A community oven at Wuhlegärten

gerda and giulia

Our colony opened in 2003. We have people coming from Argentina, Bosnia, Germany, Italy, Kazakhstan, Poland, Russia, Ukraine, Hungary and Vietnam and as we have built a big oven in the middle of the colony so that everyone can bake bread according to his or her traditions, so I have learnt many way of baking it.

Gerda Münich, German, Wuhlegärten

the oven

http://stiftung-interkultur.de/berlin/berlin-koepenick-wuhlegarten

Prinzessinnengarten

Other students and I with my family opened this place in July 2009. I wanted to become a father and have a job where I had not to work too much and could bring my kids with me. So, after living few years in Cuba, that has a very intense model of urban agricolture, I tried to do quite the same in Berlin. We cultivate all the different kind of vegetables you find in the supermarkets, but we use organic seeds to show our children how they grow and how better they are. Then we try to have a huge variety of kind for each vegetable. So we have 15 kinds of potatoes, 20 different kinds of tomatoes, 7 different kinds of carrots, 25 different kinds of ments, and some exotic things like 6 cm long beans from Africa. Some of the old women got cultural connections growing vegetables when they where young in Russia or Turkey or somewhere else. They have brought seeds or even plants with them from there, which they knew from their past, and which they wanted to have here as kind of piece of home. Many people have Turkish, Danish, French, American, English, Palestinian, Arabic, Indian, Swedish or Iraq ancestors. We have a very open system, so you do not have to become a member to partecipate.

Robert Shaw, British-German

In Germany we are not aloud to cultivate and sell herbs for medical purpose, so we do not cultivate any kind of these but we have got some things which are more for health. If you got a cough you can take a thyme tea or we have healing plants like comfrey.

Robert Shaw, English-German

Indigenuous people use some bushes for their health, but I do not know them. The same for our Chineses immigrants that have many traditional medicines using plants. However when I am sick I take fresh honey, ginger and garlic. They make me feel better.

Emma Rugg, Australian

We have rugbrød that is a very dark bread which is very healty because it is rich in whole grain and dietary fiber and contain little or no sugar, and is thus considered by many Danes as a healthy alternative to whiter types of bread. I never tried to bake it myself because it is a very long process, but my father does and it is always nice to come home and have the homemade smørrebred.

Ida Davidsen, Dane

I could find mangos in Berlin or kiwi from New Zeland, however they are not very fresh and it's not very good for the enviroment to buy foods that have been travelling half the world. So I do not like to buy them.

Emma Rugg, Australian

There is a popular Australian story that became a cartoon where a little koala - Blinky Bill - eats leaves from eucalyptus trees and these leaves have some medicinal benefits as his appendix can neutralise the toxins of the plants.

Emma Rugg, Australian

Prinzessinnengarten

Foreign residents in Berlin 2010

berlin city map

184.702 | Sonstiges Europa

149.726 | Europäische Union

66.552  | Asien 

25.132  | Amerika
17.089  | Afrika 

12.564  | Staatenlos, ungeklärt, ohne Angabe 

2041    | Australien und Ozeanien

1. Turkey (104.556) 2. Poland (40.988) 3. Serbia (19.230) 4. Italy (15.842) 5. Russia (15.332) 6. France (13.262) 7. Vietnam (13.199) 8. the United States (12.733) 9. Bosnia and Herzegovina (10.198) 10. the United Kingdom (10.191) 11. Croatia (10.104) 12. Bulgarien (9.998) 13. Österreich (9.246) 14. Griechenland (9.301) 15. Ukraine (8.324) 16.Libanon (7.078) 17. Spanien (7.670) 18. China (5.632) 19. Thailand (5.037) 20. Rumänien (5.024) 21. Mazedonien (4.729) 22. Schweiz (4.184) 23. Niederlande (4.041)... 


http://www.statistik-berlin-brandenburg.de/

Many nationalities at POG

a gardener's house waiting for springtime

Klaus Trappmann: There is a women here that everybody calls her "Paprika". She lived in Yugoslavia when Yugoslavia still existed and she taught Albanian language, but after the war, the government did not need her any more and she had to start another job, so she began gardening. She was and she is still fond of paprika and brings the seeds from kosovo for cultivating and cooks paprika in a balcanic way. She put some in vinaigre and others inside onions or in other foods. Some are very hot other are more sweet. 
Another gardener is specialized in healing plants and he has got really a lot! 
Then we have another gardener, a women coming from Naxos, that cultivates a lot of wild herbs and put them in marmelades and other dishes... she cooks really well! She also does a lot of food in oil.
In the kolonie there are also two or three people coming from Russia... A lot of nationalities here at POG!
http://www.wir-bleiben.de/ 

a gardener's house and its dwarfs

the square where the POG has its community dinners