Berlin

Wrote this last Sunday, just posting it now.

Oh where shall I start? Berlin. I shall start in Berlin. Forgive the dramatic opening – I just finished role-playing a violent, spatula related death via text message.

So we went to Berlin this weekend. But this weekend actually starts Thursday night. See, I done made friends here in this city. Oh god who would have seen that coming?! There’s the Czech man-creature, obviously, but there’s a girl in my program name Sara who is not like the others. Which is to say I find her interesting, engaging, and she’s smarter than me. She’s also the second person I’ve said that about here, the first being you-know-who and the third being her boyfriend Max. I hate being the dumbest one in any given group, but its passive, "this is actually awesome and I don’t know what I’m talking about" kind of hate. It’s like saying I hate hot showers because they feel too good. I mean, if I had to choose between being the smartest in a group and the dumbest, I would pick “dumbest” any day of the week. Any how, Sara and Max: Sara is a history student at CU, and Max a fine arts photography student in Pittsburg (I think). Sara is here with the program, and she picked Prague because you can’t throw a rock in this city without hitting something old. Max isn’t studying, but came with her because he wanted to spend a semester abroad anyway. The two rented a small little apartment in a basement in Wenceslas, and have up to this point been each other’s main (only?) source of company. Well, Sara and I have a class together Mondays and Wednesdays, and we began talking that way, which is when I figured out hey! She’s a smartie! We spent most of the spa towns trip hanging out with each other, plus Martin and Anthony, and by the end I’d pretty much decided “yup, you’re interesting and that’s a valuable thing here.” Two Thursdays ago, Sara, Max, and I got an early dinner and spent most of the evening walking and talking and interacting and generally behaving like well spoken individuals. The following Sunday we got tea, and then dinner, and then a movie, and then hung out in their apartment with the addition of another person. We did it again this most recent Thursday, but instead of spending that much money, I cooked dinner, Max made a salad, and they all stayed at my place until I finally had to kick them out at 1:45 in the morning because I was falling asleep and Sara and I had to be on a bus to Berlin at 7:30 am.

The bus ride to Berlin was unpleasant, because I was exhausted and couldn’t really fall asleep comfortably. And because I was tired, hungry, and dingy feeling, I wasn’t in the best of moods. So my first reaction, once we got inside the city itself, was “I don’t like it here, I want to go home.” Home, in this scenario, being Prague. It’s interesting, I think, that I’ve started conceptualizing Prague as home. I mean, I did something similar at Gonzaga when things were still fun and hunky dory, but as soon as things got bad it was a nice little slice of hell and home became my parents’ place again. So maybe I’m thinking of Prague as home because everything has been great so far with the exception of two long weeks that weren’t really ok. I’m trying not to let this convince me that I belong in Prague, because if I let myself think that way, leaving is going to be even harder and I’m going to push to come back and maybe that isn’t such a bad thing but I need more time to think about that. Anyway, Berlin is awfully new. It feels very young, and as a person who is 80 at heart, I don’t especially like that. And of course the structure itself is “young” or really just new. I mean, I’m not surprised, as far as I know, the city was basically flattened in ’45 and had to be rebuilt, and I think the Berliners never got out of the mindset “we can build it bigger, we can build it newer” because all the buildings are incredibly new. I think I can count on one hand how many buildings I saw that looked like they were built between the end of WWII and maybe the late 90s. Daniella was saying that every time she comes to Berlin it looks different because nothing stays up for long. Compared to Prague where it’s almost bizarre to see a building built in the last ten years, it’s weird. And because of how new everything is, it felt very much like a German LA to me. Everything is new, there are wide streets everywhere which are full of cars, and even though the buildings are big, they’re spread out. I went for a walk Sunday morning and found streets tucked away from the main thoroughfare are quaint, and in some cases even beautiful in the brisk October air and in the light of a late Sunday morning. But I don’t think I’d go back. Not when there are so many other places I’d rather go.

Friday once we got into the city, we took an incredibly brief tour around and then headed back for the hotel. I took a shower to scald my skin off, then Sara and I got dinner. It was a shock to my system to have to pay $20 for a meal again, instead of $6. And then we headed back to the hotel and did nothing. We were both exhausted and a little cranky and neither of us are really inclined to involve ourselves in “night life” anyway. Sara was out by 8:30, I think I was gone an hour later.

Saturday we went with the program to a museum about East Berlin under the Soviets, which was a hoot. Nothing better than mocking failed regimes over the remains of their crumbled empire. Next was another history museum, which was free because it was celebrating 25 years of being open. We spent maybe an hour and a half, two hours in an exhibit covering German history from basically 400 AD to 1914 (I think. It looked like it started WWI, though). Now, I’m the kind of person who takes their sweet ass time going through an exhibit because I feel COMPELLED to look at and appreciate everything. I think it’s something I picked up from going to art museums with Uncle Roger, because if he’s going to spend an hour in front of a painting, god knows there’s really no use in rushing yourself. At first, out of the corner of my eye I could see Sara ping ponging between displays like a kid in a candy store. It’s a funny image in my mind’s eye, me plodding along at a pretty consistence pace and Sara running from one thing to another and then back again. There was a point where I caught her in front of a portrait of one person or another, and she was so wide eyed and excited that she looked like she was going to bust, and then she just threw her scarf of her face and shouted “I’m so overwhelmed!” It was pretty funny. After about an hour, she got bored, as did the rest of our party, and while I would have liked to stay there and finish the exhibit the way it deserved, everyone else wanted to leave. It felt blasphemous to rush through the exhibit like that, and I at least made them walk the whole thing instead of cutting out half way through.

After that we rounded the corner to the Holocaust memorial, which if you don’t know it is about half a city block covered in huge concrete slabs whose only variation is height, which gives the general impression of a wave. Like someone put grey legos on a sheet, and shook, and this is the moment before they all flew off. The first couple are maybe knee height, but as you walk further in, the blocks eventually double your height, maybe hitting 12ft at their highest. Walking through it alone is a little surreal, because everything is grey and its pretty disorienting, and your only point of reference is where you think you saw other people walking. I’m not sure how that related to the Holocaust, but it certainly invites introspection.

There was lunch, and then we decided to find one of the standing sections of the Berlin Wall. Up to this point, Sara had been making all the decisions and generally leading us in the right direction. Of course, up to this point we’d been moving on one axis – East to West – along the main street. I think she reoriented her brain to think of east and west as north and south, and when she was looking at the map to get us to the Berlin Wall, she was going to have us walking 90° in the wrong direction. I don’t know where it came from, but as long as you don’t stick me underground (or really in any vehicle I'm not driving), I pretty much always have a good sense of where I am in relation to other things. For Prague that means I have little islands around the metro stops I use where I’m fairly familiar with what’s around, and when I have nothing better to do I ride the trams to fill in the foggy areas and connect my little islands. Except for in the middle of the Old Town Square because the streets are too narrow and there’s no fucking logic. Anyway, in Berlin because we’d done nothing but walk and drive, I was able to look at the map and mostly figure out where it was. Emily’s got some pretty funny pictures of me trying to explain to Sara that East was actually behind us and we needed to go south a little bit, and as I lose my patience my arm gestures get bigger. Finally she capitulated and I played Magellan for our little group. There’s also a picture of me holding the map upside down. In my defense, we were walking south and I was trying to visualize if we needed to turn left or right.

We got to the wall, took some pictures, acted like assholes, walked back the direction we came to see the parliament building, and headed back to the hotel, which involved using the Metro, which I am still not good at figuring out in Prague, much less Berlin. We also decided, while dicking around on the platform, that our whole day had more or less been an indie film – nothing really important happened, it was a character study full of strange but entertaining interactions between strange people – and Sara dubbed it Walking While Swimming. Back to the hotel, then dinner, and then back to the hotel again. Sara and I scalded our skin off in the shower (again), then climbed into bed and started reading. We stayed up talking about boys and school, which for us meant a feminist discussion of who should pay for the check, and how disillusioned we are with our classmates lack of intellectual hunger. Also trading first impressions of each other, which made me giggle. I didn’t have a strong reaction to her, I just automatically lumped her in with Sabrina and Emily as “quiet, nerdy, shy, maybe a little awkward.” Of course now that I know her, the only one of those that’s true is “nerdy.” She said her first impression of me was “hipster girl from DU” which made me laugh. I mean, it’s not necessarily untrue, I am a hipster, but I like to think that I’m the proto-hipster because I liked all this crap before it was cool to be uncool, and I will continue to like it afterwards. Although bright red skinny jeans, matching lipstick, short ass hair and eyebrow piercings don’t really help my case.

Sunday we slept in, though I had a horrible nightmare where I was tossed down a cobblestone street Aztec style. Hard to sleep much after that. We had breakfast, and I went for a walk and waxed pensive. Always something nice, and I’ve yet to find anything that brings me quite as much peace as plugging my headphones in and wandering no where in particular. I don’t recall what was bothering me in detail, only I know I was feeling… uneasy. I wish I could remember what about. I think it might have something to do with Berlin being the most “American” experience I’ve had since getting to Europe, and it was disquieting to think that as profound a time I am having, in the grand scheme of things, it is impermanent. I hate that. But it’s hard to stay upset on a beautiful Sunday afternoon walking around neighborhoods that look like they belong on a postcard.

We piled back on the bus, with a short, maybe hour, stop in Potsdam where the Allies split up Germany and Berlin. Sara, of course, was as pleased as you can imagine. Also, a funny thing happened on the way out of Potsdam. We were driving through a neighborhood full of these beautiful, old houses like the ones in the Wash Park area at home, and I found myself imagining taking care of one of those houses, and what my kitchen would be like, and if we’d have a tree house or a swing set in the back for the kids, and hosting Christmas dinners and my someone special do the dishes afterwards and how very well I think I’d sleep at night if that was my reality. And then I realized I’d been thinking that way all weekend. German kids must be cuter than Czech kids, because every time I saw a family I starting thinking about the places I’d like to vacation with my kids. JESUS CHRIST I JUST WROTE THAT SENTENCE. My kids. Oh my god, what is in the water there that this is something I’m actually thinking about with anything other than horror?! But I think it’s the Europe thing. Specifically, I think it’s the Prague thing. The emphasis on things instead of people making you happy is so far and away removed from the American idea of purchasing happiness, that its become very easy to put my happiness in terms of the relationships around me. Also, since to spend time with my friends I have to talk to them instead of go out and get dinner or what have you, I’ve been getting closer to a select few. I think it might have something to do with that, with a shift in what’s important to me. I think it might also have something to do with the fact that these classes are so under stimulating that I’m not getting any sort of satisfaction from them, which is kind of a projection of my career.