Berlin, What a winner.

July 19, 2010

Um, so, Germany. Well, Berlin. My first time visiting, and it is like no place I have visited before. And yes, feel free to comment on the irony that despite her 4 previous ventures throughout Europe, this is the first time that "Jessica Reuteler" has visited Deutschland.

But, Berlin: we are all vaguely aware of the bananas-crazy business this city has been through in the past century (our guidebook's history chapter didn't hurt, though), and visiting it now inspires the already-in-withdrawal students within Kate and myself to constantly use this crazy history to explain what we will be seeing during this visit. In a nutshell:

1. East Berlin was governed in a terrifying communist totalitarian state! Perhaps this vibe is still present in law enforcement! Or the laws, perhaps!

2. The city was divided for 44 years! Surely we'll find east-west tension! Turf wars! Geographic pride?

3. The wall physically divided it for 28 of those years! Surely there will be all kinds of remnants of it about! We'll take tasteless tourist photos, hooray!

4. Or even, more somberly, Germany has a super sad history under the insane regime of the Third Reich... For Germans, talking about their own government's role in this will be awkward or at least taboo, for sure.

Guys, it's seriously none of the above. I will attempt to explain, but the bottom line is that Berlin is the chillest (and illest) city on my Eurotour yet (sorry Amsterdam, close second), with an incredibly wise ability to look forward while paying due homage to everything in the past.

So, in order. #1: Laws. Berlin ... does not have them? Anymore? I am Ron Burgundy? (Sorry.)

To illustrate, let's look back to our previously visited nation, Italy. After a week there (and a lifetime in other more... mainstream? typical? cities), we have become accustomed to certain regulations of behavior that aren't exactly present in Berlin. You can't say, drink all over the place in the streets in Italy. Well, you can, but cops (when they are not cat-calling foreigners, TRUE STORY THANKS NAPLES) will get all up on you for it. Probably because you are being all kinds of sloppy, and it's time to rein it in. We arrive in Berlin, however, and attempt to figure out their policy on the ish, as it becomes immediately relevant:

Jessie-Kate boards train from airport: Heyyy people drinking from beer bottles.
Jessie-Kate: Oh, check it. The young people of Berlin are casual rebels, probs left over from their bad-ass Berlin Wall Resistence days.
JK roams the streets on that Friday night: essentially every individual on the sidewalk has a beer bottle.
JK: Friday nights are serious business?

But no, the beer bottles are never put away, despite the hour or day.

Adorable tour guide, when enthusiastically pressed on the issue: 'Open what? Open container laws? Oh, right. Yeah, we don't have those.'

Sufficiently fascinated ("Yes, but what do you think is the historical precedent for such a law?"), we beg him to continue. Turns out the city that for nearly half the 20th century was anal-retentively controlled by 4 bossy nations has decided that it's time to err on the side of chill.

'Be prepared to be offered pot in parks,' tour guide says. 'Oh, if the cops find it on you? I dunno, they'd probably confiscate it, give you a high five, and walk away.'

Prostitution is also legal-ish, and what is the sum total of these laws? What does it lead to in the streets every day? How does it affect the moral fiber (just kidding) of the city? Nothing! Not at all! What I mean is, we did not see public drunkenness, we saw a single cop car maybe twice, and we never found any such thing as a seedy neighborhood--and believe me, we wandered about aimlessly our fair share. It was like some sort of twilight zone.

And in that vein, predictions 2 & 3? East-west pride tiffs? Wall remnants abounding? Also totally false. It didn't take us long to realize that putting those nasty histories in the past was a no-brainer--if an impressively sagacious one.

Wiser visitors than myself already know that nearly every cubic centimeter of both of the walls (me: there were TWO??) were torn down in the days after Gorbachev gave up on the fool's errand that was East Germany. All that was left were a few meters of it here and there in memoriam, and a brick trail was installed elsewhere to remind where it once stood at other locations, though not even everywhere. The German government did its best to re-mend the two halves of the city, which was not that hard when you think about it, as they were ultimately were still filled with German people, most of whom didn't really give a shit about politics and Cold War mumbo jumbo. Granted, 12 years after the wall went up in '61 (East Germany had lost nearly a fifth of its pissed-off population through the portal that was West Berlin, so, hello Wall), efforts were made to reunite families arbitrarily separated by the wall, but all of a sudden it's not surprising to realize how easy it was to reunite the city when what split it up in the first place was an arbitrary georgraphy; people had been separated from their own friends and their ways of life for way too long.

Corn aside, as for the legacy of the monstrosity that was the Third Reich, Naive Prediction #4, judging from the effort put in by the post-Wall capitalist government alone, the order of the day is all about openness, education, and prevention of anything like that happening again. Kate and I only scratched the surface of Hollocaust memorials, they were so numerous (Surprise: I cried the whole time). The home of the government, the Reichstag, had a huge iconic dome installed for symbollic reasons: As legislators work on the ground floor, they can always look up to see hundreds of people circling around this huge spiralled (and free of admission) dome, a supposed reminder of their one and sole purpose of representing all the German people.

Much of the Nazi- and then Soviet-era architecture was torn down, but some of it remains, often juxtaposed (like the Reichstag) with something paying tribute to its ramifications or telling a more complete side of the story (e.g. still remaining is a hilariously communist tile mural commissioned in the 50's, whose message is essentially "Look how good it's going to be guys! ... Just not yet!" But installed under glass on the plaza floor in front of it is an identically sized--huge--beautiful photograph taken during the first deadly riot led by unhappy East German laborers not long after the mural went up.)

Geez, there was even a super cool below-ground memorial installed in the center of a square (below glass you saw empty bookshelves below the ground, descending for 8 meters or so) ... the square where Nazis, students, and even professors purged the local University's libraries of all literary works by Jews, not 4 months after Hitler's appointment as chancellor (not yet Fuhrer) in 1933. Across the square stands the University, Humboldt, I believe, and every goddamn day the students head outside the main gates with dozens of boxes, unfold some tables and sell books, in humble penitence of their forebears' actions, and donate all the proceeds to charity.

Kate and I were shocked by this last detail in particular, and in truth I'm embarassed to be surprised by this policy of openness. Nonetheless, it takes so much wisdom and humilty to operate this way, and it makes visiting Berlin for the history (despite the fact that only 10% of pre-war structures remain) all the more satisfying, meaningful, and inspiring.

We learned all these lessons and more on our first day and just spent the rest of the weekend delightfully taking in the awesome ambiance that is today's Berlin. Never before have locals waltzed up to me without expectation of what a speaker of their language "should" look like, and start speaking, in this case, German at me. Smiling and nodding is pretty fun (and weirdly effective), in addition to the fact that I was all touched and impressed in the first place to be addressed in German. Inevitably they then seal the nail in the WE-ARE-SO-NICE coffin by being like, Oh! English! My mistake, here I'll say the absurdly nice thing I said before in German in English! (e.g. Jessie sheepishly fills her water bottle in a train station bathroom sink--hydration while traveling is a game you never win, you only break even--and German woman ultimately communicates that That water won't taste very good, and here, why don't I take her extra 1.5L water bottle since she's about to leave the country anyway.)

Or, once we got over the shock of Beer Everywhere as a way of life, JK buys 2 bottles from a vendor, and is too shy to ask him to open them. No worries, though, friends, any one of the dozen people they'll pass on the next block--with smiles on faces and beers in hand--will open them gladly!

We noted with delight that after our week in Italy, Customer Service was back in our lives (sorry Italy, the tough love will do you good), and even our AMAZING hostel (Wombat's, thanks Amulya!) was unimpressed with how unfailingly helpful they were. Just completely blank stares of confusion at my asking if various amenities were available:

Jessie: Can you recommend where to buy a toothbrush? I'm a Responsible Adult and left my entire bag of toiletries in a train station bathroom in Venice and have been brushing my teeth with my finger for 3 days now. (Okay, I didn't say that second part because that def would have warrented a blank--at best--stare.)
Attendant: You mean these toothbrushes you can obviously have right now?

Jessie: Listen, Italy was a million degrees, and my clothes are already approaching lethal toxicity, any laundromat tips? (For those loyal readers, observe how Jessie has learned not to rely on Google Translator and webpages from 1998 to glean such information this time around)
Attendant: I mean, why wouldn't you use the ones we obviously provide for you.

Jessie: NO WAY, this is amazing. But oh no! Check-out is at 10am tomorrow, and I'll need to do my laundry after that! What now??
Attendant: Why would you need to be checked in to take advantage of all of our services, what sort of inhumane hovels have you been staying at [if only you knew, sir], and would you care for a coupon for 85% with our in-house Swedish masseur?

Okay not that last part, but the point is: Go to Berlin. Kate, lover of American cities and self-declared bitter enemy of learning foreign languages, is already scheming how to carve out a legitimate existence in Berlin and how to do so asap.

Amulya went straight from Rome to Prague, so we're headed over to meet her there, now. She claims so far that "Prague is surreal," and our correspondence the past couple of days has resembled a bizarre City-off ("Berlin is BLOWING OUR MINDS"), so we're stoked that things are only going to look up from here. As long as it doesn't get hot again.

J