Mauerpark Flea Market and an upset neighbour

The weather wasn't good today but we still wanted to get out of the apartment.

Rather than go to the Boxhagener Flea Markets again, we went a bit further into Prenzlauer Berg to the Mauerpark Flea Market. We have been here once before on our trip in 2011. Then it was summer, very hot and extremely busy.

We took the tram 'up' to Mauerpark and it dropped us off right at the doorstep. It was raining lightly yet there was still quite a bit of activity going on. This park and its flea market are also known for their outdoor karaoke in an amphitheatre, which when in full swing is quite a sight. None of that today though with the poor weather.

The markets were still quite busy though.

Most of the stuff was undercover.

But also lots was just left out in the rain.

Regardless, we were just happy that these people still come out any weather! Even with the dampened day it was still a pretty good variety of stuff and in interesting flick through. A bit less stuff than when we last came, but surprisingly not substantially less.

I was mainly interested in camera stuff today, but didn't find anything that matched my systems.

Our tram tickets are valid across all the transport systems and you have a two hour window in which to use them once validated. We still had a bit of time left on our tickets so jumped back onto the tram to the Nordbahnhof, and then caught the S-bahn to Friedrichstrasse (Central Berlin).

In the central area we went for a wander and everything was mostly shut. Not really surprising for a Sunday. We followed the S-Bahn along and got diverted to what was mostly an 'antique' book market. A bit of a sorry showing today and didn't take us long to breeze through it.

It was a nice walk through a part of Berlin we haven't spent much time in yet, but man there wasn't much to do in this stretch. We ended up at Hackescher Markt, usually a bustling outdoor market area, and this too was dead as a door nail. Here is the S-Bahn we were heading for, and we jumped on board with a 'Kurzstrecke' ticket, which is a cheaper ticket for travelling no more than three stops (1.40 Euros vs 2.40 Euros normal price).

Three stops from Hackerscher Markt is the Ostbahnhof which is where we had to get off (to use the ticket legitimately). It's only one stop before our normal, and not much of a further walk to our apartment.

At our apartment we were planning to have a quiet afternoon lazing around. However on the door was a sticky note, complaining about our dog.

We were quite worried and spent the next little while translating it and it ruined our mellow.

Basically, one of our neighbours (must be the upstairs one) wrote 'Please try not to leave your dog alone for long. He barks and it is annoying.'

This worried us quite a bit as we really try our best to keep the dog under control. In fact, its not secret that he is quite a barker at home back in Australia - yet no one has ever complained. However, since being in Berlin he has been much more subdued, and the with thick walls and several doors blocking us from the stairway the noise has been very minimal. We thought.

Despite the mega thick walls, the floors must be wood and the noise does travel between floors. We can hear the upstairs people (probably the complainers) walking around quite easily but we accept that this is just part of living in these types of places and community living in general. Hopefully our complainer will be reasonable.

I have read quite a few instances of people experiencing these type of complaints, usually to do with noise from their children. Most often its an impasse situation or the complainers are written off as 'typical grumpy Germans'.

We only have a couple of things we can try to reduce the barking, particularly trying to make sure it doesn't happen during the various 'quiet times' stipulated in our house rules.

We are now thinking of some kind of polite acknowledgement to our neighbour for the meantime.