BERLIN – Other than seeing pictures of the bombed out buildings in history books or Hollywood depictions of the American sector, this was a city that had never really popped up on my radar until the summer of 2003. That was when a friend and I took a trip to Paris and made brief overnight stops in Berlin and Amsterdam.
In their own right, Paris and Amsterdam are magical places; Paris for the architecture and stylishness of the people, and Amsterdam for the sheer fun and frivolity of it all. I had never seen that many happy Americans wandering the streets. But that place that I have meditated over the last four years has been Berlin. (The locals here pronounce it (bare-lyn). Why did I like it so much? That trip was a flurry on the touristy path. The history, the majesty, the scale of it all overwhelmed me. I didn’t then nor do I now know not a lick of the harsh-sounding German but the vibe of Berlin spoke to me.
In booking this trip, I opted for a sleepover night train, hoping to be lucky enough to NOT have a cabin mate. When the train pulled out of Munich bound for Berlin and I didn’t see anyone in the cabin I thought I could relax uninterrupted for remaining six hours. Then at about 1 a.m. the train made its last stop before Berlin. There was commotion. My door pushed open, the lights flickered on and in walked a man in his mid 40s, with gray hair, glasses and immediately apologizing for waking me up. I wasn’t very friendly or talkative. “It’s okay, don’t worry about it,” I snarled, pulling my head under the covers on my bottom bunk.
Five hours later when my wake up call came, I pushed the curtains aside and saw the sunshine. He knew I was up and he started talking. And talking. And talking.
“Where are you from?”
“What are you doing in Germany?”
“Do you have any friends here?”
“Oh, you’re from the States? I lived in Atlanta where I got my MBA.”
Blah, blah, blah.
Within fifteen minutes he had given me a list of things to do in Berlin that were not on the tourist list. Taking a boat through the canals. A two-night jazz festival. He told me that if he were gay or married to a black woman, he would definitely live in Berlin. “It’s the most liberal city in all of Germany without a doubt.”
That man, Clase, gave me his business card and cell number. He told me his wife was a doctor and if I got into any medical problem please call them. He then pulled out a map and helped orientate me to where my hotel was and gave precise directions. It was incredibly kind of him. This is why I love Berlin. Throughout my entire four days there, people stopped me on the streets, as I looked puzzled flipping through maps. Strangers told me where to go and have a nice meal on a lake. Another one took me on a tour of a neighborhood which had been lots of signs about things the Nazis had done to the Jews. He translated all the signs that said things like “Jewish children could no longer go to schools too far away from their houses.” “Jewish men could only work at x, z and y.”
I inherited a gypsy gene from my father and it has caused me to wander into many foreign spots in the Caribbean, Mexico, Central America and Europe. None of those places have I ever encountered kindness like that of the Berliners.
As a tall, black man making my way through this world I have grown accustomed to people staring at me – even in New York City and other places I cherish. In Berlin it didn’t matter if I walked into an upscale restaurant, a dicey part of town or wherever, not once that I get that blank, cold, icy stare that many black people know. I honestly believe I could have walked down the streets in a purple dinosaur suit and no one would even blink.
“That just doesn’t happen here,” said David Brewer, an American black man who is a singer and vocal coach who moved to Berlin four years ago. He has no plans to move back to the United States. “If you ever get into an elevator and you see a white woman snatching her purse back and pulling away into a corner, she is more than likely an American white woman.”
Brewer went on.
“A lot of black people who move here lose themselves for a while. They get so many invitations to people’s homes and dinners they are just overwhelmed – the kind of thing that doesn’t seem to happen much in the States.”
In addition to being a world class city, steeped in the history of World War II and some of the best museums, shopping and cultural life, the people are friendly. They don’t stare you down like a criminal waiting. The city is clean. Navigable in English by bus and subway. For as horrid as the Nazi history that will forever blemish the place, Berlin is proof that any city doesn’t have to be stuck in an ugly past. They have indeed embraced it, learned from it and moved on. We could still do a bit of that in many American cities.
For the sake of space, I will offer a few observations from my trip to Berlin. Lots of Americans love it and come through here. My to do list of restaurants and places to see from friends would have kept me busy for a month. I saw a good bit of the touristy stuff but I focused on the neighborhoods and where locals hung out.
~ Berlin’s Hauptbanhauf (Central Train Station) is a stunning sight. The five level glass structure, only built a year ago, is one of the busiest crossing points in all of Europe, Clase told me. Some people come to Berlin just to see this magnificent structure which has trains coming in on three levels. You could spend hours just shopping or eating. The only thing I found strange was they charged .80 Euros to use the bathroom.
~The Hotel Sylter Dof was pretty much a draw. I paid under $100 a night to stay there. The staff was friendly and helpful but it seems when you get an Internet special they put you in a smaller room with no air conditioning. I had to keep the windows open – not only allowing a lot of noise into the room but dozens of mosquitoes. When I saw a clump of dead ones on the window pane I knew to spend as little time as possible there. DO NOT stay at this hotel.
~The Kaufhaus Des Westens (KaDeWe) is one of the biggest department stores in all of Europe at six floors, a consumer’s dream or nightmare depending on your financial condition. I found some my size (49) of Birkenstocks while shopping in Berlin.
~I ate at many fine restaurants, Italian, German and Vietnamese cuisines to name a few for some very cheap. I drink a lot of water and had to learn very quickly that if you ask for water without gas they will always bring bottled water to the table. Very quickly I had to ask for water from the tap.
~Unlike my experience with Parisians, almost every Berliner I met not only knew some English but were willing to speak it. This point cannot be minimized. As a person wandering around in a city with a German phrase book and a dictionary, unless you know the language of a place, you are at the mercy of the locals. Shop clerks, servers in restaurants, hotel employees, taxi drivers – almost anyone interacting with the public, especially tourists, knew English.
~On the Sunday before I left I had found a great area to read and rest, park with a fountain called Viktoria-Luise Platz. The fountain was gushing 20 feet upward. The air was cool, about 70. People relaxed on the park grounds – some almost nude. I came to Berlin to feel that feeling of magic that I had felt the first time, to allow the hundreds of books read and pages written from graduate school, to began to seep into my being. It was indeed a perfect moment on a perfect trip
Posted under
Travel,
Uncategorized
