(l)ostkreuz

Ostkreuz 

always was and still is a lost place and the very train station in Berlin 

that, for me, portrays the city's ongoing change for the past couple of years, decades even.

It is a place in a constant state of transition

that moved from the periphery to the center of attention in Berlin urban life:

I still have some childhood memories related to that old water tower in the center of the picture above

when Ostkreuz was a not very busy place, a simple train station to change trains on your way to the city center.

A number of younger memories reach back some ten years ago and

sketch the area as a place where one did not feel comfortable walking around at night
but that began to offer a wide variety of cultural projects and 'wheretogoes'.

Today, Ostkreuz is an infrastructural hub - both in terms of traffic and in terms of social life:

 it marks the heart of east Berlin's social and tourist (night-)life

and relates to and is identified with 'hot' topics in local politics such as gentrification

(although it is in a constant state of construction and does not look like it at first glance)

there is a great blog that - on an irregular basis - documents the metamorphoses of (l)ostkreuz