153 Touching Berlin: Fourth day: I bring in my backpack my geologist tools and, continuing the exploration of Mitte, I end up at the point where the river Spree bends before splitting into two and encircling the Fischerinsel. I take refuge in a secluded place that few know about: the Hall of the Berliner Stadtmodelle, a permanent exhibition housed in the offices at the Senatorial Department of Urban and Environmental Development. In the heart of the building lies a courtyard that looks like a cave lit by a large gash in the vault. Here, four enormous scale models show the city as it was at the time of the GDR, as it is today, as it will be when every urban space is fully occupied by the projects in the pipeline... and finally as it would, if my hand had an extension greater than that of the Alexander Platz. The latter is the Tactile Model, scale 1:2000, with which you can play God, close your eyes and slowly slide your fingers along the skyscrapers and streets, the complex topography of the city, with a 3-D perception of its architectures. I jot down in my notebook: Brandenburg Gate has the essential and squared shapes of a block of bismuth. The Siegessäule is an elegant piece of selenite. The shapes of the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche- the church symbolising the bombings of World War II, with its ruins deliberately left as such - to the touch produce a sensation of quartz crystal. The Tiergarten is a large amethyst flower. Berlin is a sharp thing, a pointy and angular collection of stones, whose asperities are sometimes softened by the hemispherical and semi-ellipsoidal shapes of its domes - especially in the baroque and 19th century geodes in the area crossed by the monumental avenue Unter den Linden (literally "under the Linden trees"), and the Museum Island. From a cursory petrographic analysis, it appears that in these large igneous rocks a bubble of time has so far allowed us to preserve little masterpieces from Wunderkammer. senses and the City
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