Berlin...Rather Quickly

I still haven't written much about our recent travels, and I have a feeling I never will. No excuses: I simply wasn't in the frame of mind for writing and journaling on this particular trip. I navigated through each day in a mindless kind of way, and none of my observations were worthy of recording. But I should at least mention our sojourn to Berlin, and I'll share a few images here and perhaps in a subsequent post, because I did take a lot of pictures. (If you'd like to read more substantial musings about time spent in Berlin, I recommend this piece by Miranda.)

Anyway, you 're looking (first picture above) at the central train station, Berlin Hauptbahnhof, a glassy architectural wonder and as good a way as any for us to enter the city.Berlin as always is a place of contrasts, bearing the scars of recent history in full view. Rows of plain apartment buildings are interspersed with survivors of grander days, some pockmarked by the shells of World War II.

Beneath our feet on cobblestone streets we saw the stumbling stones, or Stolperstein, small brass bricks embedded there in memory of Jews who were deported from these addresses and taken to be murdered: Emordet, an unequivocal word.

We visited The Neue Wache, originally a guardhouse for the troops of the Crown Prince of Prussia, now a tranquil place of remembrance for all victims of fascism and militarism. The sculpture within, Mother with Her Dead Son, is illuminated by the light through the oculus (left) above it.

We also walked through the Holocaust Memorial, which I mentioned and pictured in a blog post a couple of years ago: somewhere in here.

And we visited Bernauer Strasse, with its disturbing remnants of wall and watchtower, and its moving memorial to the wall victims, known as Maueropfer. From 1961 until 1989 there were at least 136 Maueropfer; on this gray day we stood to listen to their names spoken, in English and German, with a succinct summation of how they met their deaths.

But all this talk of memorials does not convey a sense of the vitality of the city, its modernism, its art scene, its edginess. Sometimes there is a sense of rising from the ruins, but the ruins remain, adding to the atmosphere. I had this feeling in Kreuzberg, with its bustling streets, hip cafés, and graffiti splashed buildings. It's a place with a bohemian reputation, where students, hipsters, and arty types seem to flock, coexisting with a large Turkish immigrant population. A long segment of the wall that remains in this area is now the East Side Gallery, which runs along the eastern side of the river Spree.

We stayed at my friend Cornelia's apartment in Charlottenburg, a relatively quiet and affluent neighborhood in the western part of Berlin, which has its own kind of charm: wide streets and sidewalks, a pleasant park, even an 18th century Baroque palace.

And one of my favorite days here was spent oblivious to history, and memorial-free, exploring Cornelia’s neighborhood by myself in trivial and prosaic ways. I love the small mysteries of the supermarket: Are there individual bags in this package, or a single roll of plastic? Is this a yogurt thing, or some kind of custard dessert? What does this word mean? Or that? I love how the guy at the check-out counter seemed clipped and unfriendly but then ran outside calling to me, my forgotten tomato in his hand. I love that there are bakeries with a thousand kinds of cake, and bread...real bread...everywhere, like OF COURSE we have real bread...how is this even a big deal?

I love the bicyclists of Berlin...women in particular, of all ages and sizes, nonchalantly and competently pedaling along. And I love how the city accommodates them with ample bike paths and signals, and how they are simply expected as part of the way people get around. I love the sound of a bike bell behind me gently alerting me to the fact that the nice brick portion of sidewalk I am on is a bikeway, and how motorists seem to respect both bicyclists and pedestrians and honk their horn sometimes, but in an "excuse me-I'm-approaching" kind of way.

On my day of solo wandering in Charlottenburg, I even enjoyed the sprint across Kaiserdamm where the light gives you about ten seconds to get to the midway divider. I love that there's a flower shop on nearly every street, or so it seems, and stores filled with antiques and curiosities...dishes and telescopes and rickety hat racks...such odd collections of stuff that somehow ended up for sale here.I love that dogs seem so indulged, and I love seeing so many robust, imperfect women dressed however the hell they feel like dressing, not beautiful or trying to be, but beautiful for that very reason.And I loved how nearly colliding transformed itself into nearly dancing on the sidewalk with an old man in an overcoat...and his smile, mirroring my own.

Berlin...Rather Quickly

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