Moabit - Westhafen

When time in a city is limited to a few months, or even just a few years, there is only one way to explore: walk around. As much as possible. Don´t limit your views on your neighborhood, but go to other parts of town, especially those that are supposedly uninteresting, boring or off limits. Chances are you´ll discover something new and unexpected, or, in the worst case it´ll just be uninteresting and boring. Latter should hardly happen in Berlin when you´re open-minded and curious.

On this particular day we took a walk around the Westhafen (Western Harbor) and found some nice scenes. Amidst all the industrial atmosphere there is a lot of nature around. Beautiful Plötzensee and Rehberge Park are within walking distance and along one side of the canal are the green extensions of a promenade. Urban coziness with all amenities is not far away. Actually, Moabit is worth exploring a little more. I´ll be back.

The tracks seperate the industrial part of Moabit (left) from the residential and cultural part (right).

Unlike other large Berlin Enterprises, the BEHALA Harbor Company seems

to be a success story. Harbor handling and turnover is growing.

More than 110.000 container units are moved per year. Not so bad considering

Berlins distance to the real harbors like Hamburg or Bremen.

A lot of goods are moved to and from Poland also. Germany has an almost perfect water-way

infrastructure throughout the country, a lot more goods could be transported via ships.

The wealthy truck lobby and stubborn politicians have a different view.

The green embankment is part of the promenade.

Not far from Westhafen is a power plant with partly historic industrial architecture.

Berlin Gallery