Photo Gallery Berlin's Water Homes
DIY boat builder Woody Johnson and his girlfriend, Paula Wolff, enjoy a few rare rays of winter sunshine on their newly built houseboat in Rummelsburg Bay, in eastern Berlin.
The wooden barge, which floats on more than two dozen 50-liter barrels, is 28-square-meters large, 2 meters tall and cost 1,500 euros to build. Its owner and builder, Woody Johnson, intends to rent it to tourists this summer.
Houseboat communities vary from east to west in Berlin. The more luxurious boats, such as the variety pictured here near Berlin's Tiergarten Park in the affluent area of Charlottenburg in western Berlin, usually come prefabricated and can cost nearly 1 million dollars (759,000 euros).
Another houseboat community, seen here in the Treptow Harbor enclave in eastern Berlin, faces eviction from a river tour operator.
Manja Ebert, owner of the "Risiko" houseboat in Treptow Harbor, is fighting a legal battle against Stern und Kreisschiffahrt, a river tour operator, which is trying to evict her and her neighbors from the pier it owns. The owners of the 13 houseboats may be forced to move before the end of the year, despite the fact that several have anchored their boats at the harbor for more than 20 years.
