A Homage to S-Bahn Man
Yesterday I was on my way to Teufelsberg, yet another of Berlin’s Cold War relics I hope I’ll have time to post on soon. Anyway, I was following the same route as the narrator from the Book of Clouds, except that she gets off at Savignyplatz, and I was reminded of the following passage:
“As for the S-Bahn, it too was a wondrous thing, especially its elevated routes, and during each ride I’d fall into that limbo between origin and destination where thoughts are churned out in time with the wheels of the train but with far less purpose and linearity. It wasn’t just the trancelike glide of the wheels, however, or the view out the window. It was announcer’s voice. I preferred this recorded voice to any other voice I had heard in my life, especially on days when I felt disconnected from the city, attached by the thinnest of stringest.
“Nächste Station: Friedrichstrasse”
All it took were a few words to retighten the bond.
“Ausstieg links,”, the announcer would add for those ignorant of which side to disembark.
There was a spring to his utterances, a buoyancy packed and delivered in ancipation of every stop, and I would put away my book or newspaper and sit back and listen to the stations, as they were rolled off, one by one, uninterrupted - that is, if other presences didn’t interfere, such as plainclothes ticket inspectors or junkie musicians, their pleas for attention like dark blood clots in the city’s circulation.”
I agree with the author, it is a very pleasant voice with the right amount of enthusiasm, but not as much as to sound like a life coach. S-Bahn man sounds like he’s having way more fun than Underground lady back in London, although I don’t know yet if that is something you should be looking for in a train announcement.
Another quote…
There are moments in Berlin night life when it would be nice be a native English speaker, just to be able to appreciate all the nuances. Like when a Swede and a Spaniard who have just met in Watergate and shared a taxi to Alexanderplatz talk about how great they think Berlin is: ‘I fucking love this city.’ Or shortly afterwards in the lift when a Dutch guy who lives in London gets talking to a Norwegian girl, and she’s there with a friend who just moved to London. While they’re attempting to explain all of this - they do have fifteen floors to travel - another Norwegian chips in, telling the Dutch guy that, should he ever travel to Norway, he mustn’t go to Bergen as it’s incredibly boring.. Then we reach the top. The door opens and the lift operator lests everyone out. On his way out of the lift, a guy in his late twenties who sounds as if he might come from Australia, and who has been listening to his companions’ conversation the whole way, says, ‘Norway, Norway - that’s the country with the fjords, right?’
Tobias Rapp, Lost and Sound: Berlin, Techno and the Easyjet Set
A Living Fossil
This is a South American Lungfish. To the untrained eye it might resemble an eel, but make no mistake, you’re looking at a living fossil. These guys have been around since the dinosaurs. Lungfish - named after the lungs that enable them to breathe air - might not have built great civilisations or lead interesting social lives, but they have successfully been failing to do this for the last 200 million years. This lungfish was swimming around in a tank at Berlin’s Natural History Museum, alternately burrowing its head in the sand and napping between seaweed. Admittedly it has had a long time to develop a conscience, but I think it’s safe to conclude that it was blissfully unaware of its superstar status among evolutionary biologists.
Which raises the question…will we make it to the 200 million year mark? I don’t know folks..We’ve been around for a mere million years and half of those were spent climbing trees. And we do have an uncanny knack for getting ourselves into trouble. But then again, trouble is fun, until is no longer fun. As the American satirist P.J. O’Rourke puts it “It will always be more fun to carry a gun around in the hills and sleep with ideology-addled college girls than to spend life behind a water buffalo or rotting in a slum” Or being a lungfish. This is by no means an endorsement of armed conflict, just an example of why humans are no lungfish. As if it wasn’t apparent already. You’re welcome.
The Natural History Museum/ Das Museum für Naturkunde
Today I finally managed to make it to the Natural History Museum. It has been too hot until now, and the building, like many others in Berlin, has no air conditioning. It was already quite toasty inside, and I did not want to wander into the “Evolution in Action” room to encounter a sign reading “You’re not it. All the successfully evolving Berliners are at the lakes”.
Why is Berlin special?
Why is Berlin special? Certainly not for its beauty or its state of preservation. Berlin is fascinating rather, as a city of bold gestures and startling incongruities, of ferment and destruction. It is a city whose buildings, ruins, and voids groan under the burden of painful memories […] The concentration of troubling memories, physical destruction, and renewal has made Berliners, however reluctantly, international leaders in exploring the links between urban form, historical preservation and national identity.
If the historical form of the city is to provide the standard, which of the many Berlin pasts is meant? Baroque or classical Berlin, Berlin from the time of unification or the chaotic Twenties, to say nothing of the insane building plans of the Nazi years?
A Break from Berlin
As much as I have come to like my current host city, I need a break. Dr Johnson once famously - and a tad optimistically - claimed that if a man is tired of London, he’s tired of life. I’m tired of graffiti, which means I must be tired of Berlin. Actually I’m tired of people taking pictures of graffiti as if they were spontaneous acts of anarchy, and not a compulsory element of the urban landscape. I was going to take a picture of somebody taking a picture of graffiti, like a möbius image of counterculture, perpetuating ad infinitum outside the confines of mainstream. Except that graffiti is mainstream in Berlin.
So, where does a woman go when she needs a breather from Berlin? To Budapest, of course, an architectural gem in the heart of Europe, or so my guide tells me, and most importantly, the only destination that did not cost €400 a flight. I would like to think it is a sign, although so far it’s only a sign that a) I don’t book in advance b) everybody else is heading south.
One week to go! (Yeah, that’s how much I plan in advance)
Counterculture
The fight for freedom is always easier than the practice of freedom
- Matjia Beckovic
A couple of days ago I was sitting in one of the city’s countless alternative cafes trying to cool myself down with copious amounts of chilled alcohol. The establishment, opposite a sushi bar and an overpriced organic supermarket, was run as a collective and prided itself on its left-leaning credentials. Stuck to its walls were countless posters, as well as the requisite graffiti, that reminded everyone that Capitalism sucked harder than a hoover on amphetamines. Or something along those lines. Which is all really well although “preaching to the converted” did spring to mind, but mostly I was very hot. My attention was instead directed towards the menu, in the hope that this would provide me with a much needed icy margarita. The drinking list was disappointingly short though, with much space devoted instead to views the establishment found offensive (how about a lack of margaritas?). I was gently reminded, among other things, that sexist, homophobic or racist comments would not be tolerated, you know, because they’re positively embraced in the rest of Berlin. But not here. Here would-be offenders had been given a written warning.
“Whoa, you know, the other day this guy came in wearing a KKK robe made from old copies of Playboy and DEAD KITTENS and asked me if I had Feuer to burn a picture of Harvey Milk, and I was like, you haven’t read our menu, that is SO totally not on”
“Whaaaaaaat? And it was written down and everything. Man, that’s outrageous! I’m SO unbelievably outraged that I’m going to start a FB group. Thank God for people like you though, shining beacons of civil rights.”
“Who does he think we are? Starbucks?”
Having read the eager manifesto and being on the left side of the political spectrum myself, I thought I could escape the evening without treading on anybody’s toes, but the list was so comprehensive that following it was akin to dancing the tango with a millipede. So if any of the friendly waiters happened to have overheard me, I’m really sorry, guys. My comments were taken out of context. As a white middle class woman myself, I think that Naomi Klein is an awesome author and clearly in touch with the less privileged in society. Her magnum opus No Logo, which I have had the pleasure of reading, is an brilliant, inspiring and above all nuanced reflection on the role played by corporations in today’s society. Before Ms Klein and her Promethean Feuer, mankind humanity lived surrounded by unicorns and rainbows, blissfully ignorant of the inherent deviousness and EVIL espoused by corporations. I especially like how she, instead of highlighting potentially useful activities like pushing for new legislation, instead encourages readers to attend another yet amorphous demonstration against “globalisation”. It leaves would-be leftists like me with more time to enjoy wine and, you know, get properly outraged.
Firemen and Hot Weather Berlin Style
Sunday saw temperatures rising to 37º (close to 100 Fahrenheit). Those of us who hadn’t escaped to the lakes had no other option but to seek refuge in the shade, lay on our backs and gasp like an asthmatic pug. Even my deodorant, it seems, had left for cooler climes. We were walking back from Frühstück, hopping from shade to shade like a couple of sweaty ninjas, when we noticed a sudden shower of water at the end of the road. We initially assumed that some overheated and desperate citizens had burst a fire hydrant. As we drew closer, we were instead met with images of the local firefighters hosing down a grateful and ever growing crowd of people. It was one of those quintessentially Berlin scenes in which Germanic order meets the capital’s predisposition for pandemonium. An impromptu choreography soon developed in which children and adults would run in front of the firemen and stand there semi-defiantly, the firemen cooperatively spraying them with water till they ran away squeaking with delight. A cyclist would occasionally drive by, cheerfully accepting their dousing, eliciting applause from the crowd for being such a good sport. The loudest cheer came when the firemen briefly and rather playfully targeted a passing police car giving a brief yet contained glimpse into Berlin’s anarchic soul.
Eventually the inevitable happened, an over-enthusiastic little girl tripped over in sheer excitement and the whole thing was immediately stopped as the firemen came to her rescue, producing a collective “aaaaaaaaaah”, and securing their romantic prospects fort the foreseeable future. We stood uncertain of what would happen next. In London they would have called the whole thing off but this was Berlin. Well they carried on, but only after assessing that it was a small bump. The girl, blessed by the blissful amnesia that characterises children, soon rejoined the action. Besides a group of giggling women in lightly coloured summer dresses had just turned up. As my boyfriend, “I can’t imagine what the firemen are getting out of it.”
You know you’re in Prenzlauer Berg/Mitte…
When you spot a guy with the ubiquitous plastic rimmed frames and a t-shirt that proudly reads “Helvetica Neue”. Damn right, because Helvetica is for plebs, right? That is for people who still have an iPhone 3GS. Now, if you were really clever you would’ve had it printed in Arial. Bet you didn’t think of that! Except you probably wouldn’t have been able to tell them apart. I assume you’re one of those people who sneer when the menu is printed in Comic Sans. Or when somebody tells you it is.
