Personifying Places

These past two weeks have been pretty hectic, between writing midterm papers and taking a few trips. I had two major assignments due this past week, and on Friday I celebrated by taking a trip to Berlin, where I met my friend Delaney who lives in Madrid. We planned this trip in January, so it was really surreal to actually leave for the trip; for the past two months it has sort of seemed like something I planned for way in the future. I am really glad we did plan this trip, since it gave me two weeks to enjoy London and focus on some schoolwork after my trip to Amsterdam.

Yeah, everyone loves to talk about how cheap travel is in Europe and how it's really terrific to go to every single city on the continent and it's so easy and why wouldn't you jump at every opportunity that comes your way? What nobody told me - or what I just wasn't paying attention to before - is how tiring it is. Getting to the airports for cheap flights - which usually depart at the crack of dawn or late at night - is a pain. I think I've written here about this whole cycle before, from which emerges the big question: how am I going to have the energy to do everything I want to do in this place? So two weeks for me seems like a good span of time to break up trips during the semester.

Before I tell you about a recent trip I took, I'll share a few quotes I've been thinking about as I try to figure out why I have been choosing to visit certain places.

Rome says: enjoy me. London: survive me. New York: gimme all you got. (Zadie Smith)

Cities have sexes: London is a man, Paris a woman, and New York a well-adjusted transsexual. (Angela Carter)

These are two of the wisest London-based writers of the past few decades, I think. It's all imaginable, right? I know I've been putting down Central London a lot for not seeming as authentic a place as I hoped for in London, but really I think the sense of imminent doom pervades the cityscape, i.e. crossing the street at any time, walking with a backpack through a market or down Oxford Street, being watched on the endless reel of observation that is CCTV, etc. So, though I haven't had any significant run in's with mortal fear, "survive me" seems an apt subtitle for London.

Anyway, considering these notions, that we can personify places and imagine them as human, what makes London a man? London I don't entirely understand as a man. The city does have a long history of cultivating young gentlemen, at least up to the First World War; I noticed today in the crypt of St. Paul's Cathedral that everyone buried there is male; and of course, there's that towering phallic presence, Big Ben right in the heart of Westminster. But it's also the city of Queens Elizabeth I and Victoria, two monumental figures in its history. I'm sure other arguments can be made.

I can add a few: Amsterdam is a quirky uncle who still behaves like a child; Berlin is a brooding teenager. So what exactly qualifies these descriptions?

After the Second World War, Berlin had to be totally reconstructed because of the extensive damages the city suffered. Looking for Old Europe? It's not really much of a motif in Berlin at all. I think Berlin is a brooding teenager because the skyline is relatively young (mostly constructed post-1960) and very chromatic (and thus, overwhelmingly downcast). I say this in jest, but the melancholic energy of Berlin is of course inevitable and tragic; every block bears some reminder of the terrors experienced in the city-monuments and statues in memoriam to oppressed groups in Europe.

The Jewish Memorial

There is an exception to the sense of grayness: the Eastside Gallery, where a span of the Berlin Wall has been transplanted and designed by artists from around the world.

my favorite part of the wall

trying to "be" the wall

This goes on for a while; it's a great walk to take. Walking along the Wall  reminded me how constructive public artistic forums can be and that we need more of them in the world - spaces where anyone can contribute and anyone can enjoy it for free. The project of the Eastside Gallery is to spread messages of peace, freedom, and hope. So there is much light and color in a city that otherwise seemed hopelessly dark and colorless to me.

Another gem in Berlin is the food. Currywurst is a must have in Berlin; I had a small box of it (a long sausage chopped up and served with ketchup and curry spice) near Brandenburg Gate. On our first night, Delaney and I waited for over an hour to buy kebabs at Mustafa's Gemüse Kebap, a small streetside haunt in Kreuzberg with a long line. For a good reason-sure there are lots of great kebab places in London, but none quite this good in my experience. I think the principle is this: if the deliciousness of the kebab justifies how unhealthy it is, it's worth the abject bodily guilt.

inhaling my kebap after the long wait

currywurst

We met up with Delaney's friend Patrick who has been studying in Germany all year; he told us about a lot of the ins and outs of German culture, which was much appreciated; most people in Berlin spoke to me in German, so I felt like I was missing out on a lot of cross-cultural interaction since I don't speak a lick of Deutsche. The streetsigns were really fun to try to pronounce as we walked along, though I did this under my breath since mimicry is never particularly polite.

One of the most fascinating parts of Berlin, in my opinion, is right in the middle of Alexanderplatz, the city's tourist haven. It's a striking contrast that's impossible to miss: the Berliner Dom (consecrated 1454; reconstructed 1975) and the Berliner Fersehturm (constructed 1969). They stand close to each other, but could not be any more disparately designed:

Berliner Dom

Berliner Fersehturm

It's interesting to me that the Dom, which is effectively a reproduction of an Old-European cathedral, and so looks very old, is actually a more recent construction than the TV tower. In the heart of Europe, where for centuries religion and science have spurred conflict, these two representatives of each faction share a block of space. Since Berlin was reconstructed so recently, I feel like I have to question whether or not these choices were deliberate.

So maybe Berlin is a brooding teenager after all - confused and contradictory, characterized by a dark wardrobe and a perpetual look of discontent. The streets were very quiet at night, or at least in the area where we were staying (specifically along Greifswalder Straße), which came as a surprise to me, since I have heard so much about Berlin's vibrant arts scene and its clubs and bars.

We did learn from Patrick that a cultural practice of many Germans is to buy beer and then walk around drinking in public with friends. So we did just that. The beer in Germany is pretty great, and buying it from the convenience stores only costs about €1! So, in Berlin we did as Berliners do. Along the way, walking around the city center at night, we tried to find a statue of Marx and Engels that had popped up on Delaney's Triposo app (which is highly recommended for short trips) and seemed nearby. We searched for it for a while, only to find that the park it is in has been closed off due to the construction of what appeared to be luxury apartments in the area. Can you think of anything more ironic than luxury apartments being built around a statue of Marx and Engels?

On another topic, a running theme in my experience has been minimal interaction with locals, which is disappointing, but inevitable on weekend trips since they are so quick. How can anyone really know a place without knowing its people? How can someone personify a city without understanding the actual persons who live there?

This brings me back to where I started in this post: travel is tough. A weekend is really not enough time in some places; I might sound like I have many convictions about Berlin's personality, but really this is just how I perceived and interpreted what little of it I saw. I've heard people say it can be the funnest or the saddest city on earth. Here's an article that explains all of this:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/01/travel/in-berlin-history-squares-off-against-hip.html

All in all, I am really glad I went; engaging with a new culture is always exciting and interesting, even if only for a few days. Though this post might sound a bit bleak, these are the notes of someone who was totally rapt and thrilled by the opportunity to interpret a new space.  It's the same when I talk about London and maybe sound a bit critical; it's all shared with you in the name of curious excitement!

I will be grounded in London for the next month, so look for new posts on local travel and more urban exploration.