Savignyplatz s-bahn station

As I said in the previous post, Savignyplatz s-bahn station is my favourite s-bahn station. Sure there are other, bigger ones, but this one is such a pleasure to ride through or even wait for a train on. We've been here a few times for spielplatz visits, a festival nearby, and of course a trip to the Schwarzes Cafe, home of the most must-see toilets in Berlin! That and it's easier to change trains if you're going far enough west and you happen to get on a train that terminates at Charlottenburg station (which has a layout that I can't quite get my head around).

A lot of the stations in Berlin are decorated with various themes. I still need to take the camera to the Rathaus Spandau u-bahn station, but at least of the stations I've visited I've noticed that the u-bahn stations are a fair bit more likely to be decorated than the s-bahn stations. In contrast, the s-bahn stations are more likely to be modernised. A fair number of them have lifts, for example, even if the lifts are often broken. A word to the wise: if you're going to take advantage of the ridiculously cheap monthly bike tickets with your kids, make sure you can carry more than one bike at a time. One lovely Berliner helped me carry Jill's bike through Zoo Gartens, but sometimes getting around with our bikes resembles that old logic problem of having a boat that will fit three when you need to get a cat, a dog, and a chicken across the river but you can't leave the cat and the dog or the cat and the chicken together alone.


More graffiti, more art.


Der Baum - the tree.


Even quotes!


I really like the Theodor Heuss quote, though I'm not quite game to translate it for you. They have an u-bahn station named after him.


Yet more quotes. :)


Finally, a rose. It may seem silly to be so attached to a train station, but I think it's really lovely.

Über Spielplatz „Sherwood Forest“

Last weekend Tangential was sick and Maddyn needed a nap, so Jill and I decided to have a girls only outing towards our goal of visiting the Top10 Spielplätze. The day's adventure: the Sherwood Forest Über Spielplatz. Within very short walking distance of Savignyplatz s-bahn station--one of my favourite stations, with gorgeous decorations that I need to post about--it's in a bit more of an urban area than most, and with that comes the unfortunate Berlin graffiti. Apparently graffiti is very much debated here: a lot of people agree that graffiti is unsightly and should have harsher punishments, but others believe that it's a valid form of artistic expression and should be protected. I've personally seen some gorgeous graffiti here, including a Doctor Who theme on a wall and some very impressive pieces on trains, but a lot of it also seems to be tagging and English-language swear words in children's playgrounds. I'm getting more and more used to it, but there's so much more graffiti here than I recall seeing in Australia and it's still a very strange idea to me that it would be protected.


In front of the castle is a very cool climbing frame, a water feature, a play house for toddlers, and swings. I didn't quite see immediately why it was an Über Spielplatz until we went behind the castle. The whole area behind the castle just made the outing for Jill. The lovely metal slide, the ramparts, bridges, a climbing wall, and a lovely place under the castle where a fair number of the kids gathered to have a pretend tea party. The park has an unfortunate building site next to it, but it's still very green: lots of bushes, at the very least, to make it fantastical in the middle of the urban setting, and strategically placed rocks for the adults to sit on. I don't know about the other adults, but I had a lovely sit down with my book.


The climbing wall. Jill liked this one a bit more than Rapunzel's hair at the Märchen-Spielplatz, because it wasn't quite as high and scary, but I think they're both fabulous.


I'm collecting a lovely number of photos of the carved statues in the parks here.


I don't know if you can see it clearly, but what looks like an F there is actually a T. This is part of the climbing structure at the front of the park.

All in all, I'd definitely go there again. There's also a very cool flying fox (adventure swing) that connects the castle with the climbing frame at the front of the park, and I think the kids could easily spend hours there.

Berlin Aquarium

One of the kids' favourite places in Berlin is the Berlin zoo and aquarium. They're very reasonably priced, and are such a guarantee of hours of fun that we're saving our pennies to buy an annual family ticket to the zoo. Even still, that's only 180€ (which is quite a bargain considering an annual family ticket to a certain zoo in Australia currently costs between $425 and $920!). Or the utterly ridiculous Sea Life and AquaDom here in Berlin, about which I left a scathing review. Over forty euros admission without taking my husband with me, they charged for Maddyn (nowhere else seems to charge entry for three year-olds, and the zoo will let him in for free until he's five!) and not even a discount despite having less than half the sea creatures the aquarium does, nor that their current building project means some of their exhibits are closed. There are no words for how displeased I was with the entire experience, but I digress. Back to the excellence of the cheaper and far more enjoyable alternative.

Tangential has been working very hard recently and in exchange for a hectic week that saw him coming home at 9.30 one night and midnight another--and even working on Saturday--he scored a day in lieu. Maddyn's been missing his dad dreadfully, so the boys and I headed out to the aquarium.

Maddyn's favourite part of the aquarium is the snakes. On our first visit he sat down next to the giant snake at the top of the main staircase and just watched the one enclosure for twenty minutes. He also loves the giant enclosure of caymans and slider turtles--you can choose to either watch them from a bridge that spans the enclosure or from another floor up, on the floor with the insects and arachnids. He's also a very big fan of the shark tank and the large reef tank that sits in the middle of a lovely chamber of sorts with seats if you fancy a sit down after walking through three floors of aquarium.

There's a back door that takes you from the aquarium into the zoo. We've probably spent ten hours in the zoo so far and we haven't seen a fraction of it. We didn't go this week, but the kids love it there (hence our plan to buy annual tickets). There's even a three-part playground, which was legendary even in winter when we found it deserted and dusted with snow. Alas with our move and our recent exploring most of our photos were taken back when we were in Mitte with sketchy wireless so I don't have the photos handy, but I can't rave enough about how much fun we've had at the zoo.