berlin

in honor of reading Herr Lehmann tonight...

Berlin. I always call it the ugliest of cities. Berlin's beauty isn't in its buildings, it isn't in any single Kiez, it isn't the wondrous and multiple bars, restaurants and perversions galore that abound there. It isn't the wonder of it's many amazing museums, its ruins from war, its rising from the ashes of war and a wall. It isn't for all of the wealth of literature that has poured from there. Berlin is. It lives, and breathes and says fuck it all. If a city ever had a personality in modern European culture, it's Berlin.

Built on a swamp. Home of thugs and dictators. Six stories, its many buildings, topped with antennas as far as the eye can see. The church bells ringing out in the morning. The clear, piercing winter sunlight, the gloomy endless grey of many days. The summer nights that are so short, and its days filled with its inhabitants swimming, drinking, biking, making the most out of its most glorious season. Odd little tucked away dance clubs/language learning center/volkskuchen run in an old apartment run by gay men and transsexuals from America. The Tajiki tea rooms with worn rugs, dim candlelight and the air of perfect romance. Speed and coke from ill-lit rooms on Oranienburgerstrasse, filled with hordes of backpackers looking for the next cheap exotic thrill. Hash in the basement bar with an unknown bartender. Late nights at bookstores with kooky smelly old hippies trying to make love to you for an unknown reason. Backyard barbeques to celebrate a graduation, with sentiments of bourgeois respectability disappearing with each drink. Foolish old women on the garish Ku'damm, looking at a whore whose time has passed. Watching films about the building of Brasilia in the Schwarzes Cafe at three am before visiting the Auslandersamt. Playing with children at Kollwitzplatz, running barefoot in the sand, pushing a little girl with a striped dress on a swing. Watching antifa kids scream righteous anger, as the cops follow them, hating the kids for believing in something impossible in Germany's rigidly respectable society. Eating falafel at four am on Rosenthaler Platz. The crazy woman on the U2. Dodging the kontrollers, trying to play the fool or run as fast as you can. Fireworks on the Oberbaumbruecke on New Year's Eve deafening and blinding you as you try to drink fast enough to stay warm. Breakfast of rolls, cheese, tomatoes and spread at the park of the lesser-spotted elephant. Buckets of cheap veggies at the closing of the Turkish market. Borscht at a cheap little Russian dive. Socialist realism at Treptower, shivering, knowing the marble came from Hitler's chancellory. Biking up the Prenzlauer Berg, down summer houses by the Spree, through the grounds of the Schloss Charlottenburg, through the Brandenburger Tor. Drinking with the working class old men at the Duncker 80. Being free. Loving life. Not giving a damn, for the trees are green, or will be again, and there is beer then and there is beer now. Making art, making love, fighting for something worthwhile. It's all there, somewhere.

One memory: on Greifswalderstrasse, by the Ernst Thaelmann memorial on the east side of the Thaelmann park. Stopping on my bike to look where I was. It was fall, and cool, but the trees were still green in the park. It was late in the afternoon, and the sunlight fell behind the trees, illuminating them, giving Thaelmann's memorial the proper tribute due a socialist martyr. Beyond, I could see the buildings in the park, the pool where I swam every week, the apartments and blocks beyond, where I lived. The cobblestone streets that I bumped on every day on my thin-wheeled bike. It was for that moment, my home, and I loved it, never as much before and never as much after. The wind blew my hair and I remembered I needed to meet someone at Mehringdamm. I gave one last look to the sight that gave me such pleasure, and then raced down to the Pope's revenge and beyond.