This evening I am in New York, working, per usual (and having one more cup of tea so I can put off writing a press release I've been avoiding, per usual). Fortunately, friend of Lux Lotus Bryan is in Berlin and was kind enough to send a letter about his observations and adventures. When he returns to "the city," as we say, he's going to start a new job running Brijit.com so check it out before yr friends do-- that's today's hot tip!
Things worth knowing about Berlin:
The first thing someone from a big American city is going to notice about Berlin – right after the fact that everyone under 35 speaks English, and their grammar is usually better than yours – is how quiet the city is. It’s so spread out that, if you’re used to the no-one-on-the-street-equals-trouble mode of relating to a city, it’s eerie. The second thing is that there’s graffiti everywhere. It’s as if when the Wall came down, every other wall in town became fair game. Very little of it would qualify as street art – it’s nearly all just tags of various sorts, though there’s also the occasional clever piece, like a girl with a bouquet of roses with a pair of devil horns I saw painted on the outside of a restaurant.
Walking down the street, it immediately becomes obvious that no one here jaywalks. (As a friend put it waiting to cross a street with no traffic whatsoever, “If we were in New York, we’d be there by now.”) Berliners argue that they actually do jaywalk, but as far as I can tell this consists of nothing more than occasionally stepping into the street a second or so before the light changes to green. Even horses pulling tourists around in carriages are very careful to stop at red lights, without even being reined in by the driver. And half the town seems to be on a bike – there are special bike lanes on the sidewalks that are paved in red, and if you happen to swerve into one of them, you’re likely to be asked, in German, “Are you retarded?” (Which sounds even meaner in German than in English.)
In terms of street fashion, Berliners seem to have appropriated various pieces of international styles and amalgamated them into some that’s actually distinct. To wit: It’s hard to walk down the street without seeing an “I [Heart] NY” t-shirt and Palestinian scarf (both worn, as best I can tell, without irony). And RayBan aviator sunglasses, everywhere. It’s actually quite striking how internationalized the city’s commerce seems to be, all the way down to brands (Oakley, Mavi jeans) that seem to be making one final attempt to claw their way to hipness via Berlin.
The pinnacle of men’s fashion appears to be the printed t-shirt and the hooded sweatshirt. To find the truly hip(ish) hoody/t-shirt, however, you’ll have to do some hunting – Berliners seem to like to hide their coolest shops. And by “hide” I don’t mean pick an obscure location; I mean you have to endure a very un-American sort of spatial hazing ritual to find the place. The Apartment, one of the cooler boutiques in the city, is tucked away in the basement of a blocky high-rise apartment complex just off one of the main squares. To get into the actual sales area, you have to walk into a ground-level room painted floor-to-ceiling white, then walk down a tiny spiral staircase into an all-black room that sells those hoodies and t-shirts (and some other designer clothes, to be fair). Likewise, other uber-deisgner boutiques like Berlinerklammoten and AM3 are hidden back in the courtyards of buildings you pretty much have to know about in order to find them.
Other things worth knowing:
You can carry booze around on the street. And not New Orleans-style plastic-and-paper-cups-only; people carry bottles around all over the place at all times, morning, noon and night.
Berliners love fake beaches. There are at least three set up along the Spree. The beaches aren’t any nicer than you think they would be.
There are a half-dozen or so Starbucks floating around town, in exactly the sorts of places you’d figured Starbucks would pop up at in a foreign city (near the Brandenberg Gate, etc.). There’s also what is apparently a European chain called Balzac Coffee, which seems to use the same drink sizes, fonts, and even style of décor as Starbucks. If it were America, Balzac would long ago have been sued out of existence by Starbucks, but it’s a live-and-let-live kind of town, an ethic that apparently extends all the way to corporate franchises.
The restaurants run toward communal seating in a way even New York doesn’t do – if you’re a party of three seated at a table for four, you might just end up having dinner with a single stranger the management puts at the final chair at your table.
There’s a truly horrifying quantity of mosquitoes and wasps buzzing around the city. The wasps tend to visit you while you’re trying to enjoy your coffee at one of the hundreds of outdoor cafes (the wide sidewalks are good for that), though I have yet to see anyone actually be stung. The mosquitoes visit you at night – there’s no air conditioning in the city outside of chic stores and hotels, and sometimes not even then – so apparently everyone sleeps with their windows open.
The best coffee in the city I’ve had in Berlin is at a Portuguese café called Galao. Sometimes they play Johnny Cash. I also liked a somewhat trendy place called Pony Bar, which reminded me a bit of the Pink Pony in New York, but with less pony.
There are little art galleries all over the place; the art is of varying quality (and it’s often by New York artists, anyway) but it’s impressive to add up the amount of retail space devoted to art here. Not sure who buys it, given that no one seems to actually have a job here, but the effort itself is noteworthy.
There’s an astonishing quality of young hipster parents walking around – I’m told that one neighborhood in the city, Prenzlauer Berg, has what may be the highest birthrate of any place in Europe. On the plus side, since the sidewalks here are so wide, it’s much easier to dodge the strollers than in, say, Park Slope.
The cemeteries here are quite pretty – for most graves, they outline the plot with stones, and fill that in with ivy (some of the only ivy I’ve seen in the town).
Germans like cranes. Where in the U.S. a construction project would use scaffolding, Germans will employ a gigantic crane that towers over the building to move small shovelfuls of dirt and the like.
Women seem to feel very safe here – much more so than in New York. And single women out to dinner or in a café seem to be left alone, again much more so than in New York.
For those like myself who decide to take a brief jaunt to Prague: It’s a beautiful city. In July, however, it’s crawling with European tourists. Somehow, I don't think Charles IV had in mind thousands of sweaty foreigners with black socks pulled up their calves walking across his namesake bridge when he had it built. And, no doubt thanks to the tourists, it feels more than a little dodgey – almost as dodgey as Mexico City, I’d say. Also, there are apparently only three women in all of Prague who haven’t dyed at least part of their hair some color that doesn’t occur in nature.
Still, after a couple of weeks in Berlin, I’m left with the impression that there’s a tremendous amount going on below the surface that you have to know how to find in order to find. (Not unlike those boutiques.) And it’s probably pretty wild – like some party where everyone is hanging from the ceiling by straps attached to their nipple piercings, or something. The essential truth of this was confirmed to me by a native Berliner, who told me, “Oh, yes, certainly.”
What an excellent description of Berlin! I keep hearing about the baby boom too. As for the lack of airconditioning it should probably be attributed to the German ecological sensitivity. If few airconditions exist in the city, this makes it more bearable for the people who do not own one. It actually makes it possible to sleep with the windows open. Something that could not be said about Athens i am afraid.
Posted by: evi | August 08, 2007 at 08:46 PM
What an excellent description of Berlin! I keep hearing about the baby boom too. As for the lack of airconditioning it should probably be attributed to the German ecological sensitivity. If few airconditions exist in the city, this makes it more bearable for the people who do not own one. It actually makes it possible to sleep with the windows open. Something that could not be said about Athens i am afraid.
Posted by: evi | August 08, 2007 at 08:46 PM