This is the big building adjacent to the Forum shopping mall, viewed from the “back”. The today rather nondescript-looking building once housed a huge Hertie department store on all floors until the early 1990s, when it was extensively renovated. The building is actually hexagonal and about 100×60 meters across. It’s still accessible directly from the northeast end of the shopping mall, but the floors are now occupied by many different tennants. There are two grocery stores in the basement, on the ground level and first floor are two clothing stores and a toy store and the second floor is occupied by an 8-screen cinema, which has changed owners several times in the past few years. The third floor belongs to a hotel and on the fourth floor are some offices and a fitness center. Oh, and what you see on this photo is the entrance to a slot machine casino where a restaurant used to be – located directly opposite of a kindergarten!

We have a lot of grapes this summer, they’re hanging everywhere between the balconies!

Decisions, decisions: do I turn red like my neighbours or do I stay green a bit longer? :-)

This one is still the first original Zinnia which I had photographed as a wee bud back in mid-July.

The inner city highrises have always been a part of the complex with the shopping center you can see in the bottom of this image from 2004. This is the second incarnation of the shopping center called the Forum, which was the City Center until the early 1990s, when it was completely renovated. Today it looks a bit different again – the glass tower, which had no apparant function whatsoever, has been shortened a little and is no longer transparent and the flat building in front of the mall has had one more storey added.

We had spotted some very small cross/garden-spiders some weeks ago, this one has grown up nicely!

Approaching taste perfection in 3, 2, 1…:-).

I’m not going to make up more excuses for all the Zinnia photos, so here is just another one :-).

Yesterday’s sunset, because it’s raining buckets today. It has become a little bit difficult to see the sun setting because the tree in front of the house has grown so much – not that we’re complaining!

Just some sky floofyness :-).