Berlin

Two weeks ago I was on vacation, so I decided to spend it in Berlin. Berlin is the capital of Germany, a large and troubled country that lies to the west of the more important places. The city is arranged mostly horizontally, with some vertical elements. There are cars and people.



The history of Berlin is complicated. When you start to talk about it, you have to make sure the events you’re describing (a car crash, a meeting, a near-meeting) actually took place in Berlin, and not Meissen or Spreewald, or Detroit. And if you find out they did in fact take place elsewhere, you can’t automatically assume they did not also take place in Berlin.
A small circular museum in the base of the Siegessäule goes a long way toward not really explaining any of this. The graffiti in the stairwell of the statue was obviously written by amateurs, since it speaks almost exclusively of love.



Finding your way around the city can be as daunting a task as finding your way through it. There is a “north” side and a “south” side, which the locals insist are identical, mirror (or mere) images of each other, except for small discrepancies only they can perceive. However, after just one week in the city, I began to accustom my eyes to some of these differences, which are mostly imaginary.

Berlin is a huge city. It’s impossible to talk about it as a whole. Each neighborhood is a new experience and has a distinct flavor. What follows is my general impressions of each of the major districts.


Mitte: Mitte means “middle” in German, and this area is, true to its name, in the middle of not only the city, but also in the middle of itself, and in the middle of every other area surrounding it. The people here tend to be very friendly when spoken to. They occasionally listen to music. They have managed to build a large glass dome.



Tiergarten: No one ever sleeps in this part of town, since animals roam freely here, and their rustling keep people awake. Occasionally a scuffle breaks out in the foliage.




Penzlauer Berg: This district lies peacefully at the base of massive, copper-streaked mountain. I tried to rent skis here, but this proved impossible.



Friedrichshain: This area has been entirely given over to soap advertisements which fill the windows and are nightly projected in red light onto the sidewalks. Other forms of nostalgia are popular, too, such as boat journeys. The swan you see in this photo is named Bertrand, and he’s become something of a local mascot. He has been trained to recognize the false advertisements from the true ones.


Tempelhof: I noticed a lot of yellow buildings in this neighborhood.

Spandau: Performance artists have made this area completely unlivable.


Schöneberg: The people in this remote southwestern district have perfected the art of staring. They gather in groups on the streetcorners and stare at the sky. When you join them and follow their gaze, they laugh at your white-smeared face. Shopkeepers stare at you as you walk in the door, and then stare at an item on their shelf (an expensive bell, or a hammer) creating an invisible, irresistible force field. Dogs stare too, as they offer their white crotch to a ash or a linden. Doctors stare. Women on the U-Bahn stare at you using only their eyes, or some other unremarkable part of their body, and you realize how stupid all those people were who told you about things like decision-making. There’s no freedom in this world. There’s this stare, and this neighborhood is its center, the world capital of pure direction, pure visual will. Down one of the side streets, an old man sits in a wheelchair in his street level flat, a bare light bulb hanging over him. He can't move anymore. His neck is low and turned. He stares all the time at something blue, but it’s not a TV. It’s a wall calendar, a wide blue panorama of mountains and jagged ice. In the sky above the range, in big white letters it says ALASKA, and below that, JUNE. And then the inevitable grid of days. This old man’s stare is the one that started it all, I think. Because it’s not June 1998, obviously, anymore, but the flowers beneath the glacier are in bloom. That one piece of history hasn’t changed for as long he’s been watching.


So these are the neighborhoods I visited, although there are probably more, if you can find the U-Bahn stations that lead to the late-evening trains that will get you there. But I definitely don’t recommend taking the U-Bahn anywhere. That far underground, things start to get dicey. Any city could be over your head.