quite a contrast to my last post, right?
my front door belongs to one of the few houses in our street that haven't been renovated. slowly, the neighbourhood is being gentrified and the university students, artists and bohemians are moving on to other districts in berlin, like neukölln or wedding. but still, rents are reasonable here and many of my friends live within easy bike riding or walking distance.
when i moved here, i had to completely renovate my apartment. without the help of friends i couldn't have done it. we freed the walls from layer after layer of hideous late eighties/early nineties wallpaper. and painted walls white and some of them in deep colours. for a while though, i have been very much into white, and the dark, tomato red wall in my kitchen is getting a bit much. the next time i have time and funds for decorating projects, walls will be painted white.
eventually, the front door will be renovated too, along with the facade. perhaps i will have moved on by then.
p.s.: those old signs in the hall date back to east german times and ask you to separate your household waste, as well as glass, bones, wood, medical products, wood and plastic. i've always wondered about the bones and medical products. peculiar.
UPDATE: well, i thought i'd better check up on the bones recycling as otherwise it sounds way too sinister. recycling has a long history in germany, east germany (the GDR) had a state owned company called SERO that was very effective in recycling waste. households separated their waste and had collection points nearby for plastic, wood, metal, paper etc. bones clearly refer to the old bone in your steak or chicken etc. i haven't found out yet what they were recycled for, but one thing seems to be bone meal (an organic fertilizer) formerly used heavily in agriculture. today, mostly synthetic fertilizers are used (organic farming being an exception, of course.)
