Bus 100

A few years ago, I bought a plan of Berlin on the Europa Centre observation platform. It was hand-drawn, with a great love of detail. Such plans were popular in the nineteenth-century United States because of their unusual perspective and their incredible accuracy. Every house or public building on such a map was carefully drawn and signed, so that anyone could find what they were looking for without too much difficulty. Many people thought that these maps were processed photographs taken from balloons and the publishers encouraged this misconception.

In fact, the artist walked around the city from building to building and made sketches on the spot by hand, immediately in the perspective and proportion in which the houses would be depicted on the finished map. The finished plan was drawn from the many hundreds of sketches thus collected. One might think that this would require an army of artists, but it did not, most all plans were drawn by only a dozen artists.

My plan was also drawn by only one artist, whose name I can't tell you yet. The thing is that a couple of years ago, when moving to a new flat, the plan was first slightly damaged (you can't hang it on the wall anymore), and a little later the clingy hands of my growing up offspring reached it and a good block of Berlin streets went into oblivion with a bang. Together with the artist's name and a link to his website. Due to natural laziness the map was not sent immediately to the rubbish bin, but stood until today between books on the shelf. Having found it by chance I decided to breathe a little second life into it and made a still life with a bus of the famous Berlin line 100. I think it worked.

Now I just have to remember the link to the artist's page or go to the Europa-Centre again and order or buy a new plan.