No matter how busy I am or how full my days are here, I always sit down to write and struggle to think of whether I’ve done anything exceptional enough to mention. Which is strange, because every day here is another adventure. Anyway…
Yesterday was my last day of classes before spring break. My friend Sam and I had a very Berlin night to celebrate: we picked up döner for dinner and then went to a concert in NeuKöln. She’s a fan of the band and convinced me to come along to their show. They’re called Watcha Clan, and they’re a French band out of Marseille. I think they sang in every language except for German. That’s a bit of an exaggeration, of course, but not by much I promise. They put on an excellent show…I’ve never seen a band before that had such good group energy but also in which the members helped each other to stand out as individuals. Plus hearing world music from a French band in Germany, excuse the stereotypes, but after a lecture on racism in Europe it was great to hear this band mixing Yiddish with French and English. I really really liked their sound. Guess I’ll stop gushing now.
Today was my first real day of break. I’ve been working a lot on internship things all week because we have a big event this weekend, and I’ll be working on that more tomorrow and Sunday…so I took today to get lost. At first it was difficult. I kept reworking my grocery list, travel budget, and final essay topics. But eventually I remembered how to relax a bit. I made pancakes and coffee, wrote some cards, and then set out on an adventure.
When I got on the U-Bahn, I thought I was going to a spring festival. When I got off the train, however, there was no festival to be seen. I wandered around looking for it, and then I realized I was lost and wandered more looking for the U-Bahn. Instead I found a park. It looked pretty small, and an expression-less older man watched me walk in. It was so relaxing to be surrounded by trees again. It didn’t take me long to realize that this park was much larger than I had first thought. Aside from forest patches and open areas where people were training their dogs, there was also a beer-garden (closed) and a kids adventure camp. Beyond that was a lake with strange ducks, a beach, a playground, a high-ropes course, and an art deco tower. I took my time exploring and enjoying the sunshine, but then some storm clouds rolled in and reminded me that I still didn’t know where I was. I turned down a path that seemed to be an exit, but just when I saw the end of it open up into a neighborhood something moved to my left. I’m not sure if you’ve heard that there are wild pigs in Berlin? I turned away from the road and found that the area to the left of the path was fenced off as a nature preserve…and that there were several large pigs staring at me. When I went up to the fence, I saw something even more surprising: babies! I asked an older man as he approached if he had seen the “kinder schwine” (my terrible German!). If I understood his answer properly, they’re actually about a year old. I’ll upload pictures once I’m back on the school’s internet. They were so cute!
Finally I said farewell to the pigs and left the park in search of the U-Bahn. As I left I passed a sign informing me that I had just spent half my day in the Jungfernheide Volkspark. Good to know.
When I did find the U-Bahn, I realized that I was only one stop away from the Citadel stop…so I went. Unfortunately, the citadel is considered a state museum rather than a state park, and I didn’t buy a ticket because they were going to be closing soon. Sooo I only saw the outside walls, but I’ll go back. Still pretty cool.
Then I saw a sign pointing towards “Alt Stadt Spandau.” Since the rain had held off so far, I decided to keep walking and see what happened. So I followed the sign and discovered a small beautiful church and then the historic town center. It was hard to believe that I was still in Berlin. The city-state of Berlin has slowly eaten up the surrounding towns, so that this place with its own town hall and city wall is still in the B-zone of Berlin’s ABC-zone transit system. Crazy! I enjoyed wandering around for a bit…through their market, past their old wall remnant, and eventually into their “gothic house.”
Inside the “gothic house” was a free exhibit of art about Berlin and Brandenburg. There were two pieces that really struck me. One was by Eberhardt Purrucker and called “Havelimpression.” It was made in 1997 and it interested me because it was made using oil paints and crayon/oil pastel. As in, there was a painted landscape and then there were details and writing drawn on top of the paint. It was really different from anything I’ve had a chance to see so far. The other piece that caught my eye was by Matthias Koeppel. I think it was a lithography piece, but it was called “Kleingärtner” and he made it in 1986. The security guard was a bit confused about why I stared at it for so long, but I have to say that it was a very accurate portrayal of some parts of the city still today. It showed an old man working his little patch of garden, bent over with the line of his shoulders echoed by the line of a huge graffiti-covered building in the background. I went to a party last weekend that was in the kind of place shown in the picture: the bar was in the middle of an area with small garden paths and sheds that was surrounded by huge concrete buildings that reminded me of the Czech panelák.
After the exhibit, I went back home, making a stop at the grocery store. Then I cooked dinner and started spring-cleaning. I want to get my room clean and most of my finals started over this break so that I don’t get swamped with them in the last weeks of Berlin-time in May. I’ll let you know how that goes.
One more note before I go. I’m listening to the radio right now. I’ve noticed before that they don’t censor “f---,” but that made sense because it isn’t a German word so the weight it has as a symbol (keeping in mind that all words are symbols onto which we impose meaning) is lost on most listeners here…even those who have learned English because our pop-culture throws swear words around like they’re nothing and that is the language we export. Tonight, though, I keep hearing the n-word. It’s come up 7 times in the last half-hour. I’ve been counting. After an excellent class yesterday about Afro-Germans, May Ayim’s poetry and activist work, and post-unification racism (which the media here calls ‘xenophobia’ even though it includes native-born Germans who are part non-German ethnically) I’m really surprised to be hearing this right now. The word is the same in English and German so there’s no excuse…I’m tempted to change the station, but I want to keep counting at least until the hour. Then I’ll find something better to listen to. Yikes.
