, banging on the refresh button and checking for any blue days that might come up (blue means an appointment is open, red that there is none). That night I continued the practice, switching to Chrome because it updates faster. Just before going to bed, I scored: an appointment at the civic office in Buch the next day at 12:40!

But where was Buch? As it turns out, it was in the far northeastern part of the city, exactly on the opposite side from Charlottenburg which is in the southwest:

 The circle gives the location of Buch, the arrow where I live in Charlottenburg.

Not wanting to risk getting there late because I took a wrong train connection, I decided to take a taxi. The taxi driver drove through Wedding and Pankow, two other parts of the city that look typically city-like: densely packed four story buildings with shops on the first floor. But on the other side of Pankow, we popped out into the countryside. He even drove on the Autobahn for a couple exits. I began to get nervous and quickly checked Google maps, but he was in fact taking me on the recommended route.

On the road into "town" I saw a couple cows out standing in the field next to the road. This is Berlin??? It looked more like Iowa. The taxi driver dropped me off in front of the civic office around noon.

The town was not laid out like the small towns I was used to in the western part of Germany or the US. There were no single family houses but rather the living space consisted of huge 11 story apartment buildings, shown in the photo at the top of the post, separated from each other by wide lawns and scattered trees. In fact it looked a lot like the parts of Moscow which were built after WWII that I remembered from my visit in 1991 just after the coup against Gorbachev. Which was not surprising, since this part of Berlin had been in the DDR (Deutsche Democratische Republik, aka East Germany) before the wall came down in 1989.

Since I had some time before my appointment, I decided to check out the "downtown" and have some lunch:

Again, nothing like the downtowns of small towns in western Germany. The low rise reinforced concrete buildings looked a bit like Homestead High School in Cupertino or Cubberly Community Center in Palo Alto.

But there were some shops there, including the ubiquitous doner shop:

Doner shops are usually run by Turkish immigrants and feature a selection of Mediterranean-style "street food": falafal, humus, flat bread sandwiches, etc. Prices are generally low. There's always a huge cone of compressed lamb meat turning on a spit displayed in a prominent place in the store.  I ordered a flatbread doner sandwich, and the proprietor whipped out a big knife, deftly sliced off a pile of lamb for my lunch, then added a selection of veggies and sauce.

Here's my doner partially eaten:

After lunch I walked over to the civic office and did my Anmeldung. The lady behind the desk was friendly and when I told her I would be leaving in September, reminded me to do an "Abmeldung" ("report out") when I left. Fortunately, I could do that by mail.

Going back, I decided to take the commuter rail and metro since I had no afternoon appointments. As I walked to the train station I passed this whimsical statue, a gaggle of geese:

The statue sealed it. I was indeed in Berlin and not in Iowa.

What's this Ku'damm Thingie Anyway?

Posted by James

So some of you might be wondering what the heck is a Ku'damm? And how can notes come from it anyway? Well, as you can see in the picture above, the Kurfuerstendamm is a street. In fact, it is a street about three blocks from where we live, in the part of Berlin called Charlottenburg. In the 70's and '80's, when Berlin became the center of the Alternativ scene in Germany, the young people abberviated it as "Ku'damm". The screen shot below from Google Maps shows where the Ku'damm is located in Berlin, highlighted in yellow:

The street runs from the exchange with the Route 100 Autobahn in the west to the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church in the east where the name changes to Tauentzienstrasse.

The Kurfuerstendamm is named after the former "Kurfuersten", or prince electors, of Brandenburg, famous from Bach's "Brandenburg Concertos", the area of Germany in which Berlin is located. In the Middle Ages, the Holy Roman Emperor who ruled Germany (more or less, how much and where varied depending on when) was elected by a group of princes called Kurfuersten. The "damm" part of the name is a German name for a road on a raised mound like a leveee. In this case the road was corduroy road, a road paved with logs over swampy places thought first erected in 1542. During the 1920's, the Ku'damm was a center of nightlife and leisure in Berlin, but that ended in 1933 with the Depression and the Nazi takeover. During the Cold War, when Berlin was divided, it became the center for upscale shopping in West Berlin, and therefore for student protests against capitalism and consumerism. But after reunification, the Ku'damm had to compete with other areas in Berlin and many businesses moved out (more about the history here).

Today, the Ku'damm is considered the Champs-Elyees of Berlin because many fashion designers have their shops there:

Gucci, Armani, Hermes, you name it. A Silicon Valley favorite also has a shop:

although, the showroom only had one car, probably because Tesla only has one model, in contrast with BMW dealership down the block which had 3. And next door to Telsa was the Apple Store.

Further down the block, we get our first glimpse of the imposing steeple of the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church:

 Well, Ok, maybe not so imposing. In fact, it looks like someone has chopped off the top. Hmmm.

Near the church is where the tourist buses leave from:

I took a walk down the Ku'damm on Easter Monday, and, this being Germany, the temperature was quite cool, in the high 30's and low 40's F at noon. As you can see from the trees, the leaves aren't out yet, and the number of tourists is only a fraction of its summer peak.

Behind us now we get a full view of the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church and we can see what the problem is:

The "church" is actually a bombed out ruin, left over from WWII. The only thing that works is the clock. So it's been turned into a clock tower.

We can get a better view from the other side of the street, then we can see what that honeycombed building on the left above is:

Although it looks like a computer center, that's actually the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial church, not the bombed out ruin. The Germans like to keep occasional buildings in a stabilized version of how they looked at the end of WWII to remind people today of Germany's fraught history. In fact, leaving the old 1890's Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial church as a bombed out ruin is fitting, because it was Kaiser Wilhelm's government that was responsible for starting Germany down the road of its tragic 20th century history as an aggressor, since his government started WWI exactly 100 years and 8 months ago.

Strolling back west on the Ku'damm, we come across another interesting sight:

I guess this must have been some kind of traffic control hangout for the police in the 50's or maybe even earlier. But it's been converted into a clock tower now too.

 Further west, we come across a store where it is Christmas 365 days a year:

Two years ago I was in Berlin right before Christmas and the decorations were spectacular. In contrast, the decorations in Stockholm, where I flew immediately after Berlin, were considerably more circumspect. So maybe its not surprising to find a store selling Christmas decorations and toys all here on the Ku'damm.

A short distance up the block we find this guy staring down at the passersby:

Next to him on the other side of the window is his twin. This kind of architecture was popular in the early part of the 20th century.

21st century art is less representational and best incorporates some kind of technology, like this wire grid cube outside of a store:

At the intersections of the wires are LEDs that are programmed to light up in various forms, like an electronic display. You can see them shining in the middle of the cube.

Finally, on the turnoff to Leibnezstrasse, these two black and white bears greet the passersby:

The bear is the symbol of Berlin and you find them literally everywhere, on the city coat of arms (shown in the initial post) and in statues around the city. Maybe the black one is a grizzly bear and the white one a polar bear, like Kunth the polar bear at the Berlin zoo who was rejected by his mother, raised by zookeepers, then later died from drowning.

That's about it for my Easter Monday stroll down the Ku'damm. Hope that gives you a better idea what it is. I'm sure we'll have more pictures of it as the summer progresses.