A Trip to Berlin
Created | Updated Nov 7, 2009
I'm part of the lucky generation for which moving freely between the East and West of Germany is a matter of course.
When my sister and her husband drove back to Berlin Wednesday evening, I decided to go with them quite spontaneously - they had room for one more in the car, and my sister had a few days of doing nothing before Uni, while my brother-in-law had to study for an exam and couldn't really keep her company. We passed the former border at Marienborn (Checkpoint Alpha) - a dreary and entirely obsolete collection of concrete bunkers, customs shacks, and searchlights on poles.
Though Berlin is a huge city, its districts are more like villages. My sister's is in the former East, consisting mostly of small independent shops and restaurants, with students and young artists living in gentrified former squats. Unlike the West, this area didn't have money for extensive tearing down and re-building after the war1, so most of the houses are Wilhelminian-style, several courtyards deep, and arranged along wide, tree-lined streets. Nearly everything is nicely within walking distance – except, unfortunately, an easy way out of the crowds and bustle.
Of course, despite all the indie boutiques trying to become fashionable, crass commercialism has a definite foothold. Our first stop Thursday morning was the shopping centre set down in the former no-man's-land beside the train tracks by the same corporation that's been depositing them all over the country, easily recognised by its faceless but polished architecture and the same old selection of chain stores. We pounced on the bananas in the supermarket, not because they were rare here, but because they were on sale, perfect for feeding starving student types. We had ice cream for lunch, sitting on a bench in the park, though it was already a bit chilly for that sort of thing. Thursday evening, my sister and I braved the crowds of tourists and early television crews at the central Alexanderplatz to visit the Museum Island on the banks of the Spree. The national museums are all open until ten on Thursdays, with free entry for the last four hours. Theoretically, at least – in preparation for the expected onslaught of tourists, both the Altes Museum and the Pergamon Museum had special exhibitions, for which we'd have had to pay. The Neues Museum, the last to be repaired after the damage sustained during the war, wasn't going to re-open until next week – a pity, because it was part of my recently finished Bachelor thesis. The Bode Museum finally let us in, and we spent a few hours wandering around the opulent, baroque rooms, mostly stuffed full of medieval and renaissance sculptures, but also a coin collection and Byzantine art. Neither of us, I must admit, took it quite seriously; we spent a lot of time looking for the silliest-looking saints and making up stories to go with the scenes in the paintings.
On Friday, I got a hint of what living in the GDR meant – my brother-in-law's grandmother would love to go to a nursing home, but thinks she can't. It would mean giving up the beautiful rental flat she was assigned forty-odd years ago, and she's afraid that the younger generations of her family won't have such luck in the living-space lottery. Explaining to her that everyone's now free to choose where they want to live doesn't do much good, and she's reluctant to talk to strangers – so while my sister went to help her with the household chores she can't do herself, I had time to wander around Berlin. I like wandering around cities, to just pick a random direction and walk until it stops looking interesting. I don't usually enjoy shopping – especially if it's for myself – but did find the things I needed, and some more entertaining odds and ends for packages I'd been meaning to send to various people. That evening, I even (quite incredibly) enjoyed clothes shopping with my sister and one of her friends. One of the small independent hippie-ish clothes designers they like to buy from is starting to gain popularity, and has opened new shops all over Berlin – with an outlet selling reduced-price remainders and test pieces among them, which they'd been intending to visit for a while. Most of their things are sweaters, skirts, and coats made of sumptuous velvet in a variety of bright colours, trimmed with striped silk. Many have long, pointed hoods. Some have bells on. We each found something we liked, though it took us three hours, in which we had the shop mostly to ourselves and could try things on merely for laughs – like my sister's very short friend parading around in long coats that fell in folds around her feet, or dancing in the turquoise thing with the stand-up collar that made her look like a Ferengi Elvis impersonator. There's a reason some of those test pieces never went into serial production...
Saturday was October 3rd. The Day of German Unity. Our national holiday. This year marks the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall. Maybe you saw the televised pictures of millions of spectators watching Royal de Luxe's giant marionettes symbolically re-uniting the east and the west at the Brandenburg gate, handing over hundreds of Stasi files, and then boarding a ship together? I wasn't one of them. We celebrated the day by enjoying its normality, and the peace and quiet in those parts of towns that hadn't been invaded by hordes of tourists. A home-cooked lunch, a visit with friends, and a long walk to the centre of town – we weren't too keen on using the overcrowded public transportation – to the Filmtheater in den Hackeschen Höfen, a cinema in an old factory. We watched Taking Woodstock, which was quite appropriate, really – rock music symbolised a bit of freedom and a connection to the capitalist West for young people in the GDR.
We avoided the crowds again Sunday morning, though it would've been a chance to meet my cousin, who was taking her son to see the giant puppets. Instead, we had a leisurely brunch at a nearby Mexican restaurant – not a terribly Mexican spread, but excellent nonetheless. Afterwards, my sister and I left her husband to his revision and went to the flea market at the Mauerpark. Since it's at the edge of the Prenzlauer Berg district, it hosts not only the usual semi-professional purveyors of dodgy antiques, cheap electronics, and whatever fell off the back of a truck in the last week, but also a more bohemian mix of young designers, hippies, and far-eastern imports. It was as interesting for the possibilities of people-watching – a man ran by dressed entirely in tight silver lamé from head to foot, save the holes for his eyes and mouth – as it was for finding interesting things to buy. Nonetheless, I am now the proud owner of a felt handbag with something resembling dreadlocks and several small, white porcelain plaques, each with a blue number 42 on it. I intend to carry one in my bag, so any table can be table 42!
We also bought a large flat-topped wooden trunk for my sister to use as a coffee table – their tiny flat doesn't have much storage, there's no room for a dining table for more than two, and we were rather tired of eating on the floor. It was painted a horrible pink and yellow and in need of extensive repairs, but it's carved with unicorns and greyhounds, and we did manage to haggle the price down to €15 from the ridiculous €50 originally quoted. Carrying it home was another matter entirely; we ended up having to phone for help and a handcart.
The day was pleasantly warm – possibly the last nice Sunday of the year – so the park itself was being used by playing children, jugglers, musicians holding open-air jam sessions, joggers, and people of all ages flying kites. The scene was only marred by the Max-Schmeling-Halle, a building I detest merely because one of my more annoying professors designed it and loves to show it off and proclaim its merits in every lecture – and of course by the graffiti-covered wall that's a reminder of the fact that 20 years ago, every single one of the people walking around there would've been shot dead on the spot. What's now a park was once the Death Strip around the Berlin Wall, separating the Soviet Prenzlauer Berg district from the Wedding2, part of the French sector. You don't really notice when you cross the former border. The grass is the same colour on both sides.
I used an internet ride-sharing platform to find a carpool back Sunday evening. The trip was quite uneventful, despite the arguments – the driver was from Brandenburg and in his second year at the police academy, his girlfriend a primary school teacher in training. I shared the back seat with a rather excitable young man with an interesting accent – half Mexican, half French – and a deep distrust of authority figures in general and policemen in particular, which led to a lively debate in which I had to watch out for unexpected sweeping gestures.
They ended up agreeing that it was a good idea for policemen to remember they're human, and not just machines for executing orders.
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