Sheep in the City of Science
A place for dreaming
It’s Saturday in Adlershof. Even a place like this, where 20,000 people work from Monday to Friday, comes to a halt on the weekend. Dilek Güngür went off exploring the area for Adlershof Journal.
One can almost smell the storm. Whether it will break in the evening or take a few more days, we don’t know. It was in the forecast, but there is no wind and the clouds hang heavily and hazily in the sky. I feel a light breeze on my bike, but as soon as I get off, I have to head for the shade under the trees: away from the heavy heat. I wouldn’t mind a nap right now. The children don’t mind the heat at all. They tirelessly rip out bits of grass from the lawn and hold it towards the sheep standing behind the fence, dressed in thick wool. The animals eat greedily as if they didn’t have grass of their own and the children run off to get more and more. They could go on forever. A warning sign commands me to beware of a bull, which is apparently life-threatening. The children are undeterred. They want to see the bull, but the bull is not to be seen.
We are not even close to a farm or the countryside, but quite a good way from Berlin’s inner city. We are in Adlershof, the Science City on the outskirts of Berlin. From the urban railway station, you pass research institutes, technology and start-up centres, the institutes of the Humboldt-Universität, TV studios, and newly built residential areas. The most successful high-technology site in Germany and Berlin’s largest TV and media location covers 4.2 hectares, enough space to cycle around for ages. I pass glass facades, metal and steel, exposed concrete and wooden planks, ride through streets with great names. Albert-Einstein-Straße and Max-Planck-Straße, Alexander-von-Humboldt-Weg, and Abram-Joffe-Straße. Riding down Ernst-Ruska-Ufer, you catch a view of the Teltow Canal. There are people fishing there, too, but today is too hot even for them. More than 1,000 companies and scientific institutions are located in Adlershof. About 16,000 people work here and 6,500 students. But today, on this hot Saturday, nobody is to be seen.
Walking across Hermann-Dorner-Allee, you face away from the Science City and forget about the glistering buildings. Suddenly I can look far and wide over the 26-ha former Johannisthal airfield, which is now a natural reserve. This is where the kids were standing with their tufts of grass. There are crickets, bugs, breeding birds, spiders, butterflies, wasps, bees, and plants. Many of them are at risk of extinction or have become extinct elsewhere. In 1909, the first German airfield was created here. Johannisthal quickly developed into a hub for the aviation industry and developed into the most significant site for German aviation research during the Nazi period. A long time has passed since airplanes took off and landed here. Today, the former airfield is under conservation and can be explored for miles and miles by foot on paths and wooden planks. It is like walking around a lake.
It is the evening time as we ride back. The heat has waned and the sheep have probably had enough. Now it is our turn to be hungry and thirsty. We will be back, whenever we have a yearning for vastness and calm. We will go on a weekday next time and maybe meet some scientists.
By Dilek Güngör for Adlershof Journal