New Apartment, Same Town

Lars and I recently moved into our new apartment.  We now live practically in the town square, in the center of town life. 

Lars is my hero.  He found our apartment while I was visiting Agata in Poland.  Before my trip, we looked everywhere, but were faced with few options.  We saw an apartment in a Plate Development (with even a higher rent, but same space) in the south of the city, which seemed to be our only alternative to the loud apartment we had then.  Without a car, I would have been stranded after 7 PM in the Plate Development, when the last trolley serviced our area.  Our problem with finding an apartment was that we only want to rent short-term and we have a dog.  This time of year, with students going back to school, there's nothing left at all.

Miraculously, Lars found a two-room plus kitchen apartment for a lower price than even the Plate Apartment, and in the Old-City!  When I got back from Poland, he showed it to me and we moved in immediately.  Apparently, it was all luck; the last owner had just moved out.  Lars was the first person to commit to the apartment.  So, finally, Lars and I can say that we are settled in Cottbus, at least for the next 3-6 months!

Above is the view from the Foyet looking into the bedroom on the right and living room on the right.
Below are two pictures looking out of the bedroom window.  In the first picture, one can see a mixture of older buildings, Gründerzeit buildings and Plate-buildings.  In the second picture, you can see a  "Gründerzeit"building on the left, otherwise known as "Jugendstil" or in English, Art Nouveau style, a style connected to the American Arts and Crafts movement for its emphasis on organic and human form and decoration.  To the right is a building, similar to the own we live in, of Plate construction, or "Plattenbau."  A lot of the Old-City looks like the Plate building.

I learned that the reason for this is that much of the Old-City was destroyed during a bomb raid from the American-allies during WWII.  Since then, really nothing had been rebuilt until the Wall came down in 1989.  At that time, the town planners took a very conservative approach to rebuilding the Old-City: the decided to recycle the Plate-material they had on hand, but, instead of building large Plate building common to East European, they built building that fitted into the local buiding style and tradition.  That is why the Plate-buidling across the street doesn't really look like a communist Plate-building, even though the material is the same. 

Look to the Town Center "Alt-Markt", or Old-Market

View out my window, looking down a side street.  Plate-Building on the right.

Former site of City-Wall

Above is a interesting picture of the site of the historic City-Wall.  The stones mark the spot.  To take the picture, I stood in the middle of the street and looked south.  The street is also historic and was a main access into the city until 1500.  After 1500, the area around the wall became more settled, and I'm not sure what purpose the wall served then.  Still, the wall marks the boundary of the town until industrialization and the coming of the railway system, which caused an increase in wealth and an expansion of the city in all directions, especially southward.

I have been learning all of this in a class at the university, in which I get to look at really old maps of Cottbus and have to redraw maps.  One map I made shows the settlement pattern of Cottbus.  The city stayed the same size from its settlement in the 3. or 4. century AD. (according to wikipedia) until industrialization, and then again after WW2.  So, in the last 150 years, the city has exploded in size!  By looking at the maps, I'm guessing that one could fit 12 Old-City size Cottbuses into the current Cottbus.  Basically, there was an exposion of growth with the advent of the railroad, and again with the arrival of the personal car.  Does that also count as urban sprawl.....?

City Gate and entrance to the left and house built into the old City-Wall

House built into the City-Wall

Old City-Guard station on the wall.

Market street leading toward the Alt-Markt. My apartment is further down on the left.

Above is the Plate-building I live in, designed to fit into the local building style.  The entrance to my apartment building is on the right.  Number 12, Marktstraße.