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View from restaurant Lodge on giraffe enclosure
The Deauches Ex
Marktkirche - Market Church
Old mail box at the old City HallChess Players
In the park of Warmer Damm I encountered a busy group of chess players feverishly shuffling pieces about on boards both great and small, while drinking copious amounts of beer from bottles cooled in the shade of the big evergreen trees overhead. Here there were all kinds of people, arabs, Russians, Germans, both young and old, although no women. Everyone played or watched intently, and took matters extremely seriously. I spent half an hour watching the two guys pictured on the big board. They were both Russian.
The guy on the left, lets call him Kasparov, was loud and animated, stalking all over the board making quick, sometimes showy, moves. The guy on the right, Spassky, was quiet and unemotional, keeping to the edges of the board except to move pieces. Shortly into the game Kasparov made a error, causing the structure of his right hand side defence to fall apart. I predicted he would lose at that point, and although I was to be proved right, the number of twists and turns in the game was amazing, with Spassky finally giving Kasparov a rook advantage so that he could push his far back pawn up to the backline and exchange it for a queen.
It was great fun to watch, and it would have been even more fun to join in. Even though my chess skills are pretty bad I've always wanted to spend some time in these open air chess games, as it is something we lack in England.
