Shopping with shoe shiner, water clock and porcupine
In the 20’s, the meeting spot of the literary world was here. Gottfried Benn, Bertolt Brecht, Alfred Döblin, Erich Kästner and Else Lasker-Schüler passed through the Romansiches Café. Now standing at the same spot, at the Breitscheidplatz in Berlin Charlottenburg, a 123-metre high building complex out of glass and aluminium—the Europa Center.
It is the classic one among the shopping centres of the City West. Diagonally across from the Gedächtniskirche, around 70 stores and numerous restaurants invite for shopping and strolling. Moreover, situated there in the building is a large cinema complex and the famous Berliner Cabaret, “The Porcupines”, and—there is even a shoe shiner; with him, the customer can take a seat on a throne, to then allow his shoes to be polished with one of 180 shoe creams.
A special attraction is also the “Clock of flowing time” that was designed by the French artist Bernard Gitton, which spans across three floors. This modern version of a water clock displays the passing of minutes and hours in twelve-hour time. In a system of glass, to balls connected to towers and communicating tubes, flows green water and indirectly enables the reading of the current time.
A second artwork in the Europa Center is the Lotus Fountain of the Parisian artists Bernard and Francois Baschet, a trick fountain with optical and acoustic elements.
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