Tag: Germany

Berlin boogie

~ Chris ~ 2 Comments

So there we were, rambling the hip Berlin sidewalks, hopscotching crumpled cigarette packs whose contents the locals so blithely puff, and glancing at the endless walls of colorful graffiti that looks like so much bubble-lettered gobbledygook, when we stumbled on a little shop that sells porcelain pups. Yes: glazed Great Danes and shiny Schnauzers. My brother and I peered in the windows, pointing, laughing, pining. Too bad the damn place was closed. We moved on, slightly crushed. Onward.

Berlin is a beaut. It may not be the prettiest or most charismatic city I’ve been to — you win, Paris, Istanbul and Tokyo — but it is relentlessly amicable, stylish, pulsing. The city, from which I just returned, has a big determined heart, still pulling itself out of the twin muck of Nazism and Communism, that makes it both a little staid and also, wildly, weirdly, the techno-rave dance capital of the world, a pent-up human energy explosion.

It’s an offbeat charmer, animated by a vibrant polyglot and a diverse people, be it leather-clad Eurotrash, Arab falafel slingers, or well-heeled bougies and their primly groomed doggies. It presents an alluring jumble of history and humanity, culture and cuisine, with a dash of decadence and the pesky ghosts of a bleak past that’s shudderingly recent.

We spent six full days stamping the streets, alleyways, museums and squares of this relatively young metropolis, whose US-backed west and USSR-backed east didn’t reconcile till the Wall came tumbling down in the great thaw of 1989. Much of the architecture looks shiny-new, replacements for the rubble left by ferocious Allied bombings during WWII.

Berlin was also rocked by rock ’n’ roll. We took a tour of  the city’s grungy, arty, DIY underbelly in a vintage 1972 Ford Econoline van driven by the shaggy founder of the Ramones Museum Berlin, which is really just a funky bar strewn with punk artifacts. It’s cool. The tour was happily heavy on David Bowie and Iggy Pop’s ‘70s stint in Berlin, which forged a collective creative milestone in rock, including Bowie’s wondrous “Heroes.” We can be heroes, just for one day. Or, in our case, six days.

A side note: For all its diversity — the Turkish and Arab worlds exert strong stakes — Berlin has blind spots. I saw fewer than three Black people in six days, and that’s troubling and hard to fathom for a US visitor. I googled this and read that most of the Black population lives in the so-called African Quarter, an area I’m pretty sure we didn’t hit and whose existence rather unsettles. Ignorance may place me out of my depth here; facts are elusive. And yet.

And now, a smattering of visuals — alas none of those porcelain pups that so capture the whimsy, artistry and dog-love of the bounty that’s Berlin … 

Berlin Cathedral with the famed, kitschy TV tower of East Berlin

Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe — stark, contemplative, abstract

My bed at the lovely Chateau Royal Hotel, with mystifying skeleton-emblazoned canopy

The Tiergarten park, a 520-acre urban oasis in West Berlin, where I sipped a stein of lager in a leafy biergarten

Tiergarten

A bar I wish was open when I passed

Cafe Frieda, my favorite restaurant in Berlin, swathed in that glorious graffiti

Some of the bar staff at our arty hotel, a fantastically hospitable crew, slinging mean, creative drinks
Guinea fowl dinner at my second favorite Berlin restaurant, Eins44 Cantine

The iconic Brandenburg Gate, doing its thing, just sitting there, from the 1700s

One of my new Berlin buds

Tripped up on trips

~ Chris ~ Leave a comment

One of the more jackassy things I’ve done lately is buy a small stack of books about Berlin, where I travel to in October, and buy a smaller stack of books about Hong Kong, where I’ve rather rashly decided I will travel to in January. That means I’m planning two big trips at once and it’s not financially healthy nor psychologically joyful. It’s kind of driving me crazy. It’s what is called, in polite society, a dick move.

I’m getting greedy. Or antsy. My wanderlust is in labor, twin trips ready to pop out. Travel is one of my prime passions, and when it’s piqued, I gotta scoot. Move over Berlin, Hong Kong is a’calling. 

After marinating for weeks in all things Berlin, I’m now thinking about Hong Kong more than the German capital. Honestly, I haven’t even read all my Berlin books and here I am scouring hotels on an overpopulated island with precarious ties to China. It’s like I’m leapfrogging, snarfing down dessert before the second course has even arrived.

Before I decided on Berlin, I made two false starts in my annual travel plans. I bought a ticket to Santiago, Chile, why I’m not quite sure. I scuttled that. Toronto (wha?) was next, until I ditched that idea, too. Then somehow Berlin — massive history, fine fall weather, beer, bratwurst and beer — zapped in my brain like a neon laser in a sweaty, druggy East Berlin club. Haven’t been there in many years, I mused, let’s check it out as a real adult, which is an entirely relative concept.

Berlin. Cool. Right on. My brother’s coming. Six days. It will be a blast.

And then Marrakesh beckoned. That’s right. 

In the midst of planning Berlin, the travel bug — a venomous, cackling black widow — bit again. It left an awful, itchy wound that somehow led me to Morocco’s great, dusty, tout-teeming desert carnival, even though I’ve been there before, if briefly. I stocked up on Marrakesh guides from the library. I viewed YouTube travelogues. I re-watched Hope and Crosby’s “Road to Morocco” (not really, but now I want to; it’s sublimely funny). 

But Marrakesh quickly proved a desert mirage. That place is hard work — posh but primitive, hagglers hectoring you incessantly, too many redundant souks or bazaars, and, this one gets me right here, open animal abuse, from chained-up performing monkeys to broken-down donkeys. I’m in no mood for a personal PETA patrol.

Back to square one in planning trip number two, which, recall, is preposterous as I’m still shaping up Berlin. So I decamp to the attic, where I read and research trips. The attic is my hermitage, my retreat, my man cave (wait, scratch that last one). After I nixed Marrakesh, I brainstormed places to go in January: Singapore, Taiwan, Croatia, Switzerland, Brussels, even Slovenia. Fail, all. 

I alighted on Hong Kong for myriad reasons: cool, dry winter weather, world-class cuisine, zesty street culture, neon insanity amid forests of skyscrapers and breathtaking mountains, island getaways, ravishing exoticism, Jackie Chan. 

And so I juggle two journeys, one in fall, one in winter. I try to keep my angst in check — the costs! the logistics! — and I think I’m holding it together.

“Boo-hoo,” you say. 

“Such problems,” you cluck.

I know, I know, I reply, face the shade of a ripe radish.

Back in black

~ Chris ~ Leave a comment

After an unintentional hiatus of chronic brain farts, here are a few bite-size entries:

Tripping over trips

I bought a flight to Chile. And scrapped it. I bought a flight to Toronto. And scrapped it. Fickle? Right. Even after planning and paying I decided neither destination would slake my thirst for culture, art, food, action. So I scotched them in favor of the capital of the European Union’s most populous nation, that mad beehive of historical and cultural abundance, Berlin. Chile would have happened this month, Toronto last month, and Berlin, well, it’s a ways off — October. Yet as with any trip, I’m already committing vigorous reportage, booking tours and meals, boning up on the history and italicizing gotta-see sights, from the fabled Reichstag and remnants of the Wall (now vibrant murals) to Hitler’s bunker (that fetid suicide pit) and the enticing Museum Island — five museums colonizing a mid-city isle on the lovely Spree river. Sounds great, I think. Equally terrific: I got full refunds for the Chile and Toronto trips. Did I mention my brother is coming along? Fine company, he’s also a crack navigator, which is perfect for me who gets hopelessly lost the second I step out of the hotel. I’m the guy holding a huge, creased paper map upside down, battling fluttering winds.

Doggy style

I don’t laugh out loud very often while reading, but I did, a lot, soaking in Miranda July’s new novel “All Fours,” a warm, warped, touching, unashamedly naughty and riotous love story that goes places you’re never quite prepared for. It’s a joy. The story follows the romantic zigzags of a 45-year-old artist who’s a married mother but stumbles upon unlikely love with a much younger man who likes to dance. Sex, perimenopausal panic and motel redecorating ensue. It’s conventional until it’s not, both bawdy and bizarre, with just the right touch of July’s signature kookiness. Never has the writer — who’s also an actress and filmmaker — been more in control of her habitual twee impulses. And never has she been so seamlessly funny.

Doggy style part II

Cubby the magical mutt is, I’m afraid, getting old. The guesstimate age for this chipper rescue pup is seven to eight, solid middle-age in human years — paunches and ear hair, janky joints and jowls, gray and grumbles. Yet while he can be a bit creaky scrambling up the stairs and some tiny warts have mushroomed on his compact body, Cubs still plays chase with his stuffed Yoda and barks with shattering verve at the random car horn and rumbling UPS truck, more than ever in fact. But he’s also more neurotic than he was in his slavering, carefree youth. Sometimes if landscapers are extra noisy or the wind rustles the trees in violent whooshes the dog will quiver and hide under my legs or behind a chair. Also, his outside duties (doodies?) seem harder to coax out of him. Otherwise Cubby’s a hale old boy, snapping up treats and begging for belly rubs. He sleeps well, too, though his snoring can register 7.5 on the Richter scale. Those little earthquakes are a thing of most assured comfort.

His head looks enormous.