People tend to tell me that living in the realm of Tegel Airport comes with quite some noise on my sunny balcony. Indeed there are frequent interruptions of the villagey silence. I call them subwoofers. Others call them planes.
It was time to walk to the root of the noise to discover the nest of the subwoofers.
One of the popular places to planespot is the tiny hill by the highway off Kurt-Schumacher-Platz. You walk through a cosy residential area where gardens actually host airport lamp posts. At the end of the street that runs parallel to the highway there’s small trail onto the dune (Meteorstraße/Uranusweg).
Experts know the direction of the planes’ landing and starting in advance, it can be west or east. From Kurt-Schumacher-Platz and its tiny hill the most interesting views and sounds will be gotten when it’s an eastbound day.
You will hear the engines subwoofering when getting ready to rumble. And arrivals fly right over your head in a touching (pun intended) distance. Today was westbound, sadly, which means you see the planes landing from quite a distance, a tiny cloud indicating the tires have touched ground. They will take off facing you, though.
Friends of comparisons sit down facing some kind of landmark such as lamp posts to compare times of respective take offs (way before the lamp post or ages later).
Text/photos: Simone Lindow
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