Berlin or bust

Not a steel girder after all

Let us revisit:

1. Health busted.
2. Sleep busted.
3. Heart busted.
4. Entire order of the universe busted -- due to BAD news from San Francisco.

In under four months.

The last item on the the list entailed a new twist: Fly home at the end of August. Just as my sublet runs out. Meaning: Fnd a new apartment and move and furnish the whole damn thing. In under three weeks.

It would have been funny. If I weren't hyperventilating.

Out of the blue, unprovoked by any of my Milanese Mafia connections, the woman I am subletting from called. "I am not returning from Hamburg in the fall," she informed me. "I like it too much... Of course, I'll keep the apartment in Berlin."

"Kah-lunk." (The sound of my jaw hitting the floor.) "Does that mean I can stay?????"

Seems God finally realized: Lilan might have enough to handle at the moment.

For the next three months, you'll continue to find me here, on Ryke Street, spitting distance from the Wasserturm, where the Nazis did horrific things but which now holds luxury condos. Even for the next five months, if the fancy takes me.

Thank you, God. Or the street-cleaners of Hamburg. Whoever had more to do with it. I really don't care.

Sometimes you must buy yourself a doll

Especially if it is the first Saturday in May and all Berlin's politically correct Prenzlauer Berg-ians are swarming the organic market on Kollwitz Platz, stocking up on small tart apples and ruffly tulips and white asparagus and forest mushrooms -- and you yourself are caught behind a thick gray veil, limbs slow and leaden.

This is Lotte. I saw her and I had no choice but to take her home.

Bayreuth Boy laughed. She is a typical Prenzlauer Berg enviro-hippie toy. I do not care.

She is made of felted wool. She has pale-blue undies beneath her dress. I would take her everywhere with me if people wouldn't think me loopy. As it is, my handbag (Lower East Side find, natch!) is vast enough that sometimes I can stash her without anyone the wiser.

Lotte means free. That's what I'm aiming for. 

Unpleasant, Unnecessary

Walking over cobblestones in high-heeled peep-toe pumps. In the rain. After dark.

But damn did they look hot.

Unpleasant, Unavoidable

Bicycling over cobblestones.

Such are the hardships of life in Prenzlauer Berg.

Other Matters of Grave Importance

1. Curtains

Beware the gauzy white fabric, drifting languidly from ceiling to floor. Beware even that same diaphanous swathe in a marachino cherry.

Dawn dawns and a rose-tinted sun stains my eyelids, rustling me from my dreams. On Chausseestrasse, thick navy blue beat back the day, granting vital extra hours to this immuno-challenged hypothyroidic Epstein-barrist, especially when caught in jet lag's trap (down at 2 a.m., up at 11).

Now it's three broken nights on Rykestrasse and I am mean and grumpy and downright delinquent. How severe is the prison sentence for stealing navy blue from your previous sublet and slapping it over the window of your current? Stop me before I do it. Please.

2. Cleo

She does not like German-brand salmon paté. She won't speak anything but English. She meows at the Boy and me till we follow her into the living room. It is the loftiest room in the flat, the one she has claimed for her own. Tufts of fur already sprout from the soft white rug. She hops onto the sofa (velvet cushions the color of olives, worn and patchy as fallen gentry). We try to pet her and she bats away our hands. We leave and she follows, peeping at our ankles.

Perhaps she simply needs us near, the scent of us, the heat, reminding her: This is home now. We are here. You are not alone.

3. Girlfriends

When I returned from San Francisco last week, I thought, I MUST foster female friendships NOW. A boyfriend is a blessing. A kindred-spirit cousin causes the heart to swell, the pulse to quicken. And yet. Girlfriends are roots. They fasten the soles of the feet to the ground. Without them, I would keel over at the ankles.

You have met the French waitress. She is boigant and delicious, cheeks the pink of a fresco'd angel. Let us call her Amie.

Berlin Relocation Number Three and a Half

Yesterday I moved. An aging lefty with patchwork jeans heaved my bags and boxes down five flights in Mitte and up three flights in Prenzlauer Berg. During the 10-minute drive between, he regaled me with thirty years of Berlin alterna-history. The influx of homosexuals in the seventies, he said, increased the appeal of the city for non-conventional artsy types such as him. Where homosexuals go, he insisted, creativity naturally follows. Lesbians too.

Naturally.

He was not pleased with my new choice of neighborhood. Sanitized to the point of soul-less-ness.

I could not fully disagree.

On Rykestrasse, the dilapidated charm for which I love Berlin has been painted over in spotless pastels. The storefronts are a string of bourgeois baby offerings. Retro lamps go for too much money. The cafes house pale-skinned thirtysomethings who sport designer denim. They prefer their coffee brewed from the bean.

So gentrified, it makes me vomit a little it into my mouth.

Kreuzberg, said the hippie, is much more diverse. Many Turks. Artists, too.

I know this.

And yet.

The streets of my new neighborhood are fields of cobblestones. The sky is wide, the sun floods the open spaces. Down the block stands the Wasserturm. Swingsets, ping-pong tables, budding chestnut trees encircle its base. Climb the stairs: a big lawn and benches and bushes have been planted atop the water tanks. There is peace up there. Plus a halfway-high view of Prenzlauer Berg you can't find anywhere else.

On Thursdays and Saturdays, at the market on Kollwitzplatz: organic raspberries, wild salmon, sheep's milk cheese. Around the corner, two bookstores: Paul Auster in the window, his wife Siri Husvedt, too. Next door, a knitting store rich in hand-dyed alpacas. That is where I found the skeins of powder blue and mottled acqua for Bayreuth Boy's scarf in December.

Also, last time I checked, I was a pale-skinned thirtysomething who sports designer denim. I prefer my coffee brewed from the bean. Oops.

Bourgeois all bad? I don't think so. Just don't tell the hippie.

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.

Gemischter Salat mit Schafskäse

Ignore what I said about reconsidering Prenzlauer Berg.

Right now I am in viv Lounge on Schönhauser Allee. Airy and serene. Perfect padded bench. I have inhaled a mixed green salad for lunch. Not topped with fried salmon, mind you, nor with sautéed mushrooms and potato chunks (a Gorky Park special, day 4). No. We're talking fresh tuna and sheep's milk cheese. Daikon and grated beets. Un-dressed. Every last bite of it Bio.

Next door is the expansive viv health-food store.

How can this not be the place for me? I'd be even more blissed-out if the free wireless worked (password: Cappuccino). Careful what you wish for. Could send me wafting heavenward, knock my bad-haired head against the lofty ceiling.

To my left: A child-sized table and chairs. A rocking sheep (horses are so over). Brio train tracks. When I got here, two mothers were packing up their snot-lipped brood of three. I'd be less happy if they were here making a ruckus round my feet. But such is the cost of life in the land of the fecund.

Oh! I got the wireless working (cap that C). I may have to stay the night here.

My Mother Says I Should Have a Baby in Berlin

Just because the Kinder clothes are so darn cute.

She has a point.

All the other ladies are doing it. You should see Prenzlauer Berg — pop-out bellies and old-style prams thrust down cobblestone streets. Toy stores everywhere. Worse than Park Slope. For untold reasons, the neighborhood has the fastest-growing number of children under 3 in Berlin. Compare the fecund birth rate — 2.1 kids per woman — to Germany's steeply declining one: 1.36.*

I can see the appeal. It's a district full of trendy cafes and shops along with plenty of green space. You get the perks of city living plus the kind of play space and Kinder-care the U.S. usually reserves for its suburbs.

Should I get busy? I really really really DO want a baby. Never been a question. Just, um, maybe not this second...?

Also, it would be nice to have a man attached. Not necessary. But.