An all round great adventure, although it was Baltic!
BERLIN
It was quite frightening just how cold Berlin was, but if you went prepared, both mentally and physically, then it’s not so bad! We arrived and the coach took us to our hostel. Well, first it took us to the sister hostel on the other side of town… then around an hour later we got to the right hostel, and it was Gorgeous! The Generator Hostel. As we arrived quite late, we got to our rooms, settled in, dropped off our backpacks and headed for some food. It was a nice gentle ease into the trip, knowing we had a lot of time ahead of us to get a lot of things done and for plenty of exploring.
As you can probably tell, the weather was pretty gloomy but hell, that didn’t stop us! First stop?
The DDR Museum.
I have to admit, it was one of the greatest museums I’ve seen! It is known for being an interactive museum, and before now I had never been to one of them before, and it really does make the world of difference to your experience. Visiting the DDR museum helped me to understand what life was like in Eastern Germany before, during and after the war. From fashion to music, to transport and leisure. There was one specific part of the museum that really caught my eye, and gave me a push in a possible project proposal direction. (exciting!)
What inspired me was this room. A small part of the museum was dedicated to showing you what homes would be like. Families lived in a very grey and derelict country where they struggled to have freedom in what they did, so within their homes they made it their own as much as they could, from home-made ornaments, to clothes, to furniture. It fascinated me, and what grabbed me most of all was the beautiful 70’s set-up, with the patterns and the colours and the overall style. I was also very envious as this kind of style has me written all over it! (why couldn’t this be my home?)
However once again I struggled to be able to maintaij t eh excitement for this idea and it dwindled out just like the rest of them, but hey, maybe I could return to this one day for a swanky little project? That’s the fantastic thing about being an illustrator…
Is anything ever finished?
Here are some more photo’s from the DDR Museum.
Heather Kirk Illustration 