when at the start of April suddenly all the many, many fountains of Berlin start to spring up again, you know - well - : it's spring!
Above you see the fountain at the Viktoria-Luise-Platz, two streets from our flat.
The Bavarian Quarter has so many fountains on what the builder/designer Haberland 1900 called 'adornment places' (Schmuckplätze), with banks and trees and flowers and green where people lie on. (Not me in April - can hear my mother still: "Don't lie on greens in months with an "R")
(Which reminds me of Rosemary & Thyme: "After eight months with you, I decided I would never again get romantically entangled with a man who pronounced both the r's in February. (...) She smiled as he silently mouthed the words two or three times.")
No, I promised you literature. So here it is: in his marvelous book "DELIGHT" J.B.Priestley mentioned it as the first of one-hundred-and-fourteen delights.
FOUNTAINS. I doubt if ever I saw one, even the smallest, without some tingling of delight. They enchant me in the daytime, when the sunlight ennobles their jets and sprays and turns their scattered drops into diamonds. They enchant me after dark when coloured lights are played on them, and the night rains emeralds, rubies, sapphires. And, best of all, when the last colour is whisked away, and there they are in a dazzling white glory!"
(This is only the beginning of a fine description that becomes almost philosophical at the end).
And I will end with another photo of another near-by fountain, the Hirschbrunnen (deer-fountain) at the Rudolph-Wilde-Park:
