Berlin or bust

Everybody Pray

I have found my dream apartment. Linienstrasse, Mitte. Five minutes from Borsigstrasse.

Five minutes from Best Soup in Berlin. Five minutes from my office.

Sixth floor (which means seventh here). No elevator. Not everyone's idea of dreamy. But excellent for Schnitzel-afflicted arse.

Balcony. Kitchen. Bedroom with wide wooden bed. Living room with sofa, stereo, bookcase. Sloping attic roof. Sun. When it actually shines.

And. A Desk. The Desk. Where the Book Must Be Written.

Wide. Wooden. At the Window. Berlin Mitte unfurling beyond. The Neue Synagogue shimmers.

I walked in Saturday, breathless. Right away I knew.

The problem: Seven other people were looking at it too. Some of them acted nice. And sane. Three were very tall, which is not fair. Tall = Grown-up. Five foot three and three quarters = mad smiley girl from America who breaks glass bowls and takes lots of lovers and has no current income.

At least that's how the subletter, a young architect heading to Basil for a new job, was looking at me.

I said, This is my dream flat. I will do anything. I will pay more rent. I will give you proof of accounts. My uncle can write a letter.

I said, This desk! This is exactly as I imagined it. The spot where I will write my book.

I said, You're an architect? My father's a landscape architect. And his brothers are/were both architects.

I said, Maybe I should just sit myself down here and stay all weekend, until the apartment is mine.

That last one was meant to be a joke. Um. And the one before that. Worst-ever teacher's pet. I kind of wanted to vomit at myself.

Angelina, Katrinka, Vagina, and Me

Last spring, Brad Pitt visited an architectural office on Borsigstrasse, in Berlin Mitte. 

The press noted his presence. They also noted the renovation of a rooftop apartment on Borsigstrasse. The landlord was called. "Is this to be the Berlin pad of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie?"

"Kein Kommentar," replied the landlord. No comment.

Photos of building under renovation promptly appeared in every media outlet.

Several months ago, my cousin and her brood moved into a newly renovated rooftop apartment. One morning, she walked to the Bäckerei at the corner. "Did you know," whispered the girl behind the counter, "that Brad and Angelina live on this street?"

"Really," replied my cousin coolly.

"Borsigstrasse __!"

"No," she said. "That's me."

But now, my dear friends, it is I who live in the apartment of Angelina Jolie. My cousin has abandoned gray Berlin for sunny, exotic isles. I have abandoned shit-ridden Friedrichshain for...

...a material a material a material a material...

Mitte. Münzstrasse 23. Montag, 19:45.

"My name should be on the list."

"Hmm..."

"I'm a guest of  _____. L-I-L-A-"

"No matter. We'll add you in."

Dark hall. Draped in velvet. Opens onto two rooms, left and right, ceilings domed. Jammed with people. I turn left. Boothed-in tables, white crate seats, lining either wall. A bank of black leather cubes running down the center.

I squeeze onto a black block, guard a spot beside me. My cousin is putting the kids to bed; she'll be late.

Buzzing all around me, Berlin's literati, fashionisti, artsy-fartsy. Gesticulating wildly: A gray-maned man, blazer striped in black and silver. His wife, pointy limbed, olive sheath crinkled along her skin. Gliding by: A man who towers, his face black marble, carved.  Wedged behind me: A gamine of a girl, Hepburn hair, neck entwined in a long taupe scarf.

The wall on my left opens into a bar. On the wall to my right flickers a large square of light.

"Welcome to the fashion show!" A redhead by the windows, lean and middle-agish. She wears a summer dress, sprayed in flame and foliage. Beneath it, a white blouse, pale pantaloons. A man on a platform. He begins to strum a guitar. His shirt is red-checkered, like a cowboy.

I Take It Back

I was still hungry. I wasn't done writing. I ordered a Champignon Stange from the viv-Lounge counter: mushrooms encased in a long tube of crispy wheat, dotted with flax seeds and sesame seeds.

Two pairs of parents entered. Five kids. One boy climbed atop the Brio platform. Banged block against block. Crashed tracks to the floor. Ouch. His little brother perched on his mother’s lap and mewled like a wet cat.

How quickly it happens. viv-Lounge = Dante’s Inferno

My cousin says it's intolerable, Prenzlauer Berg, all the twenty-something yuppie-bio-mamis from the West, who drove the Ossies (East Berliners) out and act like motherhood is the end all and be all of life. My cousin and her husband are pitching hard for me to move to Mitte. It's home to artists, they say, our age. Small contemporary art galleries. Classy restaurants full of adults (only). Parents (like them) who actually have perspective.

What I love about P.B., though, is the wide open squares. The broad cobblestone streets. In P.B. I can breathe. In Mitte I feel squeezed.

Then again, in Mitte I can hear myself think.

The Brio boy is SCREECHING.

What was that I said about wanting a baby? Get me OUT of here.

What I Love (so far): Addendum

1. The city after Donnerwetter

Monday night God turned the sky into a bucket. He flipped it over and wouldn't stop dumping. I woke to thunder claps, and rain that fell too thick for raindrops. I didn't know it could fall like that. Then I drifted back to asleep and dreamt of life-sized posters of Käthe Kollwitz.

In the morning my parents helped me bring my bigger suitcase to the sublet. How it happened that the two of them, ages 67 and 74, were the ones to hoist the monster-case up three flights, I don't know. I was futzing with the house keys and weighed down by a backpack and another bag — but still. I should be ashamed. Instead I laughed and conducted them up the stairs like a traffic cop. Fortunately they were smiling.

Pretty soon, I was not. Smiling. The cable connection the subletter (-lettee?) had set up for me only worked for her own junky PC, not my Vaio. I was desperate to post the blogs I had saved on my laptop, not to mention I type like a cripple on German keyboards. Bad enough that it was cable, not wireless, and I'd be forced to sit on a hardback chair at a tiny falling-apart desk. I had already fought and failed to hook up at Hotel Am Zoo and now suspected my laptop was to blame. I felt sick.

My parents had sunk into one of the bulbous sofas, paging through a Berliner weekly for cultural offerings, while I fumed at the computers, wishing I had pocketed one of Parenting.com's IT guys for the trip, or better yet, my coworker Jesse, who knows everything and beats me at Boggle every time.