Capital meanders

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The flight to Berlin passes by so quickly, it feels like stepping into a device that pretends to be an airplane and has all the usual equipment and gadgets, but just for show, and really beams you to your destination. Quite convenient that they also figured out a way to make people fall asleep once the plane is 'in the air' and wake them up again once it is 'about to land'.

I take the train to Warschauer Straße, and once I step off the train and walk across the bridge to Friedrichshain, I get a strange feeling of being on the road, but not quite the way I'm used to. I'm still in the same country, I share the same mother tongue with most people, and, despite the multicultural-big-city flair, it still feels like Germany. The checkout guy in the little eatery where I order a €2.50-pizza for dinner asks "Alles?", to which I repeat that I only want a mozzarella-and-capsicum pizza, but when he looks at me like I've just said the dumbest thing imaginable and says "Nee...is dat alles?", I realize that some things are indeed a bit different in Berlin, and answer embarrassedly in the affirmative. I walk for about 10 minutes until I reach my destination, a pleasant little lodging right above 'Paule's Metal-Eck', close to Simon-Dach-Straße, a street lined with pubs and restaurants, and highly popular with tourists and locals alike, where I take a shower and soon after fade into oblivion.

The next morning, I walk along Karl-Marx-Allee, formerly known as Stalin-Allee, its Brutalist architecture a striking reminder that this part of the city used to be in the Soviet sector. Everything is concrete, grey and functional, but little else. Maybe intimidating. The Frankfurter Tor reminds me of the towers at the main railway station in Minsk, and the rows of appartment blocks seem to be straight out of Chişinău or Kyiv. As I reach Alexanderplatz, I think the same thing that Berlin's mayor Klaus Wowereit recently said about it: "Ugly." From Alex, I start being a good tourist, and take in all the major sights along the way to the Brandenburger Tor, including Fernsehturm, Rotes Rathaus, Marienkirche, Berliner Dom, Museumsinsel, Humboldt-Universität, Russian Embassy, Pariser Platz.

I walk through the Brandenburger Tor, take a sharp left, and suddenly stand in front of the Holocaust Memorial, a somewhat subtle structure that becomes all-engulfing as you delve deeper into this maze of 2,711 concrete stelae, one for each page of the Talmud. I can imagine that it could be a very powerful experience, were it not for the groups of Italian school kids running through the memorial, climbing on top of the stones, laughing and shrieking.
At the nearby Reichstag, the queues to get in are so long that it would take hours until you finally enter the seat of the German Parliament, a building which has only been fully completed in 1999, after long years of restoration and reconstruction.

I decide to return another day and walk to the Scheunenviertel North of the river Spree, where I visit some important sites of Jewish Berlin, most notably the Neue Synagoge, but also the Leo-Baeck-Haus, the seat of the Central Council of Jews in Germany and the European Jewish Congress, the old Jewish cemetery, which was destroyed by the Gestapo in 1943 and converted into a park, and some other memorials and monuments.
I visit the 'Silent Heroes'-exhibition, which documents incidents where non-Jewish Germans risked their lives by helping Jews, hiding them and supplying them with food, clothes and false papers, as well as the Blindenwerkstatt Otto Weidt, where deaf and blind Jews found work and protection from the Nazis.

At Prenzlauer Berg, I am quite disappointed to see that this once edgy and alternative area has turned into an overpriced refuge for hipsters and prematurely middle-aged pram pushers. The people there look at me with suspicion, as though I present a threat not only to their lifestyle, but also to their spoiled kids sitting in designer prams. They look as though they have become what once they loathed, and they probably know that I know, hence the disapproval. In a culture that is so self-conscious and under constant self-scrutiny, where people never dance as though nobody's watching and always seem to 'go to the cellar when they want to laugh', as the German idiom goes, they seem to react to my bewilderment at their sight either with a "Have I sold out?" or a defiant "Ach, some people never grow up". The only thing they still fight for is the best veggies at the manifold organic supermarkets, where they part with their money in exchange for that warm, nice feeling of making a difference, or at least for the illusion of doing so.

I walk back to Friedrichshain, and arrive after one and a half hours, realizing that the distances are much bigger than they look on the map, and that Berlin is indeed a vast, sprawling city.

The following day starts with an excursion to Kreuzberg. The borough is perhaps best-known for its large population of people with Turkish background, as well as being one of the most alternative and radical parts of Berlin. Unfortunately, it's also not prone to gentrification, and consequently rents have skyrocketed in recent years and many a hipster lured in by the edgy charm has replaced punks, hippies and squatters. Thankfully, it's not as mainstream as Prenzlauer Berg - yet - and until then one can still enjoy the unpredictable and creative atmosphere.
I take a stroll around, look at graffiti of varying quality and at whole mural concepts sprayed on houses and walls, browse through large coffeetable books in artsy bookshops and through records and CDs in a hardcore/punk-record store. Everybody seems to be going somewhere on their bikes (without helmets), taking their dog for a walk or just sitting in Görlitzer Park or on a bench at the riverside drinking beer, Bionade or Club Mate. In a delightful way living your life the way you want it seems to be the top priority in Kreuzberg, and its people appear to be defiantly doing just that, without giving a shit what anybody else might think of that.

I spend the next days visiting Charlottenburg, including posh Kurfürstendamm and the stunning Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche, nicknamed Hollow Tooth, which was bombed out during WWII, but left standing as an antiwar memorial, Schöneberg, where I come across the Kammergericht, a courthouse most famously known for being the site of the show trial against the conspirators of Operation Valkyrie, the plot to kill Hitler on 20 July 1944, and Kreuzberg again, where I buy some feta spreads, stuffed peppers and bread on the Turkish market and devour it sitting at the sunny riverside.
On Saturday, I walk into a manifestation against the rising rents in central Kreuzberg, where between 50-100 residents voice their disapproval by provoking the police, drumming, fiddling and playing nose flutes. Ace of Spades by Motörhead has probably never sounded better than when performed by half a dozen squatters with flutes up their noses. I waste away the rest of the day in a park drinking beer with a mate.

Sunday is flea market-day in Berlin, and I head to Mauerpark, which hosts the biggest one every week. The fact that it is warm and sunny has apparently not escaped anyone, as the place is packed. All of Berlin seems to be sitting on the grass around the market, drinking beer, eating and singing karaoke. The flea market itself is very colourful as well, and one can buy anything from used books to old cameras and gramophones, vintage clothes and shoes and heaps of silly trinkets that have been spending too many years in people's cellars or attics.

When I meet my French host Tristan in his flat in Kreuzberg, he seems to be extremely hungover and not really awake. He earns some money in Berlin repairing bikes, and his German is excellent, but he also speaks quite a decent English, not the most usual thing for French people. His flatmate Leila is busy weighing a white powder on a precision scale and putting one gram each into tiny envelopes. When I ask her about it, she says its for her and her boyfriend's consumption for later that night at a club. Some clubs in Berlin stay open until late afternoon the next day, so in order to keep going, you might have to boost your energy levels by using illegal substances, in a similar fashion to Tour de France-participants. I go to bed early that night.

To get out of the city for a while, I venture west to Spandau, which is part of Berlin but feels more like a separate city, and the locals like to think of themselves as Spandauers first. I visit the old town, which is pleasant enough for a stroll, but little more, and when I come across a Scientology stall, I go so far as to rant about them to the poor Christians at the stall right next to it. I quickly get bored by the citadel, so I move on to Siemensstadt, a Modernist housing estate that, together with five other ones, made it onto the UNESCO World Heritage List.

When I'm about to say bye to my hosts, Tristan says: "Can I ask you a question? You never seem to smile or joke. Why is that?" I don't really know how to respond to that, as I'm too embarrassed and shocked that I've come across to him as dull and boring, so I just mutter a few phrases, say my goodbyes, then I'm off. Maybe we just got off to a bad start, anyway we didn't spend much time together, and I rarely saw him smile either.

After a week Berlin leaves me with mostly very positive impressions. It seems like there's always something going on, which, combined with a stunning diversity and cultural richness, should assure that you can never get bored in Berlin. I like the alternative vibe and the relaxed way of living, and compared with other capitals, it's refreshingly affordable and full of green spaces. So far I would say it's definitely a city where I could see myself living, but it remains to be seen if I can find my own little niche where I can be comfortable and productive.

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