Little traffic men

According to Google.de and the most recent Google doodle (seriously, I don’t even have to do a lot of thinking to find topics to write about these days), yesterday was the 56th anniversary of the first use of the Ampelmännchen- a quirky design for a street light for pedestrians in former East Germany. After the Berlin Wall fell, traffic light administrators took the design as an icon and honestly, it’s pretty cute, so they continued to use this street sign in the east and it has even spread into the west… mostly west Berlin, but still.

I had actually meant to write about the Ampelmänner before, and even took a few pictures, so I might as well share one of them now. What’s even more fun is that an Ampelfrauchen (women) is in existence now too.

sorry about the poor photo quality… but you can see both the stop and go Ampelfrauchen in Dresden here.

While I’m at it, I also had saved some pictures of a multi-level parking lot for bicycles outside one of the S-bahn stations in Berlin. I couldn’t get over the fact that someone had designed devices to put up multiple bikes in public spaces like this, and I really wanted to share this with you.

How nice that the kid color coordinated for me.

Other than that, there’s not much to report from Bretzel land, and I guess I’m keeping my head low because the semester is about to start, which means I’ve got a lot of work. Iran nuclear deals are being talked about, we just had hurricane force winds take down a lot of signs/trees throughout northern Germany, but Oktoberfest is basically over, so tourists are slowly trickling back out again. Still, they are taking time to stop by the Festival of Lights happening in Berlin through the end of this weekend (recall that I wrote about this last year), and my brother and I will join them and take advantage of a “golden October.”

Hope there’s some of that golden light in your regions too, this weekend!

Cheers, Dorothea