Start: An Enigmatic Banana
Begin beneath the Charlottenburg S-Bahn bridge with an inexplicable concrete banana, a Russian night shop, and instructions for listening with the phone put away.
TX001 · public coordinates
26 footnotes through Charlottenburg
A concrete banana, Nabokov’s everyday Berlin, a stubborn record shop and a lake with a sunken church: choose a stop, listen to Agnes and follow the story into the neighbourhood.
The route, stop by stop
Published footnotes
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Nabokov’s “A Guide to Berlin”
Stop at Stuttgarter Platz and imagine Vladimir Nabokov waiting nearby in the winter of 1925.
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Zum Hecht · approach
Continue up Kaiser-Friedrich-Straße toward Zum Hecht, the first part of a three-clip sequence.
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Zum Hecht · workers and rough edges
An informal labour market, a neighbourhood’s rough reputation, and the longer story gathered around Zum Hecht.
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Kommune Eins
The birthplace of West Berlin’s first political commune and the unfinished revolt against parental silence.
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HappyGoLucky Hotel
A psychedelic hostel façade disappeared under heritage rules, leaving a dispute between colour, ownership, and urban order.
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Klick Kino · the last Ladenkino
One of Berlin’s small shopfront cinemas carries traces of adult film, neighbourhood projection, and independent survival.
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Music Train Records
A used-record shop becomes a portal for Mary Ocher, circulation, exile, and a street heard through music.
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Hedayat Persian Bookstore
A Persian bookshop and café opens onto Sadegh Hedayat’s imagined Berlin and the Iranian city around Kantstraße.
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Charlottengrad
Kantstraße gathers a former women’s prison, émigré businesses, and the unstable nickname Charlottengrad.
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Towards the Sidur sculpture
Follow the path around Amtsgerichtsplatz and look for a compact bronze form near the courthouse.
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Sidur’s “Treblinka”
Vadim Sidur’s 1966 sculpture “Treblinka” compresses bodies, weight, survival, and early West Berlin memorial culture.
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Amtsgerichtsplatz and the Antique Mile
A manual continuation along Suarezstraße braids the antique mile with Erich Maria Remarque and the fate of his sister Elfriede Scholz.
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Slavic Farmers and Fishermen
The antique street thins into wetlands, shallow ponds, Slavic settlement, farming, and fishing before modern Charlottenburg.
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Galerie 15
A modest corner gallery opens onto micro-museums, neighbourhood exhibition space, and a building carrying several lives.
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Dernburgplatz
A street name is assigned, removed under National Socialism, and restored: the map remembers by overwriting itself.
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Balavat
A gallery edge hands the route to the Große Kaskade and the descent into Lietzenseepark.
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Kleine Anarchien · plaque and artwork
A nearly invisible guerrilla plaque on the small bridge becomes a minor act of counter-authorship.
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The Mushroom Cloud Above, the Sunken Village Below
A nuclear image, lake infrastructure, a vanished settlement, and unreliable folklore form the route’s deepest narrative knot.
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Fanfarenplatz
The lakeside path becomes a lesson in glacial form, groundwater, maintenance, and the small lake as urban system.
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Boltzplatz
Hedayat returns as a writer of exile and cities that gnaw from within while the park continues around him.
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Tree 418
A numbered tree and blind owl sign pull Aleister Crowley into the story as historical resident, occult projection, and narrative risk.
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War Memorial
A regimental memorial gathers inscriptions, bronze emblems, multiple conflicts, and the uneasy persistence of martial memory.
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Parkwächterhaus · caretaker’s house
A practical park building—once toilets, administration, refreshments, and a home—becomes a civic archive and repair project.
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Toward Kleine Kaskaden
Turn right toward the lake and follow the narrow watercourse of the Kleine Kaskade.
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End: Kleine Kaskaden
The final soundbite returns to the caretaker’s papers, technical drawings, spectral infrastructure, and the story-walk’s uncertain ending.