Single Sweet May in Berlin

My friend Jackie and I are walking through Tempelhofer Park in Berlin, a park whose empty terminal is still and tiny across the wide expanse of the old runway. Tempelhof Airport was actively receiving and departing airplanes until 2008, then it became a park, and there has been controversy over redevelopment plans ever since. 

But today the weather is perfect, the sky mostly blue, and packs of casual, hip Berliners have swarmed the park for picnics and barbecues. Jackie and I sit for a moment and drink from our bottles of Club Mate and finish our conversation. We have been talking nonstop the past few days, and everything I have learned about Berlin Jackie taught me. But right now we’re talking about the personal, finishing our conversation about the afterlife—Jackie mentions her roommate’s philosophical take, which she says has calmed her anxiety about dying: her roommate says between life and death, only life exists if death is the end of consciousness. 

Information board about Tempelhofer Park

Panorama of Tempelhofer Park — low sling of building is the former terminal

Berliners barbecuing and picnicking in Tempelhofer Park

We’ve had a monumental walk over here, from Friedrichshein-Kreuzberg through Gorlitzer Park, onto Neukölln, and now to this strange airport-park. Along the way we were so absorbed in conversation that I sometimes had to remind myself to look around, to be a tourist. In Gorlitzer park, the fruit trees were exploding in almost surreal beauty. I couldn’t catch my breath as I took in trees unfurling savage pink blossoms in a series of stuttering realizations. In Neukölln, Jackie pointed out the hip cafes lining the street and claimed one was likely to hear American English in this part of town; when she first moved to Berlin 5 years ago it was completely different. She lived cheaply in Neokölln, very close to Temelhofer Park, and at that time it was totally Turkish and one rarely saw women or children on the street. All the establishments were Turkish owned. As if being driven in by the busload, “hipsters,” a group unidentifiable by race or ethnicity, have inundated Neokölln in the past couple years. Now the rents are higher, many of the Turkish establishments have been forced out of business, and many families evicted, Jackie says. But, on the topic of gentrification, Jackie is some sort of post-liberal: she says her eyes glaze over when the term gentrification is even mentioned because the history of cities is the history of cycles of gentrification. 

Self portrait with Berlin Cathedral on Museum Island

Tulips blossoming along the Spree

Fruit trees blossoming near the Oberbaumbrücke in Berlin

There is no doubt about it: Berlin is endlessly cool, way cooler than Amsterdam—more hip, more gritty, more nightlife, more street life. I love people watching in Berlin, I even love cruising in Berlin. Soon we exit the park and head into the heart of Kreuzberg and continue talking incessantly. Jackie says she feels like she is on drugs with me because we talk so much. To me it feels like we’re on some sort of connective brain transmission, corroborating all the things we have thought about but never expressed to anyone since we last saw each other. Clearly my whole point of coming to Europe on a cargo ship and struggling with the definition of home and loneliness was to meet Jackie here in Berlin and talk about it, at the very height of Spring. 

***

It’s almost bedtime for Jackie after a long day and little sleep. She’s enveloped in her duvet and about to nod off on the living room couch-bed in her shared flat. I’m flipping through channels on German television. Despite both of us being at the end of our battery packs, I ask her a huge question: What’s the deal with the Berlin Wall? I feel stupid even asking, since it’s a pretty famous part of history, but Jackie generously starts explaining what happened once the wall came down, even if her eye lids are drooping. I stop her—I need to know why the wall went up in the first place. She says simply that the Allies divided Berlin after WWII and the Soviets got East Berlin. The amazing nature of history and one’s place in it hits me: I knew the wall began to come down in 1989 and the reunification of Berlin was completed in 1990, but that was only 23 years ago. In the past 23 years, while I was coming further and further into adulthood in my own part of the world, the generations cycled through the growth and development of post-wall East Berlin unbeknownst to me, yet here I was, confronted with it on a very real basis. I was fascinated.

SLEEP IS COMMERCIAL:
Graffiti stencil on facade in Berlin, city of cool, well-placed Graffiti

Weird raised pipes that run throughout Berlin periodically (in Mitte)

Mural through dark driveway near Schlesisches Tor station of the U1

I have heard stories about disgruntled Berliners yelling things such as “Learn German!” from open windows when they hear someone on the street speaking in English. I have heard tales of graffiti signs on buildings that point an arrow to a window with a caption that reads, “Insert grenade here.” I have heard anecdotes about people sneering and saying, “Go back to America.” Jackie says some of the old time anarchist punk tenants that moved into her building in the 90s gave her roommates trouble for moving into their flat in the 00s. “Those high nose academics,” the neighbors said. Jackie retorts, “They did the same thing in the 90s! The neighborhood developed and became a cool place for people to live because they came here in the first place!” 

Reflection of illuminated trees in a Berlin canal 

Night scene along the Spree

Yours truly and Jackie on the Oberbaumbrücke

There is something interesting in my preference about getting my information from Jackie rather than a text-based source, be it online or a physical book. No doubt about it, I am a researcher at heart, but this time my preference is for the primary source interview. On my first night in Berlin, Jackie told me there was no summer one year in the 1800s. She said a late spring gradually gave way to an early fall. The pronouncement haunted me like a dream I couldn’t shake the entire next day as I wandered heavy, grey Mitte: losing such a cherished season was actually possible on this mysterious planet? Three days later, after we left Tempelhofer Park, we checked out The Amerika-Gedenkbibliothek (American Memorial Library) and Jackie pointed out the sign—she claimed the “Amerika” portion of the sign had been removed by protestors as part of a ballsy anti-America action a few years earlier. I wondered at Jackie possibly being nearby when that happened, of potentially being witness to it. In these two examples, the power of myth and vague memory propel the imagination: I found out later that indeed there was no summer in 1816 mostly because Mount Tambora in Indonesia erupted in April 1815, which was the biggest recorded volcano explosion in history. In actuality, there was no spring, summer, or fall in 1816, there was just a year of winter basically. As for the The Amerika-Gedenkbibliothek, that turned out to be total myth: the sign always just said GEDENKBIBLIOTHEK. I love these layers of information, and it makes me contemplate the nature of “trueness”–if Jackie’s description of the Year Without a Summer catapulted my imagination into motion, then I think her take on it was valuable, even if inaccurate, information. 

***

It’s my last night in Berlin and I am pretty sure I’ve fallen in love with every person I’ve met, except the Americans that started talking to us outside the cafe tonight. I cringed as they claimed to be from Los Angeles (but were originally from Texas), I muttered as I admitted I was born in Glendale, I shuddered as the homely sporty one tried to pick up on Jackie’s adorable German roommate. I suppose this exposes the shell of being the only American I’ve developed in the past few months, and I am ashamed of my internalized self-hatred although I can’t wait to complain about these Americans to Jackie. But the bigger theme is the dragon I’ve been chasing ever since I conceived of riding a cargo ship across the Atlantic: I want to be unique, I want to be the trend setter, I want to be unparalleled and in order for that to happen I don’t want homely, jet-lagged Americans talking to me loudly in a hip part of Berlin.

Intersection of Oppelnen Straße and Skalitzer Staße, Berlin

View of interesting architecture from the Oberbaumbrücke, Berlin

Sun setting through tunnel of the Kottbusser Tor station of the U1

Walking to the next bar, I finally get my chance to complain, but through the course of my diatribe I realize to be set on fire by Berlin means to writhe in its cultural complex. Earlier in the day, walking home from the Berlinische Gallerie, I was making hasty resolutions to learn German and emigrate to Berlin; in the afternoon I scrapped the plan, pinpointing all the cultural strife one would have to overcome; now, on the eve of my departure, I relished the strife as only an outsider could. I laughed at the Germans so fervently clinging to their language, their culture, their post-wall city. Racism is alive and well in Europe, I said to Jackie, while in the U.S. political correctness has ravished any attempt at a productive conversation, and while in Amsterdam, the clever Dutch have capitalized on their reputation of tolerance and good English speaking abilities.  

Sunday morning vantage between the U-bahn and S-bahn after a night of dancing at the Berghain

Luckauer Straße (easy easy easy easy easy)

Home sweet home: Görlitzer Bahnhof station of the U1

After a few more Cinco de Mayo shots of tequila (after all, Jackie and I did meet in San Francisco where the bastardized Mexican holiday is celebrated by getting wasted), we shuffle home under the rails of the U1 and Jackie promises me David Bowie’s newest music video, which is a tribute to the years he spent in Berlin in the 70s. She keeps saying everyone thought it was great because it was made by a famous videographer but she’ll wait for me to make my own pronouncement. I sense an indictment brewing. Once home, she cues it up on her laptop and I try to view it with an open mind. I think, well the song absolutely sucks. I think, who is that chick’s face? I think, why are there subtitles of the lyrics? Jackie yells, “How could anyone take this seriously?! All the names of the streets are spelled wrong!” 

With Jackie’s familiar world view I find something I had lost inside myself a long time ago: the courage to be outspoken, the self assurance to love, the promise of blossoms unfurling their petals. Spring has come to Europe and this won’t be another year without a summer. 

Blossoms...

...blossoms...

and more blossoming Berlin