Peter doesn't give a fuck

I’m back and so are you which I appreciate tremendously. I kinda enjoyed writing the blog about Astana so I’ve decided to keep writing. Just ain’t gonna be ‘bout Astana anymore. I will be writing about Berlin instead, and I’ll blend in some random facts about all kinds of things, events, and places that even I don’t know about yet.

I always like to start at the beginning. Have you ever asked yourself the question why Berlin is actually called Berlin?

“Berl” indicates a swamp or bog. The suffix -in, which is also found in other East German city names such as Schwerin or Stettin, simply means “city in”. There you go. City in the swamp ➔ swampcity. That’s because the first settlement was located in the midst of a swamp. Berlin was first mentioned in a document in 1244, and founded by traveling merchants as a trade hub on the banks of the Spree River not far from where the Alexanderplatz is located nowadays.

You know which city could also be called swamp city? That’s righty, Saint Petersburg. Tsarist Russia was not connected to the Baltic Sea up until the beginning of the 18^th century. To Peter it was one of THE most important things to get that access. He had a strong orientation towards Europe and the city of Saint Petersburg was his "Window to the West" referring to his vision of establishing a gateway connecting Russia to Western Europe.

Peter, who was determined to build Russia’s new capital up there in the north didn’t give a shit about the unsuitable conditions of the terrain and started building his city in 1703, after taking the land from the Swedes.

A bunch of people told Peter that it might not be a good idea to build a city there, but bullheaded Peter did not give a flying fuck about the other people’s opinions on what he had planned.

The area was low-lying (water tends to accumulate, and there is a big risk of flooding), the climate was harsh, with bitterly cold winters, and it was of a swampy nature meaning that the ground was soft and unstable.

The poor workers who were forced to build Peter’s city had to work from dusk till dawn, and they were lacking tools, food, and shelter. The ones who tried to escape had their noses cut off and the extreme weather conditions and diseases like scurvy (severe lack of vitamin C) and dysentery (infection that causes an inflammation in the intestines, leading to you shitting blood and eventually dying) finished off the rest of ‘em.

What a time to be alive.

But if you’re a Russian tsar, have big plans, and the power and the will to carry out such a project, you will.

Peter ain’t the first and surely ain’t the last Russian ruler to risk breathtaking casualties for his cause. History sadly forgets to mention episodes like these later on and we nowadays call him Peter the Great, forgetting that the creation of Saint Petersburg (sometimes also called “the city built on bones”) had to be paid with some 100,000 human lives. The remains of these poor creatures are buried beneath its wide Parisian-style avenues and grand Italianate palaces.

Berlin on the other hand was not designed on the drawing board as Saint Petersburg was. It grew gradually and was not built upon corpses over corpses. The city expanded bit by bit and the swamps were dried out accordingly to the space demanded.

So, while many of the swampy areas in Berlin have been drained and built upon, some remnants of Berlin’s former swampy landscape still exist.

Places like the Grunewald Forest, the area around the Tegler See, and the Müggelsee have preserved some swamp like characteristics. They have been integrated into the urban landscape though and will only be able to partially resemble the extensive swamps that existed in Berlin’s early history.

This is it for today, I hope you enjoyed today’s content and as always, much love.