Last Sunday was grey and cold and foggy. When I got on to the Berlin S-Bahn it was still early, the streets were deserted and the morning light couldn't be more dreary. Somehow the weather and the Berlin tristesse matched my destination: an abandoned meat mill. This mill was operating until the 90s and had its heyday during the GDR times. Today it is not only a place where history is still tangible in the dust on old desks and papers with fading signatures and dead plants. It is also a place that is full of street art treasures, an almost weird combination of industrial conformity and creative individualism.

I could have been there for weeks exploring all these little and large masterpieces that await you around every corner. In my pictures I tried to conserve what I saw since time waits for no man and this applies also to street art. Some of the pictures are painted over by others and some are rotting with the building. Everything is in constant flux and here you can see this very clearly, which is both beautiful and sad at the same time.

I had the chance to be part of a tour organised for some Instagramers and photographers. We had almost the whole day to appreciate the strange beauty of this place, exploring the halls, the cellar with an old bowling alley, the old furnaces, abandoned offices and all the street art.

The tour was organised by the people of EyeEm, an app for sharing pictures, together with go2know, who offer tours through this building and other lost places. Here's a huge thank you to them both for this day and to all those lovely, inspiring people that I met there!

And a special thank you to all you fabulous street artists that produce such treasures!

PS: You can find me on EyeEm here: @nancyinberlin

the transformation of things

In the west of Berlin, amidst the Grunewald is the Teufelsberg, a man-made mountain. Or rather women-made, since it were the Trümmerfrauen (literally translated ruins women), who piled up the debris of post-World War II Berlin up to a 120 m high mountain. And on top of this mountain there is a relict of another war: a now abandoned listening station that was built by the British and the Americans in the Cold War.

Today this place is slowly decaying. But it's not abandoned. You can book tours and visit it. And there are some artists living and working there, too. I didn't see many people while visiting, but every now and then I heard the sound of a spray, creaky music from a radio transistor or the sound of a hammer.

The acoustics in the radar dome on top of the tower, that was once made to hear everything that was transmitted as far as to Moscow, is overwhelming. Every word whirls like thunder inside the dome. When I visited this place there was a guitar player sitting in the middle of the dome, under two impressive larger-than-life figures of a street artist, humming and playing his guitar absorbed in his music. A somehow surreal scene over the roofs of Berlin in a place that was once strictly forbidden to the people.

 It has a strangely calming, almost soothing atmosphere, this transformed place.

I booked this tour via go2know - they organise phototours in lost places, and they do a fantastic job! Thank you, guys!