1,000 Hits and a Brief Absence

Hello all,

I want to thank everyone that has been visiting the site – I’ve just this week reached 1,000 hits on this blog. I greatly appreciate the support and would love to celebrate. Unfortunately, however, I have four papers to write, a presentation to prepare, and a debate to lead throughout this upcoming week (and, natürlich, everything is auf Deutsch, which adds an extra element of difficulty to the whole equation). On top of this, my laptop’s fan has broken, and I cannot get it repaired until I return back to the United States (which is, in fact, only three weeks away). As a result, posts last week were scarce, and posts this week likely will be as well. I have every intention of visiting some Christmas markets this week, however, and I have a brief trip to Hamburg planned for next Saturday.

Also, if anyone was wondering, I have every intention of continuing to post Berlin-related entries (and otherwise) after I return from Germany at the end of December.

Sorry for the present delay, though – I hope to have new posts up this week, after I get the larger part of this work out of the way. Thanks for your patience and for your visits to the blog. (:

Coffee House Culture

 

Today, another student of my study abroad program and I decided to go exploring. We wandered around a little market along Hackesher Markt, had a lunch of Turkish wraps, browsed a bookstore, and then set off on a hunt for a coffee shop. We found one after deciding to take a random sidestreet—inconspicuous and easily missed. The atmosphere was relaxed, laid-back, slow. Clearly a place meant for students and those with an artistic bent.

In my brief time here, I haven’t exploited this enough: the luxury of going to a coffee shop and just sitting there. For hours. Reading a book, writing, doing homework, chatting over philosophy and politics, doing something creative or doing nothing but thinking over a glass of coffee or hot chocolate or tea. Berlin certainly has its fair share of coffee shops – hole-in-the-wall establishments with an artsy, countercultural flair being the specialty.

I’m taking a literature course through my study abroad program here, and in it, we learned about the role of the café at the turn of the twentieth century. The coffee house was a center for authors, poets, philosophers, and political thinkers; but when it came to cafés, you were either in the in-crowd, or you were left out, forced to struggle to make your own way to fame.

Cafes were divided into two sections, one for “swimmers” (Schwimmer Bassin) and one for “non-swimmers” (Nichtschwimmer Bassin) The swimmers were noteworthy and recognizable writers and artists and thinkers that had already made names for themselves. They would gather in their confined and exclusive sections and write or talk amongst one another. The non-swimmers were left to the wider, public sections of the café.

Here is where Berlin has its coffee house culture roots—the early cafés of Charlottenburg, the meeting places for Berliner Expressionism, the inspirational points for writers such as Walter Benjamin and Franz Hessel. And, fortunately, these roots sink deep enough into Berlin’s cultural psyche to rescue the tradition from the Starbucks-drive craze of the fast and mass-produced that has so enamored Americans. There are Starbucks to be found here, yes (as well as other chains, for that matter)—but I have only found them in Berlin’s central business and tourist district in Mitte, along where Friedrichstrasse and Unter den Linden converge, where the clientele of businessmen and American tourists can get their fix.

But the dominant method of obtaining coffee is the café. Coffee on the go has been a rather recent development in Berlin, very much in contrast to the practices of United States. One sees signs advertising “Kaffee-To-Go .99!” on chalkboard menus outside of restaurants, as if it’s some new development that sets this particular establishment apart from its competitors. In America, however, the primary way to get a coffee is to go through the Starbucks drive-through and chug it down on the way to work. Coffee is a caffeine jolt, a morning starter, not an inciter of political discussion, philosophical thought, creative projects, or poetry.

The coffee house culture is something, I believe, Americans could use—but I don’t see it taking hold there any time soon. I’ll miss it when I return home. My little city lost both of its locally-owned coffee shop hangouts, after the rent became too difficult to pay and two separate Starbucks opened up further along the road.

Don’t get me wrong—I’m not bashing Starbucks (without a doubt, while at my school back home, my friends and I go there when we need to sit down and have a coffee and talk), but going to a business that sells the exact same thing and looks the exact same inside no matter where in the world you go, like a mass-produced carbon copy of itself, is not an authentic experience. The experience of a true coffee shop, in a city with a legacy of writers and thinkers who had those café as their base of operations, is one that can’t be replicated by a self-duplicating imitator.

I hope to find some more great coffee shops within my upcoming (and few remaining) weeks in Berlin. I’ll be sure to share the experiences when I find some new places.

(This spoon was so awesome.)

(And speaking of coffee, my host just brought me a homemade waffle and fresh coffee – aww. )

November 9th Revisited

A week and one day afterwards, and I’m just now getting back to this. Midterms are out of the way, and now I’m sitting on a precarious week – the lull after midterms, the calm before the exam and term paper storm. It is an awkward period. As a transitional period, we have time to sit back from midterms and breathe again, and think, and become aware of our surroundings. And it is as if, very suddenly in that moment, every participant in this program has come to a single and concurrent realization: the semester is quickly approaching its end.

The night before the 20^th anniversary, as I was studying for midterms in my room, I had the television on for some background noise. The station was running a special program in observance of the next day.

The premise was simple. A woman was on a bicycle in Berlin. She rode through the city, into the eastern districts – and, from there, into the countryside of Brandenburg, former East Germany. From what I understood, this segment was an exploration of the former DDR (Deutsche Demokratische Republik). There was very little narration; simply silence or the melding of sounds from the narrator’s surroundings. Sometimes, she would stop. She would pump water from a well in the city, or dip her fingers into the water of a stream in the countryside, or stand in an open field. There was no music.

The stark simplicity, to me, was the most powerful—as if the narrator were seeing all of these things fresh and anew for the first time. Everything had its own beauty. Nothing was taken for granted.

It reminded me—beautifully, painfully, sweetly—of my first weeks in Berlin. Those first weeks, when every miniscule detail is bright and vibrant and fascinating. The sound of the S-Bahn running overhead on a bridge that crosses Friedrichstrasse; the colorful, ubiquitous event posters; the odd, nameless smell of the U-Bahn stations; the spice of currywurst; the Fernsehturm always looming overhead. Those first few weeks I took hundreds of pictures. Everything was worth seeing and showing and remembering.

Soon, you’re not a tourist anymore. Soon, you’re trying so hard to integrate into your environment, to BE a Berliner, that you take for granted the same things that they take for granted. Your morning commute becomes only that—a morning commute. You no longer notice that the Fernsehturm is standing just there to the left; that the canal on your way to the U-Bahn station is really quite beautiful with its weeping willow branches and swans and morning sunlight; that the ambulance sirens don’t scream that way at home. The man that jumps on the same car as you on the U-Bahn, who pulls out his accordion, plays a polka tune, and carries around a shriveled cup, saying “Danke, danke”—he becomes an annoyance. You roll your eyes like Berliners do. You no longer listen to the song he plays.      

Some of my fellow students here brag about how they’ve managed to integrate. During the first weeks, they would say, “I just get on the train now, plug my earphones in – I know my way around well enough to not need to look around anymore, because I know exactly how many stops it takes. No big deal.” Like it’s something to brag about. Plug your earphones in, stop listening, stop looking.

Not something to brag about. Time here is limited. Soon, we’re back home to our daily lives. No walk to the U-Bahn across the canal, no willows, no swans, no “Zurück bleiben, bitte,” no man with an accordion playing music on your way to class in hopes that you’ll give him fifty cents. No Berlin.  

The next day, I experienced something tangible and fleeting and real and surreal and huge and indescribable. I joined Berlin in celebrating the twentieth anniversary since the fall of the wall—perhaps one of the most important events in the recent history of Europe. The crowds were massive, flocking to either side of the Brandenburg Gate, down Unter den Linden, across Postdamer Platz, clustered along the stretches of painted dominoes. I was at the back of the Brandenburg Gate, situated in front of a massive screen that showed the cold-numbed, rain-soaked and umbrella-laden crowds every moment of the festivities. I watched dignitaries of the United States, United Kingdom, France, Russia, and Germany give speeches for the occasion. I saw Bon Jovi perform. I watched the dominoes topple. I saw huge fireworks that ignored the rain-snow mixture falling from the sky.

Berlin was new again. For Berliners, for Germany, for me. It rejoiced in this newness, demanding not to be taken for granted—demanding this not merely of its citizens, but of the world. Since these two nights—one, featuring a simple bicycle ride, the other, booming fireworks and a pivotal moment in history—I cannot take my morning commute for granted.  

It is hard for me to believe that only twenty years have passed since the wall fell. It is even harder for me to believe that, for four months of my life, that wall actually stood. Europe has not always been the model of democracy and human rights and individualism and freedom that it is today. Not even twenty years ago, Germany was not the Germany I—or anybody else—think of it today. Europe was not the Europe we think of today. Somehow, in only a brief frame of time, Berlin, Germany, Europe have managed to rebuild themselves, redefine themselves, pave a new future. After only twenty years, look at what the people of Berlin have accomplished.

When I leave Berlin in a month, I want to take all of this with me. I can’t take the canal or the Brandenburg Gate or my favorite restaurant or the U-Bahn or my quiet little Kreuzberg neighborhood with me. And yet—on the contrary—I can and will take all of them home. Everything. Taking these things for granted, forgetting them, would be the worst thing I could possibly do.

This entry took a much, much different direction that what I expected. I originally intended to explain what happened on November 9th, 2009 – the events, the speeches, the significance. But I guess that’s what news reports are for. If  you want to know what happened, I have a few news reports to link you to:

http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,4875096,00.html?maca=de-rss-de-all-1119-rdf (auf Deutsch)

http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/11/09/berlin.wall.anniversary/

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8351471.stm

Mauerfall, Twentieth Anniversary

Today is the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

What could I say that has not already been said? I am not sure. So many others have already summed this day up into what it is: a historical moment of the victory of people to determine for themselves the course for their history, to make freedom for themselves, to bring together a united peoples once forcibly divided. The power of the German people to rebuild their country to what it is today, after a mere twenty years have passed, is astonishing.

I was at the Brandenburger Tor this evening. I watched all of the celebrations unfold – the symphony concert; the speeches of Nicolas Sarkozy, Dmitri Medvedev, Gordon Brown, Hilary Clinton (with a brief appearance on-screen by President Obama), Angela Merkel, Mikhail Gorbachev; the toppling of the symbolic painted dominoes; Bon Jovi’s performance; the finale fireworks; and many other events in between. I am exhausted, sore from standing – but invigorated. Tonight – as one of the many singers for the evening proclaimed – we are all Berliners.

I will try to post a more extensive account of the event tomorrow…With more pictures and a few videos that I took while there. I have this ugly monster called “midterms” staring me in the face right now (why my program determined that midterms during and immediately after the 20th anniversary was a good idea is beyond my comprehension). Once I get past that, there will be a more descriptive retelling of the evening.

In the meantime, I would like to wish everyone a happy twentieth anniversary. Congratulations, Berlin.

U2 Concert – Brandenburger Tor

As a celebration for the lead-up to the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, U2 played a short setlist in front of the Brandenburger Tor yesterday. The event was part of the MTV European Music Awards. Ten-thousand tickets for the free concert were released prior to the concert, and snatched up within hours.  

And then an ironic twist to the story – word got out that MTV or U2 or some other mysterious and unnamed force had determined that a wall would be constructed around the area to keep out everyone that didn’t have one of the “kostenlos” (that is, free) tickets. Police with shields would stand around the perimeter to keep out anyone that did not belong and to prevent those outsiders from seeing the concert. At the same time, predictions were released that a suspected 100,000 people would be showing up for the concert – not just the 10,000 with free tickets. Entire roads (not simply Unter den Linden) would have to be blocked off. And yet, a concert to commemorate the fall of the Wall would spark controversy by erecting a wall between excited fans and the wildly popular band. (For more information, check here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/8344776.stm)

Well, fortunately, that problem did not come to fruition. While there was something of a control on entrance (police standing around as if for some sort of ticket check, but not really checking anything at all, from what I could  tell – my friend and I got in and we certainly had no tickets) as well as a barrier around the street to keep people off of the lawns of the French and American embassies, there was no strict control to speak of. In fact, eventually those barriers between the crowd and the embassies were removed to proved more room for an even larger crowd.

U2 played a half-hour setlist of five songs, with a vibrant light show on the Brandenburger Tor behind them – in my opinion, a very generous performance for a free concert. The crowd was lively, the clouds and rain which had loomed over Berlin all week cleared away to let the moon see through, and Berlin was celebrating in preparation for the imminent arrival of November 9th - a great experience by any standards.

Here is a video that my friend and I took during the opening song. The light effects were spectacular (sorry the quality isn’t great – we tried):

For a better view (and far better quality), here is a video from someone that was much closer and had a much better camera (and I would highly recommend the other videos that this person took of this concert as well, as they are great):

Winterwelt am Potsdamer Platz

There was a winter market of some sort on Potsdamer Platz today. The bratwurst and glühwein attracted a decent crowd seeking a warm relief from the chill outside. Today, October 31, we’re standing on the threshold of winter – that time when autumn is at its fullest, but is on its downhill turn. The market seemed to celebrate this fact with a slope with a snow machine offering Berliners a ride on a sled for a little over a Euro, with hand-crafted Christmas ornaments, nutcrackers, and hats made of leather and fur.

The leaves have turned a bright gold; some fiery orange or burnished red. Now many trees are bare. The days are getting colder, rainy, and gray. Winter is coming, but Berlin’s autumn has its own beauty.

Countryside

My Vermieterin (in German, the person – in this case female - from which I rent my room) has a family cabin near the Oder River. This weekend, she offered me the opportunity to leave Berlin for a day to drive through the countryside, pay a visit to the cabin, and explore the area. As much as I adore Berlin, a brief repose from the chaos of city life was welcomed on my end,  and I valued that opportunity to see a different side of the country whose language, mores, and culture I had come to learn. 

Up to that point, I had seen and experienced only the city life of Germany – specifically, that of Berlin and a brief glimpse of Dresden that I had during a daytrip there on the Saturday of the week before. I have wanted (and still do) a deeper and more meaningful discovery of small-town life in this country – the ways it differs from the city, the subtle and not-so-subtle differences in attitudes and outlooks of the people, the scenery, the lifestyles. For me, a journey far past the outskirts of the city was a needed and valuable glimpse into another side of German life.

However, my Saturday consisted not only of the discoveries that come with breaking free from the confines of the city, but with the revelations that come from moving from West to East Germany.

Not that this is to be experienced constantly in Berlin itself. The evidence of the former West-East divide are so profuse as to be too ponderous a task for me to undertake at this point, without completely losing track of my initial purpose (least of which is that Wall that fell twenty years ago, whatever that was). But the East Germany of the countryside is a creature both identical and vastly different from East Berlin. There are those mighty gray highrises of the Communist era, bearing down menacingly on the streets below with their stolid, grim facades. They are present as you drive past Karl Marx Allee, deeper into East Berlin. They protrude out of the endless fields of green nothing like jagged, blunt mountains. There are those abandoned warehouses that both city and country share, skeletons of buildings whose shattered windows grant views of only blackness, who now lay empty and forgotten like some repulsive yet indifferent relics of the past.

Then there the subtle differences that arise. Differences that make them the same entity - the poverty, glumness, abandonment that lingered in the wake of the Soviet Union – but that give the countryside of East Germany its own character. Little stone farmhouses squat on the side of the road – roofs caved in, but chimneys still stubbornly standing. The streets of the towns have no people walking on their sidewalks, even in the middle of a Saturday. Then there is something harder to see: the wave of West Berliners who, with their wealth, bought those old dilapidated buildings and have transformed them into quaint little vacation homes. Now entire villages are disappearing. Their citizens age and die. The homes, abandoned, are bought by West Berliners with money to spare. Those little houses sit alone in the winter, unoccupied; entire sections of small towns now devoted to sometimes-used vacation homes. Perhaps, it seems, small-town East Germany is slowly disappearing.

All in all, the countryside is beautiful, with a stillness so stark in comparison to the noise of Berlin (and Berlin really isn’t that bad, compared to other major world cities) that it is almost haunting. It has a charm all its own.   

(More pictures on my Photobucket here: http://s795.photobucket.com/albums/yy240/Viatorofbalamb/ )

Kreuzberg Featured on PRI

Yesterday, my mother excitedly informed me that PRI’s The World was airing their usual GeoQuiz on the radio – and that the GeoQuiz answer was none other than my Berlin neighborhood, Kreuzberg. For anyone that may be interested, here is the link to the description, and an audio postcard: http://www.theworld.org/2009/10/21/turkish-neighborhood/ 

The quiz mentions the Turkish Market; the audio postcard is about a man playing an accordion along the canal. Both are very typical Kreuzberg, and very familiar to me. I was, needlessly to say, excited to find out about it. How ironic.

Embarrassing

I think I have grown more accustomed to the sensation of blushing than I ever have been in my life while in Germany (and trust me, I’m the type to blush easily, and about nothing whatsoever).

I have spoken before about how studying abroad consists largely of the experiences of constantly making mistakes and then having to learn from them. Every day, I find some sort of reinforcement that affirms that assumption.

An anecdote from yesterday:

I was doing a quick run to the grocery store at the end of the street. Bread is kept behind the counter at this grocery, forcing one to request the bread that they want from the cashier. I asked for my bread, and he replied with a question in German. Not understanding, I hesitated and tried to sort through the jumble of words that had only half-registered in my mind. Without the dawning of comprehension, I answered what I always do when I don’t understand or when I want to avoid a potentially complicated discussion: no.

The cashier looked surprised. “How are you going to transport it?” He asked, still speaking German. This time, I understood him. Flustered, I quickly answered that my German was bad and that I didn’t think I had understood his question. I could feel the blood flooding into my cheeks.

Now the man in line in front of me, who was still putting his groceries into a bag, piped up. “Your German is bad? Where are you from, anyway?” He wanted to know. I reluctantly supplied that I’m from the United States.

He swapped to English. “Then why aren’t you speaking English? Everyone speaks English here! He can speak English to you.” He indicated the Turkish man, standing behind the counter with my bread and a bag still in hand.

I answered that I was there to learn German, and that even if my German was dreadful, I was still going to try. By now, most of the people in the small store had stopped browsing to listen and watch the exchange.

“Why would you want to do THAT?” As if learning German was a waste of time. Since I’m American, a native English speaker. Since English is the language of business and success and globalization. Since Americans expect the rest of the world to adapt to their language and way of life and never waste their time learning other languages. What use could an American have for German?

I simply repeated that I wanted to learn the language, and that that was why I’m in Berlin.

“Well, if you want to learn, he can teach you.” The man in front of me, still speaking in English, indicated the cashier again. “He can teach you Turkish, too.”

I said I would like to learn Turkish.

The cashier – in some strange mix of pride and timid modesty – said that Turkish is a beautiful language. I agreed.

I thanked the cashier, and headed home.

While I have certainly had worse experiences with embarrassing and awkward situations with the German language and customs, I couldn’t help but linger on this particular encounter. To the people here, the idea of an American taking his or her time to learn German is ridiculous, absurd. I think that perception is a little sad…That Americans have managed to earn themselves the reputation of not wanting to learn anything other than their native American English; that English has become such a dominant language largely because of Americans (and British colonialism, but that’s another matter entirely); and that, apparently, Germans don’t think that their language and culture would be of any interest to me. Well, I would learn every language in the world if I had the time and brain capacity to do so.  

Whatever the case, embarrassment can go both ways. I’m exacting my revenge with this video.

Kreuzberg

Berliners refer to the area that they live as their Kiez. They tend to be, from what I understand, proud of their district of the city, of their neighborhood. Mitte, Prenzlauerberg, Kreuzberg, Charlottenberg, Wedding, Neukölln, all the rest—every district has its own personality, character, attitude, and Berliners both possess and exhibit a respectable amount of pride for their section of the city.

For my stay in Berlin, I am a resident of Kreuzberg. And I am proud of this fact. Kreuzberg quickly won my heart, and I am quite certain that even upon my return to the United States, I will consider it a second home.

For me, there was a great deal of enchantment and excitement that accompanied the idea of living in Kreuzberg. Perhaps it was the discussion of Herr Lehmann in last fall’s film class—how Kreuzberg was the artsy, countercultural center of West Berlin before the fall of the wall; wealthy West Berlin, but with some vague taste of that pitied world on the other side of the wall. In many ways, this still defines Kreuzberg. There are the more upscale, gentrified areas. Take, for instance, the beloved and charming Bergmannstrasse, with its cheerful, appealing cafes and quaint little shops. Yet there is still that sharp current of the countercultural, young, and political coursing just above the surface. Take Oranienstrasse: its strange, uncanny juxtaposition of nice restaurants, communist bookstores, graffiti, and the (in)famous punk club, SO36; its hipsters in keffiyehs walking down the street; its annual riots.

Then one finds Kreuzberg’s newer facet—its Turkish population. With one of the highest quantities of Turkish immigrants in Berlin, Kreuzberg is greatly defined by the Turkish presence. One passes countless women in headscarves while walking down the street. The Turkish language is just as common as the German one. Döner is to be found everywhere. Each week, Maybuchfer houses the twice-weekly Turkish Market (to be covered in a later post) which fills with Turkish families stocking up on the essential ingredients for homeland meals. 

Kreuzberg is a microcosm of Berlin itself. West Berlin melding with East Berlin, remembering and recognizing its own past while trekking a course for its future. Turkish mixing with German, both sides learning to coexist and integrate into one another. It is everything Berlin is as a whole—beautiful and upscale without ever being pretentious; at the same time, poor but never despairing; progressive, forward-looking. It is charming, unassuming—but it has an unmistakable edge.

Walk under the soft green curtains of weeping willow branches along the canal, savor the silence of the parks and the swans gliding on the surface of the water. Take a turn down a sidestreet and find yourself walking along posters for Germany’s far-left party Die Linke and elaborate illustrations and exclamations in spray paint. Take a turn down another street and find pastel-colored apartment buildings with lush trees and quiet cobblestone thoroughfares. Another street leads to a line of fast-food restaurants with Arabic script greeting you from the outside, women in bright, colorful headscarves guiding their children down the sidewalk past you. So many different faces, perspectives, attitudes, all collected into one area of the city.

It represents everything I hoped to find in this city: strange and discordant blends of contrasting elements, beauty with an edge. It is, for my stay here, home.