Edward's Marathon Training Site

Got out at 3PM into -4°C (25°F) air, took a good 25 minutes of running to warm up, especially my hands. The route today was out to Tempelhof airport then up to a hard-to-get-to cemetery where the two Grimm brothers are buried, the two linguistic researchers who collected stories for and published The Grimm's Fairy Tales. It's odd that they are buried in Berlin actually, since they spent most of their life in and around Frankfurt and in the southern German states, but for their work on a political pamphlet against the King of Hannover, they were expelled and eventually taken in by the King of Prussia Friedrich Wilhelm IV in Berlin. The cemetery it located between S1 and S25 S-Bahn lines at Yorkstr. a nice little neighborhood enclave on the south side of the Yorkstr. S-Bahnhof. As I approached, I listened to the story Die schlaue Bauerntochter (the clever farmer's daugther), a touching story actually (unlike many of their more bizzare tales) about a farm daughter who becomes queen, then gets banished back to her farm, but is allowed to take "the one thing she loves the most" from the kingdom, so she drops some sleeping pills in the king's drink, puts him the trunk of her horse buggy and when he wakes up in her poor farm house, he asks why he is there, and she says, "you said I could take the one thing I loved the most from the kingdom, so I took you". It melts the kings heart and so he takes her back to the kingdom to live happily ever after. The moral: always think on your feet. As the story finished I was coming up on the cemetery at sunset, it has a very nice looking gate, the problem was I got there at 3:59 and it was closing at 4:00. I explained to the two ladies guarding the gate that I only wanted to go see the Brother Grimm's grave and that I had run over an hour to get there, but they apparently didn't find me as clever as the farmer's daughter, and I was banished from the cemetery with only a picture of the gate. I paused for a moment to contemplate that the two men who collected the childrens stories which were now read all over the world and had worked their way into dozens of Disney films and our consciences, were buried there on those grounds, but quickly noticed that in -4°C weather, if you pause too long, you start shivering, so I quickly took off north.  

Switched my new MP3 player (with rechargable battery - nice), and played the rest of the euro crisis podcast, a good overview of what happened with the Euro since its creation and especially since 2009 when Greece readjusted its debt reports, also listened to a good dotnet rocks podcast on SOPA as well as a talk by Kevin Kelly on the future of the web then the rest of the way really enjoyed the first part of Dan Carlin's long podcast on the history of the Romans, Germans and Huns. 

 

Around 25K my legs started to report that they were getting a workout, and this run was bitterly cold throughout, not great running weather but nice to have clocked in another long winter run again for this week, looking forward to the long fun runs coming up this spring. 

 

the route: 

 

the goal: The Grimm Brothers, buried near Yorkstr. S-Bahnhof of all places: 

 

the cold blast: 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

the 19K marathon tunnel, every September, always a joy: 

 

arrived at destination street: 

 

Alter St.-Matthäus-Kirchhof, where the Grimm brothers are buried: 

 

built in 1856 but unfortunately closed at 4:00 PM 

 

south exit of S1 Yorkstr.: 

 

 

 

 

 

memorial to a Soviet sergeant who saved a child during the battle of Berlin: 

 

an Argentine general, José Francisco de San Martín: 

 

 

 

 

 

Berlinale Film Festival in two weeks: 

 

 

 

into the Tiergarten: 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

what a universal classic, performed everywhere in the world where there is snow: 

 

at 25K, a cold but refreshing drink: 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

home warm home: