Someone stole the fun from the fun park
Spreepark is but a shell of what it once was, and so it shell be. The city’s plans to refurbish the old DDR fun park involve removing anything that might be construed as fun.
Only the old Ferris wheel, which is now lying in a heap of metal near where it once stretched for the sky, will be resuscitated and restored. Or so the plan is, anyway. This is Berlin, so it will more likely remain a a heap of metal near where it once stretched for the sky.
On a recent tour of the former amusement park – the only amusement to be found is former amusement – the tour guide spoke of all the former attractions. Her descriptions of the old delights were inevitably followed by words like “but they won’t be coming back” or “you won’t be able to do that anymore.”
There’s almost nothing left. The dinosaurs are all gone. “Stolen,” according to the tour guide. But it can’t be easy to steal a giant dinosaur when there’s security on the site 24 hours a day – with a dog at night. I don’t know what the dog does during the day. It must be some sort of vampire dog. Maybe it finished off the dinosaurs. Not one remains, not one!
Almost everything else has been fenced off or removed by the city authorities.
When Spreepark reopens – if it reopens – it will rival the rubbish new airport and useless new Prussian palace for the honor of Berlin’s worst investment in recent times. Both palace and airport stand as huge wastes of space, time, money and effort. Spreepark will probably have to settle for a runner-up prize – there has been no effort made to restore it to its former glory.
Berlin opted for a half-assed job, a “culture park” rather than an amusement park to keep the costs down. The fun is over.
For the full rollercoaster story of Spreepark, from its beginnings as East Germany’s only amusement park, to its takeover by the Witte family after German reunification and all the thrills and spills that entailed, to its current sorry end, see the original post at abandonedberlin.com/spreepark.
Photos (2022)
Filed 9/6/2022
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I have been following your adventures for a while, but I don’t understand why you are so angry at the City for this planned public park. Why does it “need to be restored to its former glory”?
Abandoned places are fun because they are time machines stuck in between timelines. Time has mutated them, and we can only accept it will keep on mutating them.
Personally, I think it’s great that Berlin invests in park instead of keeping it as a mostly closed-off ruin.
This one will be managed by the same authority that governs Tempelhoferfeld, so the precedents are positive. I don’t quite get the negativity. Can you explain your position better?
I honestly thought I’d explained it as well as I could in the post. It used to be a fun park with dinosaurs, a rollercoaster and other attractions that were designed to be fun. And Berlin wants to reopen it without any of those things. This isn’t time mutating anything – it’s Berlin taking the fun out of a fun park.