My Own Private Berlin Wall

With the Palio behind us our attention immediately turns to the second huge event circled on our calendar for July…our trip to Berlin.

My relationship with Germany is admittedly a fragile one. My only experiences (and thus only things I had to garner any kind of expectations) of the place are as follows:

A) A 9-hour layover in the Munich Airport when I was 15 years old…and I had the Flu.
B) The second great war
a. The Holocaust Museum
b. Schindler’s List
c. Nazi artifacts discovered in my grandfather’s basement when I was 10 years old.
C) Lederhosen
D) An odd homoerotic affinity for David Hasselhoff
E) The asshole German team in Cool Runnings (really, those guys were dicks).

There were some pros on this list however and monumentous ones at that, most notably Beer and Pretzels…as I said it is a fragile relationship, not a lost cause. But all of those cons listed above had done something to me over the years. Though the idea of traveling the world and peeking into its every nook and cranny was one of my greatest desires, somehow Germany has washed off the list of places to go, it was probably somewhere on the list around Branson, Missouri or Oslo in the dead of winter. And that’s when Thom Yorke (in a perfect falsetto) beckoned me, “ Mr. Zimmerman, BRING. THIS. WALL. DOWN”

Radiohead is my favorite rock and roll band. They tour maybe once every three years. They are on tour this year in support of their latest album, In Rainbows, and would be playing their final show in Europe this year in Berlin on July 8. The instant I bought the tickets, the wall that I had built up in my head, the wall that was to keep me from Germany for the rest of my days began to crack. And then begin to crumble piece by piece. Berlin, here I come.

We arrived excited, with open minds but no expectations. My trepidation was not overt, but I was no doubt cautious. As we left the airplane, Joann and I started blurting out every German word we could see in an attempt to learn enough of the language to get by and also test the German’s level of patience with people who cannot even come close to pronouncing their words correctly. “AUSGANG” we shouted, “EXIT!” As it turns out most Germans speak English, so we would not truly be tested in the days to come. We approached an all too pleasant lady at an information desk in the airport to ask the best way to make our way into Central Berlin where our hotel was. She quickly explained to us our route on the S Bahn (the subway) and we were on our way. The S Bahn is phenomenally efficient, super clean and easy to understand. This would happily be our means of transportation for the entire 3 days we were there.
The train took us from the airport steps to the front door of our hotel (a four star little number we found for super cheap on the internet…score). We checked in quickly, dropped our bags on the bed, and headed back to the underground in search of a good meal and a good time.

A short train ride brings us to Heckersher Market. As we emerge from the train station something become painfully obvious to Joann and myself. And it was a most unexpected realization. Berlin is strikingly beautiful, clean, safe and fun. There were hip restaurants in every direction, great bars on every corner, and an energy that was impossible to deny. The first restaurant you can see when you exit the train is a tiny little Japanese number. Joann’s jaw hit the floor. This woman had not had Sushi in 7 months and was not to be denied tonight. I expressed my (very real) desire to have German food, but acquiesced and we agreed to sit down for just two rolls of sushi before we would continue. I don’t a new pair of Manolo Blahniks could have made Joann as happy as this Tuna Avocado roll did. She savored every grain of rice and every inch of seaweed. I guess in New York City we take for granted how great sushi really is…it is a lesson not soon forgotten. From there we headed down Oranienburg Strasse, a major thoroughfare through the revived and perfectly artsy East Berlin. We were planning on sitting down to a meat and potato heavy German meal as soon as we find a restaurant…but I would remain famished for a while. The neighborhood we came upon was fantastic, exactly where we would hang out if we lived in this fair city. The street had artists doing pieces on the side of the road, graffiti being painted in front of us down back alleys, and tons and tons of exotic food. We passed Kebab stands, Indian restaurants, Mexican restaurants, Thai restaurants, Indian-Thai fusion restaurants…but could not for the life of us find a German one, There was nary a schnitzel in sight. This seemed a bit weird to me, but we soldiered on. Finally after about an hour long search we came upon a Deutsche Kuche (German Kitchen) and grabbed a table outside. The waitress, in her adorable broken English, helped us through the ordering process and kind-of explained what we would be getting with the meals she suggested. She did so by using one remarkably effective phrase I never thought to employ in all my days in the service industry…”Are you BIG hungry?” Why yes, fraulein, I am BIG hungry. “Then you should have this”…and it was settled. We ended up having a lot of potatoes and a lot of sausage (some in a beer sauce) and a lot of beer. I could not have been happier. I love German food, it is official.

After stuffing ourselves silly at the restaurant we joined a group of tour guides who offered a pub crawl for a small price in the same neighborhood. It is kind of a cheesy idea and not something Joann and I would typically do, but the timing was right so we joined in. The tour took us to 5 bars and a nightclub and really did help us get an idea of what the nightlife in Berlin had to offer…we were nothing short of impressed. Especially with the first bar we went to called Zapata, which makes its home on the ground floor of the oldest squatted building in Berlin. It has about 4 bars, a dirt floor, metal welding artists working in the corner, a homeless guy sleeping on a couch, 1 euro shots of Jagermeister, a ping pong table, and a Spanish Ska band playing on stage…it is something close to what I imagine heaven to be like. After the last club, we call it a night and head home, eager for the next morning’s activities.

Funny thing about bar crawls. They usually turn morning activities into afternoon activities, and that is exactly what it did this time around. We are far too old to stay out that late and get up bright and early in the morning anymore…goodness gracious, college seemed a million years ago. We head into the center in the early afternoon for lunch and in time to go on our free bike tour of Berlin. The lunch we had at a stand on the side of the road (she had a kebab, I enjoyed some chicken lo-mein) was so delicious, we would be talking about it for hours. Things just cannot go wrong here. That was until we arrived for our guided free bike tour. Historically we do not do well with guided tours, but this one was free and afforded us the opportunity to ride bikes together so it seemed a win/win. As it turns out this afternoon the coordinators did not coordinate so well and they took on two too many customers. After a short stalemate, Joann and I did the noble thing and decided to let everyone else enjoy the tour that day and we would come back to do it in the morning. We headed out on our own and found some of Berlin that I had not expected to ever see. Since the wall fell in 1989 the place has flourished, not necessarily economically (it is in an America sized debt hole with the EU), but aesthetically. The old buildings feats and the new buildings (especially the new parliament buildings) are so architecturally stunning that they made us stop and explore. A government building did this…I, of course, did not know it was a government building until the next day because this place was so beautiful it had to be an new opera house or museum or something. But even with the knowledge of what goes on inside…I was simply awestruck with its beauty. This place is a government building like the Guggenheim in Bilbao is an art gallery.

We opt to take the day in a different direction and head to the Berlin Zoo. Anyone who knows me knows how I love a zoo. The weather is absolutely perfect and the zoo is in turn. A great outdoor park with little fencing between you and the animals, which makes for a really intimate experience. Highlights for me were: the hippopotami fighting (or mating, not quite sure), the rhinoceros (it looks like a dinosaur) and the great apes (who always entertain). After a few hours with our friends from the Animal Kingdom we head back to the hotel, wash up and hit up one of the Mexican restaurants we passed earlier in the day for a little comida. The food is nothing to write home about, but is the first Mexican Joann and I have had in quite some time so we are more than happy with our nachos and tacos. After a long day of walking around and trying to bait the Polar Bears into doing something noteworthy we agree its time to head home and get some rest.

Up early on Tuesday to catch our morning bike tour. This time we secure our vehicles and head out on the town with our enthusiastic and actually quite funny Irish tour guide. He is a student here and knows his way around very well. He takes us through a history of the city from its inception up through the fall of the Berlin Wall in a knowledgeable and insightful tour. We see many of the buildings we passed the day earlier and were shown many new ones, and got in depth descriptions of both. It starts to absolutely pour on us as we sail through Potsdamer Platz (the economic center of modern day Berlin), the rain, however, is short-lived and only serves to makes us soaking wet, not curb our tour at all. We move on to where the bunker that Adolph Hitler committed suicide in once stood and not far away visited the thought-provoking Holocaust memorial. The memorial is a beautiful one that essentially consists of a city block completely covered in stone blocks of various sizes. As you descend into the middle of the area the blocks become taller and the floor ramps down. Our guide describes the monument to us and tells us that the architect never really said what its meaning was and there had only been speculation and critical theories on the symbolism of it. One of the theories he told us, the one that I bought the most into, is that the memorial represents a time line in German history. The edges of the monument where the blocks are all very low and you can see all around you and hear people you are talking to very clearly would represent the democracy of pre and post-WW II Germany. As you descend into the 1930’s and 1940’s fascist regimes in the country your vision and senses become obscured by towering blocks in every direction all around you, until you arrive at the lowest point of the memorial where you are surrounded by the imposing stone figures and an eerie sense of helplessness crawls onto you. Needless to say the memorial gets the job done and we were all moved by it.

We pass the largest standing portion of the Berlin Wall and then the tour comes to an end with our guide dramatically telling us the series of events that led to its eventual fall in 1989…as it turns out it was an accident and it all happened in 8 minutes. I am happy to recount the story to anyone interested. But in the interest of brevity, lets save that for another day. As we are biking back Joann and I are discussing and recounting everything we have learned for the day and both agree on one of the reasons this tour and all of this information has peaked our interest so vividly. All of this happened less than 20 years ago. Our generation lived this stuff. We were alive for one of the defining moments in the 20th century. We were not there during WW II, but we were there when the Berlin Wall fell, I remember watching it on TV. Every kid under the age of 20 cannot say that now. Since this stuff is so recent and happened to people we can identify with, it hit kind of close to home (even though we are obviously far from it). We both felt pretty lucky to have learned more about the history of Berlin and of the fall of it’s famed wall, and to actually experience the places we saw on TV on November 9, 1989.

After the tour we have to hustle. Today is the day of the concert and we are running a bit late. We get showers and hit the S Bahn (which takes us right to the venue, of course). The venue Radiohead has chosen for this show is a great one. It is an amphitheater in the middle of the woods on the outskirts of Berlin. We arrive in time to see the first band (Mode Selektor…who absolutely rock, by the way), nosh on some Pad Thai, and grab some beers as we await the main event to begin. Jo and I secure some standing room very close to the stage, but a bit off to the left. We are not dead center, but we have some room to dance and sing, so I am happy. Radiohead make their way onto the stage in front of a rumbling crowd of 40,000, whom were pregnant with anticipation. They proceed to play an amazing set, as they always do, and every one of the smiling international faces in the crowd is happy…even through the sporadic downpours that did nothing but add to the atmosphere. There is something about a Radiohead show, for me, that is magical. I don’t know exactly what it is or why this particular rock band makes me so happy, but being able to see them live during this amazing summer was a treat. To discover a city that we fell so in love with so quickly and to see them there was doubly exciting. I wasn’t emotional, but I wasn’t far off. This is really happening, this is really happening…

After the show we get a little lost in the woods, but manage to locate the S Bahn eventually and head home. Our plane leaves around noon, so we are up kind of early to have a small breakfast of gummy bears (another gift the Germans have bestowed on the world) and head out to the airport on the train. As we are leaving Berlin, I am happy and anxious to return. It is impossibly sad to think this city suffered for so long and was divided for such close-minded reasons, but my solace is held onto tightly, knowing that Berlin has been re-born; and with it my relationship with this amazing city and country. The Berlin Wall fell after 28 years of keeping millions of people from accepting and truly understanding the whole package and potential of one of Europe’s hidden treasures of a city…my own private Berlin Wall fell in just under 25.

HERE COME SOME PICTURES OF THE ANIMALS (and other stuff...)