Karl-Marx Allee

 

I've now run up, down, across and under Karl Marx Allee countless times. No surprise given it is an enormous boulevard stretching nearly 2km to connect Friedrichshain with Mitte. I now love the  grandeur of the huge Stalinist apartments which run up both sides of the street to the Frankfurter Tors at the eastern end, all of which provide one of the best frames in Berlin for the TV tower that rises up from the western end.

The apartments were built in the 1950s as palaces for workers to celebrate the importance of the ordinary labourer. After Stalin's death, Khrushchev favoured less majestic surroundings for East Berlin citizens, believing everyone should live more basically, and ordered the construction of large, pre-fabricated buildings in the city's outskirts. But the wedding cake style of the boulevard remained, although it had its name changed from Stalin Allee to Karl Marx Allee.

Karl Marx Allee always reminds me of my first day in Berlin, when traipsing its full 2km in the rain and ending up in Alexander Platz, I did actually think we had come on holiday to Khrushchev era Berlin. But luckily that only lasted a day, and when I opened my eyes a bit more, saw all the amazing things Berlin had to offer.