On the side of a side street in my neighborhood of Französisch Buchholz in Berlin there is a strange looking wall. It is made out of concrete, with a horizontal footing. Quite ugly, to be honest, but for people like me, who are somewhat familiar with the Berlin Wall, this one looks kinda familiar. In fact, I had to take a much closer look to find the differences, so to speak. For one, this wall is not as tall the famous inner-German border wall used to be, with 4.2 meters or just under 14 feet. So this ain't it, in spite of the cool art on it.
No Wall Without Art - That's Berlin!
The image adorning this concrete piece is of a woman, gazinging upwards with a longing look... or maybe it's expectative, inquisitive, perhaps impatient... I don't know, I'm not great at interpreting looks of strangers. In her mind, though, we can see a storm erupting, with violent lighting strikes above a silhouetted city scape. Just below the words Looking for the Sun... don't offer much of an explanation. Still, you simply can't walk past this image without looking twice.
What's Up With This Wall?
Since the wall itself looks much more untypical for the neat side street of a Berlin outskirt than the mural on it, I asked my colleagues about it. After all, it is literally just outside my workplace. They explained that on the other side there is a cemetery, which used to have a beautiful old brick wall separating it from the street. Then, for whatever reason beyond any of us, they tore down that brick wall, without realizing that it had been under protection for its age. Obviously someone was hit with a heavy fine, but that didn't solve the problem of the missing wall. So what did the city do? They quickly brought a few concrete pieces over to serve as a temporary wall... back three years ago. The mural was added later, along with the wooden boards on top, so the image could be larger.
Necessary Information
The exact location of this piece of street art is the corner of Rosenthaler Weg and Mühlenstraße in Französisch Buchholz, Berlin. There is something that looks like an artist's tag under the image, which I made out to spell Mate, an there even IS a page of a Berlin muralist by that name. Could it be the same one? In any case, I'm using this post as my entry to CCC's Street Art Contest #146. You can also look at all my previous ones in my series The Walls of Berlin. Enjoy!