Berlin: A Map's Story

Berlin is a city.

I mean, clearly, Berlin is a city, but I mean that Berlin is what I think of when I think of a city- fancy buildings, sprawling streets, trains, trams, buses, graffiti, advertisements, museums, churches, restaurants and shops, but mostly people. People in the train station coming and going and shopping and sitting. People on the bus, standing and talking and sweating in the unexpected heat. People in the hostel making friends, getting ready to go out, talking over ideas and projects, focusing on their computers, focusing on each other, playing games, cooking, eating, drinking, laughing, listening. People painting, people dancing, people playing songs in bands, on their own, over speakers, to themselves. People talking. People listening. People acting. People watching. People.

My story of Berlin is mostly a story of a map. I didn't notice it when we checked into our hostel in east Berlin, but there was a book of maps big enough to be a place mat sitting on the counter. After being on a train and (successfully, again, I might add) finding our way to the hostel via public transportation, I wasn't really noticing much. We spent the evening eating dinner and then chilling in the common area, where I got a couple of posts done and listened to the conversations of the groups of people going out. Even before I got my map, I spent a good couple of minutes being distracted by the map of the trains in the lounge hostel where the most available plug was. It is a thing of beauty, I think, this crazy, almost unreadable map of stations and colored lines.

Click here to go to a clearer version of the chaos.

We didn't even get a map to head back to the train station to buy our tickets to Vienna the next day. We had gotten burned a little by the price of tickets from Prague to Berlin and were determined to book ahead, so we walked back to the train station (it's really not that bad of a walk), got tickets and walked back, stopping by a market on the way back (where I bought a watermelon slice and proceeded to eat it all the way home). It wasn't until I stood at the counter finishing my watermelon that a guy from our room tore one of the maps off the stack and brought it over to show Christine where a huge flea market would be on Sunday.

I started to pour over the map the second Christine left it in my hands. Already in red were circled our hostel location, the location of the market north of us in Maurpark and a section of town southwest from us where the longest intact piece of the Berlin Wall stood.

Berlin is huge. It's hard to know where to even start in this city. I had a couple of churches in mind (I ended up going to St. Hedwig's, the Berliner Dom, Marienkirche and Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, as a reference for future posts), but nothing much else other than that and that, my friends, is not the best of plans. The best of plans is to have an idea of a few things you'd like to see, leaving a lot of time open for the adventures that life can bring you but still giving structure to your day. I sat and stared at my new map for extended periods of time while Christine went up to the room intending to nap.

The guy behind the desk noticed my apparent fascination with the piece of paper in front of me and began to help. This man requires a little bit of description. He's tall and balding, with Latin American skin, a German accent and an interesting personality. The first time I encountered him I was sitting with my bare feet up on a coffee table in the lounge by reception, typing away on my computer, trying to figure a plan for the day. He walked by on his way to the smoking area in the fire escape and went to tickle my feet. I immediately put them down, because he's an adult that works at the hostel and your feet don't belong on tables, etc. He smiled at me from behind John Lennon sunglasses and told me to put my feet back up. "No, you know, it's fine. I do it at my house all the time. Now, this, this is not my house and maybe you don't want to put your feet up because they just cleaned and maybe you want to eat something here and feet are not clean, but no, it is fine, just go ahead and put your feet up. It's just that I like to meet new people, when I see people here, to avoid late night phone calls, you know. All of you, you will go out tonight and I don't expect you back before five tomorrow morning, and you will be laying here on these couches and I just like to see who will be here tomorrow morning. So," he finished, gesturing for me to put my feet back up.

He stood across from me at the bar and started to circle places. "This line is where the Berlin wall was. Basically, you have the East Berlin here, then the French, British and American sectors." He pointed them out on the map. "Now, here, this is your base in East Berlin. This place," he drew a pie piece east of our hostel, "You want to go here. It is nice shopping, you know, where everyone fancy," he did a dance that I assume signified 'fancy,' "wants to go, but also very interesting. And so, Addie Jo," he had a very intentional way of saying my name, "Next question." I hadn't asked one in the first place.

For a good fifteen minutes, he pointed out places on my map, circling and outlining locations in black marker. As Christine said, he doesn't hear a word you say, but he's got a lot to say. I left still a little overwhelmed but more prepared to deal with the mass of opportunities that is Berlin.

My good friend.

Back in the room, Christine was getting ready to go art exploring with one of the guys from the hostel. I'm good at tagging along, so we walked down the roads and ended up at this graffiti covered-old building. Now, graffiti-covered describes much of Berlin, and old building describes much of Europe, so I know I'm not being very specific, but this graffitti-covered old building wins, as far as I'm concerned. Inside, as you climb the stairs through this mess of art and writing, you come to exhibits and exhibitions, artists selling their work and blasting their music from rooms that they are clearly living in. Every once in a while, a jar or a basket would ask for a donation, but it was free, just wandering up and down the floors of what might have been an office building or an apartment building or who knows what else. I wish I had marked it on my map.

Saturday brought a train trip down to Alexanderplatz and museum island. I was constantly folding and unfolding my map, checking the train stops and the streets. Christine and I wandered through festivals and shopping centers before coming to the grassy area in front of the Berliner Dom. We spent a good quarter of an hour in the sun, listening to the bells chime less and less, dying away as the passing of the hour got farther away in time. We found a book sale, almost got run over by a bike tour (BIKES- THEY'RE EVERYWHERE IN BERLIN AND THEY ALWAYS HAVE THE RIGHT OF WAY IF YOU VALUE YOUR LIFE) and split as when I went to go visit my churches.

The Berliner Dom in the sun. Quite nice.

I climbed the two hundred and some ridiculous number of stairs up to the top of the Berliner Dom to see the city from there. I listened to a band on the bridge and counted the steeples in the skyline. Some of my favorite pictures from Berlin are from here.

Reflection of one of the domes of the Dom in a nearby office building

Watching the city

Hey, look, there's a band!

I swear, this is a lion with headphones on. On the Berliner Dom.

You know, just a field. Better from above, though.

Then Christine and I adventured to a new part of town to watch performance art. Basically, there were these moveable wooden stations that had speakers on them that played repeating random noises, a sound like clicking for a while and then a sound like drops clinking against a pipe. In the discussion beforehand, one of the panelists had said that the whole experiences was like an experiment in being free. Freedom, she said, might not be something that we either have or don't have, but more like something that we practice having. And I could kinda see that. As the performers moved, they didn't move with any kind of rhythm I could here. They used and changed the space, regardless of what it seemed like they should be doing. Thought provoking for someone who spent the last eight years practicing being in time with a perpetual drumbeat. I spent a couple of minutes before and after the performance recreasing my map so the train lines showed on top, checking to see if there was a station closer to where we were.

Sunday brought a church service in Marienkirche, where there was a baptism and communion, which ended with me holding hands with two people I've never met before speaking a language I don't speak but with whom I broke bread and drank wine and it just kinda gave you hope for the Church universal.

Christine and I spent the afternoon in Maurpark at the flea market circled on my map. It is something to see. I didn't take pictures of the market itself, but there was a sizeable crowd by the stage and plenty of people walking from stall to stall, browsing and haggling, speaking French and English just as much as German.

Not entirely representative of the many people in love with this place.

As for me, I saw my first real life rat, bought a bag (not from the same place) and listened to German kids sing along to American songs. We walked over to a coffee shop and met another guy from the hostel, who's writting a book on Americans teaching English in Berlin. After a couple of hours of work on blog posts (these suckers take more research than you think), we split and walked over to a poetry reading.

Let me pause and recap. By this point in my trip in Berlin I have:
a) been to an art exhibition in an abandoned building
b) been to a performance in a converted sewage processing plant
c) been to a huge flea market
d) been to a poetry reading. A POETRY READING.

I would like to note that all of these things were entirely unplanned by me.



And then today, after a quick trip over to the Turkish place down the street, we rode the trains out to the Berlin Wall, circled in red, where I couldn't help but take pictures of the murals that dominate it now.

Then we took trains over to the Brandenburg Gate, which used to be the entrance to the city and is right by where the American embassy is. Happy Memorial Day, home!

And tourists. Gotta love the tourists.

Right down the road is the Holocaust Mahnmal, which I am unsure about.

There were, prior to this shot, French children running up and down the aisles.

And then another train ride over to the Zoo, down the road from where is the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church.The rest of the evening was spent walking around the old American sector of Berlin, consulting my security blanket of a map, turning it around to read street names and folding it to look at the tiny unlabeled icons representing who knows how many other features of Berlin I wouldn't get around to seeing.

Though there was a statue enjoying himself...

Dance off with skateboards.

Again, the people here really made it happen. From the four girls in our room who went out every night, tighter than the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, to the man at the desk, to the author in making, our hostel provided us with all sorts of people to meet, acquaint ourselves with and share our experience of this city. I can't say I'm sad to leave though- a skylight that lets me see a few stars at night is not enough to deter me any longer from Vienna. Wish me luck on the nine hours of a train ride to Austria tomorrow!