Berlin or bust

Who knew...

That in Germany it's unheard of to knock on a neighbor's door and ask to borrow the ironing board?

You should have seen the looks I got.

Like I'd requested a pair of their underwear.

Puh-leez.

Proof that Berlin is not the Germany you thought you knew

This weekend was Karneval der Kulturen in Kreuzberg.

The Boy said, you must see it. He's away, though, visiting family in Franconia. Dylan had work to do. Amie is afraid of crowds. My cousin is in Costa Rica.

So I went alone. Me and my half-ass digi-cam.

The weather was outrageous. The crowds were hyperventilation-worthy. I climbed out of the subway into a mash of hundreds of thousands and nearly dashed back underground. But no. Modern German Culture must be pursued.

Here is what I found:

Your typical Bavarian Schuhplattlers.

Just like my Oma used to dress.

How much do you love her?

And him?! Work that orange velour. 

This dude was attached to...

...this thing. Which had something to do with...

...this thing. Um. Really, I have no idea.

Hula hoops. Never out of style.

Do you see her? World's tallest, palest Mariachi dancer, twirling in the background.

The riot of color! The flurry of motion!

And again!

A little less color, a lot less motion: Your intrepid ex-pat photographer. Getting a friggin' tan while on the job (she who has not had a friggin' tan in seven years). Woo-hoo.

Them Barcelona Blues

Monday night I arrived back in Berlin after five days in Barcelona.

I did not want to believe the Boy when he said it would be hard to come back. I did not want to accept his vision of Berlin as gray and cold and closed-up tight. "But it is new to me!" I protested. "Hip and unfurling. My writer's muse."

But oh how I yearn today. For sun so warm I bare my arms. For hills, raking the sky. For cacti, clawing slopes sideways. For houses the color of sand, the color of cantaloupe, the color of sighs.

I want palms. I want Vespas. I want the frothing coffee of Hotel Oriente.

Black-iron balconies, laundry draped like jewels. Gaudi: Shattered porcelain. Blazing castles. Knuckles punching the sky.

Most of all, though, I miss the sea.

I had no more than thirty minutes on Barcelona's beach. It was Sunday afternoon. I had eaten bad paella with the Boy. Rice neon yellow, gobbed and wet. No flavors unfolding -- just a single saffron slam. One could not peel the skin off the prawns. The clams were gummy. The cuttlefish might have been pre-fab.

Strangely, I did not mind so much. It was sitting at an outdoor table in Barceloneta, the fisherman district, our faces sucking up the sun, that had mattered most. And that we had accomplished.

No Assim(b)ilation Necessary

Last night. Too tired to think to talk to read to write. I climb into bed. Number 6 knitting needles. Skinny white mohair, from the Strickshop on Wörtherstrasse. Cast on. Loops too tight. Unravel 'em. Cast again. Bravo! Second row: Knit two. Purl two. Knit two. Purl two... Wait, how many loops was that? Eins zwei drei vier...

It's not until I reach 21 that I realize I've been counting in German. All along.

This morning. Biking to the Oberholz. A small blue car, corner of Linien and Acker. Passenger window unrolls. I brake. A lady, silver-coiffed, leans from the driver's side. "Can you tell me," she asks, "how I get to Auguststrasse?" Next street over, I explain. "Turn links up here, then links again." She thanks me. Jets away.

I re-mount. She thought I belonged. Even better: I knew the way.

Then again. Friday night. Low-key art opening, hot hot hot spot Heidestrasse. Where I once sought, and failed, to find Bayreuth Boy. This time I am on his arm. Here to meet Yogi D., his best and oldest Kumpel.

Unassembled furniture, Saran-wrapped. Badminton courts, painted half-size onto concrete floor. Wooden posts positioned atop. Nailed to each a decorated drunkard photo, plus matching mathematical triangles, windshield wipers, the like.

The art is by an Englishman in a red plaid shirt. I do not understand. But I do like Yogi D.

He is a sculptor. A vegetarian. A yogi. Gaze steady. Hair dark and wavy. Reaches to the chin. 

Sculptor J. is also in attendance. Another vegetarian. Far less hair, though. He drinks a VitaCola. Koffein Kick! trills the label. The other option: Weizen beer. I refrain from either. "Worried about calories?" teases Sculptor J. "No," I say. "Caffeine." He gets it. On the night in which I did not find Bayreuth Boy, Sculptor J. drank ten Vitas in a row. He bounced till morning. Slept two hours. Woke still whirling.  Later I learn that he is sober. Then I get it.

God Bless the Hühn

Signs I have been gone too long:

1. The Upper Westside. Stores sardine-canned. Every time I bumped a shoulder: "Sorry" came swifter than a blink. "Oh," I would say. "Sorry!" A beat too late to count.

2. Rosemary's bathroom. Closing the door onto darkness. Split-second panic: Is the light switch outside? Or in?

3.  Lunch menu. Thursday: Grilled chicken salad. Friday: Grilled chicken salad. Saturday: Grilled chicken salad. Unbreaded. Unfried. Unschwein. I cannot get enough.

Kaufrausch

Day 3 and my heart is exhausted. Expanding, contracting.... I love New York. I love it not. I  love New York. I love it not.

Afraid to open to the pieces, the people I have always held close. For when I leave Sunday, I will have to miss them all over again.

Small treasures:

Corner deli guy. Eyes flashing delight when I walked in. Wouldn't let me pay for my SMART water. I don't even know his name.

Cheryl. Hurrah for therapists! Hurrah.

The Flying Saucer Cafe. Orange walls. Green padded chairs. Tall Fair Trade coffee (yes, so tasty in Berlin, but so very tiny!). Half a novel written here. Lovers and friends collected here. Thirtieth birthday rung in here.

Barneys J Crew Anthropologie Sephora Bloomies. O. The Beauty! As if God knew I had only Thursday to assemble an entire winter wardrobe for a land in which winter lasts six months. I shopped for eight hours straight. Have never found (and purchased) so much loveliness in a single day. O. Kaufrausch. The Joy!

The Me I am here. Feisty. Secure. Fashion-forward. Fluent in the City and its offerings. In Berlin, I am one quivering question: Where to find ...? How to say ...? How to use ...? When to kiss ...?

Then again, it is the Not Knowing that infuses even the insertion of an ATM card with mystery (upside down? backwards?). Every step a chance at a stumble.

Perhaps that is why I need Berlin. To be a beginner. All over again.

Open. Awake. Humble.

Except not so humble that I buy my clothes in Berlin. O. Not that. Never.

Done.

So many people. So close together.

Crammed around the baggage claim. Stacked one behind the other in the Taxi line. Exhaust fumes curling themselves around my neck, into my nostrils.

So much money. The Dasani machine ate my two bucks. The cabbie ate my fifty. The landlord eats my thousands. And the heat isn't even working.

So much crap. In so small an apartment. How Possible to Survive a Space so Infinitesimal? Crammed with Unnecessaries: Books. Clothes. Ugly Dolls. Aluminum-painted mirrors.

So much English. Everywhere. And nothing not for sale.

I can't do it anymore. I don't want to.

Even the Diet Dr. Pepper I drank today was too sweet for me.

Bad Is Not Relative

Wednesday, 21:30. Kaffee Burger, Torstrasse 60.

Past the bar, in the back. Red-walled entry. Tall man on a stool.

"Vagina Jones is performing tonight?" I ask.

"Ja."

"Two tickets, please. How much is that? Wait, I have a student pass. Does that count for something? "

"Nee." He shakes his head. Sadly. "Five Euros each."

I turn to Katrinka. "Hope it's worth it."

"Oh, yes," says the tall man, now in English. "Star lineup." Then: "You're not German? I wouldn't have known."

"Ooh!" Katrinka nudges me. "Listen to that!"

I am alight in the dark. "If we kept talking, you would." But he's pretty much made my night.

Through the hall, another bar. Six round tables clumped. A band of four or five. Testing testing testing. Too much bass. African-American guy at the mike. Gray dred-nests. Anthony Baggette, practicing his "energized Jazzoetry" (Ex-Berliner, September 2007). Beside him a younger kid, white sweatsuit. Trying to hip-hop. Their pitches clash.

A grimace is caked to my face. I claw Katrinka's thigh. "We can leave anytime," I hiss.

She nods, bright-eyed. It is the look of one trying to make the best of something bad. "See the ammunition belt that guy is wearing?" She means Stevie Ray Vaughn's Doppelgänger. "It's full of harmonicas. Him I'd like to hear."

The Things Berliners Do That Will Do Them In

...the next time they ride the A train.

1. Stare. Oh my god, STARE.

The first few days I was freaking out. Were my baggy pants that unforgivable? Was my hair so nasty? Eyeliner on my nose? What What What?!?!

There are stares in New York, to be sure: the swift male double-take; the long male linger. Best ignored. There are stares in California, too. The gaze of total strangers. Served with a smile. Exhausting. (Dude, I don't know you. Must we engage?)

The German Stare (rampant across the country) is NOT sexual in nature. It doesn't feel friendly either. It's a pair of eyes taking you in and locking way too long. Nary a flinch. The over-fifties are the worst, but the under-fifties are not immune.

The New Yorker in me reacts one way (Look away, quick! Hold that gaze and an ugly encounter is sure to follow.) The Californian reacts in another (A slowly dawning grin. For surely this stare is precursor to a smile. NOT.)

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.)

Strange But True (continued)

Today I saw a bicyclist with a helmet. This in itself is strange in Berlin. Only (some) children wear helmets. As I got closer, I realized the helmet was an actual globe, sliced in half. Pale blue ocean, pastel swaths of land. He had strapped it beneath his chin with I know not what.

I also don't know what half of the world he chose to wear on his head. It seems like it should matter. Next time I see him, I will ask.

Strange But True

Keys must be turned in the opposite direction.

Bathroom light switches reside outside the room. Always a pleasant surprise when you've already closed the public-toilet door behind you.

Diet Dr. Pepper is nowhere to be found. Even the cherry vanilla variety.

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...

What Makes Me Crazy (so far)

1. Das Tastentgerät

If I havenÄt emailed zou, donÄt be mad. I keep losing track of the @, which is crouching beneath the Q and requires the pressing of a mzsterious Alt Gr kez, camped out beside the space bar. Oh, and as zou might have guessed, I am totallz flummoxed because the Y, a much neglected letter here, has traded places with the Z. äAnd donÄt even get me started on the apostropheönor for that matter the semicolon!ä Oz. I mean, Oy.

2. Die Kacke

Berliners, like New Yorkers, love their dogs. Big dogs little dogs bald dogs hairy dogs. Dogs sit in cafes. Dogs enter shops. Dogs drink at bars. Berliners, unlike New Yorkers, do not carry plastic poop-scooping baggies. Instead, Berliners, unlike New Yorkers, wear closed-toe shoes. With very thick soles. Even in the heat. There goes half my wardrobe.

3. Die Zigaretten

Everywhere. 'Nuff said.