Saturday 21 June 2014

Paris, Berlin, rail tracks and more

Murals covering the whole wall of a building are the most astonishing side of street art for me. Berlin is full of them and is probably unbeatable (as with any other element of the Street Art family).
At first sight, Street Art is far less present and interesting in Paris than in Berlin (notice that I know Berlin much better than Paris, and I don't know if there are any neighborhoods in Paris that could be considered some sort of equivalent to Kreuzberg, Friedrichshain or Prenzlauer Berg).

Anyway, in my last visit to the so beautiful capital of "La France", I came across 2 pretty good murals, I'll share some pics here:

This one located in Boulevard Magenta

And this one located just across one corner of the Centre Pompidou.

By the way, I've got some mixed feelings about the Pompidou building. I tend to love this kind of High Tech architecture, but there's something with this piece that does not completely play with me, maybe it's just the location, it would a quite better fit for La Defénse than for "classical Paris".

One element of urban landscapes that really delights me is the presence of elevated metro-train-tram tracks across the city. Be it sections of the DLR in London, the U-Bahn/S-Bahn in Vienna, Hamburg or Berlin. The most outstanding of these for me are located in Berlin, in particular the section of the U-Bahn crossing Kreuzberg between Schleisches Tor and Hallesches Tor, and the section of the S-Bahn crossing central Berlin (when it goes through the Museum Insel, wow, that's crazy for me). Paris sports a very beautiful and similar Metro section. Line 2 between Anvers and Stalingrad (not sure if after this stop it continues overground or not) will make you feel as if you had been transported into Kreuzberg (change the people of Turkish ascent for people of Maghrebian or Indian ascent). As a plus, from La Chapelle you'll have superb views of the train tracks going into Gare du Nord.

Train tracks, I've got sort of an obsession with them. A wide set of rusty trail tracks surrounded by dirty graffited walls and the view at the end of a large and old European train station is a quintessential representation of beauty for me. I guess it's normal bearing in mind my taste for the "Beauty in dereliction" thing. Paris does not have a single Main train station (Hauptbahnhof), but like 6 "big ones". Sure this can be a real pain for travelers having to switch from one to another, but if you happen to be into this kind of views that I've depicted, it'll mean much joy for your eyes. The views over Gare du Nord and Gare de L'Est are astonishing, but maybe the views over St Lazare from the intersection of Bd de Batignoles and Rue du Rome are probably the best.

By the way, if you happen to be into this kind of stuff and you're lucky to be in Toulouse, notice that Metro Line A goes overground for a short length in sections between Jolimont and Roseraie, and between Argoulets and Balma Gramont in the north part, and between Bagatelle and Mirai to the south. It does so by means of some interesting bridges spanning over the Péripherique.

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