Juan Convers

I took this picture while walking through Berlin-Mitte on my way to get my glasses done — way cheaper than in Switzerland! Among the renovated façades, galleries, boutiques and expensive apartments, Linienstraße 206 stands out like a time capsule. Covered in graffiti, street art and banners, it's clearly not a fully modernised luxury building and that's exactly what makes it so unique.

After the Wall fell in 1989, hundreds of empty buildings across East Berlin were occupied by squatters, artists and activists. Most of those squats were eventually evicted or swallowed by gentrification, but Linienstraße 206 is still standing, still defiant. A small piece of Berlin's alternative history right in the middle of all that fancy new East Berlin.

A few days ago, I once again had the pleasure of visiting Berlin, a city that holds a special place in my heart, as I've mentioned a couple of times on this blog. This particular trip was made even more memorable by reuniting with some former Spanish colleagues from my Google days in Dublin. Together, we spent a few days exploring this very interesting German capital, solidifying why Berlin remains one of my favorite European cities. Though I'm happy with my current life, a part of me will always miss this fascinating place.

One of the highlights of my trip, besides having great conversations and reminiscing about old anecdotes, was finally doing a couple of activities I'd always wanted to experience but never had the chance to before. First on the list was climbing the stairs to the top of the Berliner Dom. This morning's cardio workout rewarded us with some beautiful panoramic views of the city, which you can see in this picture: the TV tower and the Berliner Rathaus in the background, bathed in the sunny sky we were lucky to have.

Again this city full of living history with endless exploration possibilities and such a diverse culture, will always hold a special place in my heart. Auf Wiedersehen, Berlin!

A few days ago I had the opportunity to visit Berlin again and I spent some very pleasant days in the company of my dear friend C. In those days I remembered why the German capital is one of my favorite cities in Europe, and although I am satisfied with my life at the moment, I will always miss that very interesting place!

One of the things I was always curious about before leaving Berlin was what had happenned with the famous Humboldt Forum. I remember the first time I visited that space in 2015: At that time it was atemporary construction, created by the Humboldt foundation, that served as an exhibition space and viewing platform for the Berlin Palace - Humboldt Forum reconstruction project.

Well 7 years later, this project is finished and the palace is back to his former glory (at least the exterior facade) and it has some interesting expositions inside. Above you can find a picture on how it looks like nowadays. bis (hoffentlich) bald, Berlin

I wish you all a very happy year 2021. I hope that this year comes with good health, with vaccinations that will end the pandemia and with a return to that normality where it is possible to travel again.

Today the weather in Berlin was completely bouncing between sunny and rainy, but this created a quite stunning sky that you can observe in this picture.

Did ever tell you the Sky in Berlin can be amazing? Look at here yet another example. When I was about to board a plane a couple of days ago I observed this nice clouds decorating a nice warm summer night.

A couple of days I was walking back to my place in Berlin, look up and saw those nice patterns in the sky that you can observe in the picture above. A couple of times I mentioned in this blog how the Sky in Berlin is one of the highlights of this city.

In Berlin you get very frequently the chance to see nice sky worth to take a picture as it was the case today at the office.

This morning when I was landing in Berlin I was staring at the window and I realised sometimes I forget how many lakes and water sources there are around Berlin. I shot this picture to remind myself about it.

Last weekend a colleague of my girlfriend was in town and I was happy to walk with her around the city. During the evening I remembered it was the last day of the Berlin Festival of Lights. During this event the main landmarks of the city are used as canvas for very interesting light displays. Some of the most beautiful ones were at the Humboldt university where I shot the pictures above.

The sky in Berlin is not only amazing in Spring but it can be in Autumn as well. Yesterday a former colleague was visiting the office and when we went up to the terrace I had the chance to see this amazing sky.

If you have never seen a picture with a soldier like the one in the statue above then you don't know who is the soldier depicted in this piece, then you don't know who is Comrad Schumann. This soldier from the East is one of the first and most famous defectors to West Germany when the border was being built and it was just a line of barbed wire. This is statue is located in a building near Bernauer Straße

A couple of days ago I was walking by the Berliner Dom and I realised I haven't seen the progress of the Humboldt Forum construction in a while. The project is scheduled to finish in 2019 and as I you cans see in this picture it's definitively moving along.

I have walked by the Chapel of Reconciliation in Bernauer St. many times, but yesterday I noticed for the first time the sculpture you see above. It's called Reconciliation and it was created originally by Josefina de Vasconcellos, an english artist of Brazilian ancestry and placed at the University of Bradford. According to wikipedia there are copies of this original work in the ruins of the Coventry Cathedral, the Hiroshima Peace Park and this one here in the Berlin Wall Memorial.

Time really flies by! One year ago I took this picture in Berlin.

Last weekend on a sleepless night I setup the site pics.inberl.in to check the different pictures I have been taking in the city. When I was browsing through my collection I found this cool photo I took in my first weeks in Berlin at the Lustgarten. I'm proud of the composition.

View of the TV Tower from the Strausberger Platz. Nice colors in the sky."

Last weekend I watched the Ireland / France game in the Tempelhofer Feld (pitty we were so close to beat les bleus!). When I was leaving the place I shot this picture with an interesting composition

As I was mentioning a couple of days ago, the sky in Berlin during springtime is quite amazing!

The Berlin sky is so photogenic during springtime!

Yesterday at Jobspotting, the company where I work, we published the very interesting Berlin Salary Report with data and analysis related to the wages in the German capital city. One of the most interesting charts of the report is the treemap above that summarises the salary median based on the years of experience and the area of work.

As you can see on the graph the people working in Management and Software Development, have the highest salaries in the scale, and this is related with the years of experience. Interesting. #BerlinStartupSalaries

Walking from the Nordbanhoff through Gartenstraße, you arrive to the roundabout in Liesenstraße where there is a hidden but nice remain of the former wall.

The weather is improving in Berlin and the skies are very nice again. This picture was taken in the colorful street of Oderbergerstraße

Last friday when I went to the airport to catch a flight I was able to capture this nice shot of the Berlin airport with the spring sunlight.

One of the last vestiges of the Berlin Wall in the Topography of terror in Niederkirchnerstraße

Beautiful Sunset in Bornholmer Straße. I love the colors in the Sky. Last year I remember we had many of those spring days with amazing photogenic colors such as this one I was able to see today.

Picture taken in the Görlitzer Park last weekend. It as a sunny and warm Saturday so the people poured to the Cafes and Parks in Berlin!

Today we were walking along the east side gallery and when we pass by the Oberbaumbrücke, I got this picture of this landmark bridge on a cloudy day.

Some weeks ago I wrote about the percentage of foreigners living in Berlin. The office for Statistics for Brandenburg Berlin offers an interesting dataset related to tourism and the foreigners visiting the city. The last data available is from January 2016 and it shows how the highest number of European tourists come from the UK:

I wanted to wrap up this series of posts I have been writing about the people living in Berlin, using data provided by the Statistical Office of Berlin-Brandenburg, with a final post about EU foreign citizens living in the city.

A couple of days ago I was discussing how Poland, Italy and Bulgaria were the EU countries with the highest number of expats living in Berlin, but the data also contains a very interesting breakdown per district (Bezirk).

I put the totals in a density map:

I also used the specific countries data to create a matrix heatmap using the tutorial on how to create a heatmap with jQuery and Tables. See the resulting table below:

There are a couple of interesting conclusions from the data: Polish are definitely the highest minority from the EU countries and this can be observed in every district. Mitte is definitely the most popular district for most of the EU citizens and finally Marzahn-Hellersdorf is the least popular overall.

Almost the same picture taken near Rosenthalerplatz in two different seasons in Berlin.

Following my post yesterday, I kept digging into the data published by the Statistical Office of Berlin-Brandenburg. I wanted to discover where most of the "Foreign" Europeans living in Berlin come from. Since the European Union agreement allows the free movement of people across member states, I was expecting that the number 1 slot would be taken by a country within the EU borders. Actually, it’s Turkey that has the most immigrants living in Berlin, with almost 100k people:

Now the second and third positions are from countries in the European Union: Poland and Italy. This is followed by one of the newcomers in the union: Bulgaria.

The Statistical Office of Berlin-Brandenburg publishes some very interesting reports including: Einwohnerinnen und Einwohner im Land Berlin (Residents in the State of Berlin, 31 December 2014). One of the remarkable sections of this document is about the country of origin of the foreign residents living in Berlin. It offers a breakdown by continents, regions, and countries, so I was curious about the top countries in South America:

I'm not surprised to discover Brazil (3948 people) is the top #1 on the list, but I wasn't expecting that Colombia (1527) was going to be the second one in that region. Interesting.