Berlin or bust

Standing Tall (or, Friedrichshain Classic)

Last Sunday, walking to Ring-Bahn. Camera in hand. I couldn't not shoot. I couldn't not share.

Forgive me.

They Just Can't Help Themselves

These Friedrichschain Künstlers. Lucky for the rest of us.

Most Excellent Friedrichschain Metal Door

Sure, there's Kaka galore, but where else can  you find shops with such phat metal doors? An unspoken rule amongst taggers leaves these paintings untouched. Mostly.

Little Lucy Is Back

But why is she angry? And why did she hang her cat? And what does this have to do with Katzenschaukel a few days back?

I am too old for the Friedrichshain graffiti team... An annotated version for us over-twenties, please. 

Encounter #1

Late Monday night. U5 to Samariterstrasse.

A posse of Italian alterna-punks boards: Tipsy and delighted with themselves.  An explosion of laughter and curses on a mute German train.

A scrawny fellow — long nose, mop of black curls — sings I know not what. I can't not smile. He catches my eye. "Do you know Arctic Monkeys?" Delicious accented English. Every syllable rolls upward.

"No."

"You must download! Song: 'Flop.' Like — " he tilts forward, catches himself on the silver poles.

"Okay, 'Flop'!" I laugh. "Are they American? The Arctic Monkeys?"

He furrows his brow. His glasses are rimless rectangles. "No..." His friend jumps in: "Sheffield!"

"Ah, Scottish."

We are nearing Samariterstrasse. "Here I must go," he tells me dolefully.

"But me too — this is my stop." And I follow the tumbling boys onto the platform, up the stairs to the street. I walk away.

"Stella!" cries Flop-boy after me.

Most Excellent Friedrichshain Graffiti

"Cat's Cradle"

Hummus in a Can (or, Bobby's Big Three)

Do we have this in the states? Please say no.

It was purchased from the young Turkish shopkeeper on the corner, late Thursday evening. "Do you have hummus?" I asked, piling tomatoes and toothpaste on the counter. "Sure!" He darted away, then darted back. "Oh..." I stared. "I'm from New York. We buy it refrigerated. Fresh." He explained that you could get it fresh, at the big Plus store around the corner (now closed). A guy sold hummus from the trough. "But here, you know, people don't buy it and it goes bad."

So I paid 1 Euro 69 for the can. Knowing I shouldn't. Feeling too guilty not to. I get stupid like that in stores sometimes.

I left the shop, rounding the corner, when the shopkeeper came charging after me. He was waving my mega-pack of rainbow sponges (let us not discuss the condition of the sponges my subletter left behind). He wanted to know how long I'd been here, and why my German was good. His name was Deniz, he said, with a Z. I asked him where to find good Middle Eastern food. I told him I'd had the worst falafel of my life in Prenzlauer Berg. (Imagine: A falafel without crust. Without kernels. Tahini without taste. Three balls of pure mush. Mealy tomatoes. Now bite. A man I once loved taught me the essence of a falafel. And that was not it.)

What I Love (so far)

Not sure yet.

I remember this city differently. I remember it brighter, cleaner, greener.

I remember it...mine.

That was four years ago. I was coming off of two weeks in Tutzing and Munich. Tutzing: Exquisite. Quaint. Wealthy. And not alway an easy place for me to be. Ein vergiftetes Paradies, my cousin called it — a poisoned paradise — the lakeside home in which my mother grew up. The setting of a tempestuous family history that still hasn't righted itself, not even close.

And Munich: Beautiful. Preserved. Bourgeois-ist of the bourgeois. To my mind at the time, dead. Grumpy retirees in Bavarian get-ups. A younger jet-set, straight-jacketed into Marco Polo and LaCoste. 

In Berlin I found a pulse. Faces of different colors. Strangers who sometimes even smiled. Young people, everywhere. Each of their own mold. Graffiti blossoming like wildflowers. History embedded into street corners (and beneath!): the Brandenburger Tor, Hitler's bunker, the Old Jewish Synagogue, chunks of the Wall. Plus, pre-war Art Deco, old commie housing units, cobblestone streets, sleek new buildings by the world's best architects. Art studios you could simply wander into, music, theatre...