My German is limited to very basic caveman-style communication. However, when my “sprechen sie Englisch oder Spanisch?” is answered negatively, I give it my best shot. This happened the other day when attempting to change money in a bank. “Ich spreche kein Englisch,” said the teller. So I went into verbal Pictionary mode.
“Yes, hello, I have dollars. Dollars for Euros in this bank?” I said.
The teller looked at me and blinked.
“Dollars,” I tried again, pointing at me. “You Euros. Change?”
“No, not in this bank,” she said.
“Which bank?”
“There is one three blocks from here, to the left.”
“OK, left, three streets, bank? Yes?”
“Yes.”
I marched out triumphantly, proud of my seemingly successful communication in a language that I have never studied. Heading left, and with a heady sense of pride, I took in the street scenes of Prenzlauer Berg.
The streets of this affluent quarter of Berlin are in full gentrification bloom. If ever the neighborhood had a gritty past, the traveler today cannot see it, save for the requisite graffiti in doorways and on the sides of delivery trucks. Instead, Prenzlauer Berg seems like an idyllic slice of European living, where 150-year-old buildings stand proudly over winding streets, their five stories uniform in height but unique from one façade to the next, as if each architect were given a similar canvas and carte blanche to see what he could come up with. The sun shined this day, and people congregated in the myriad outdoor cafes, some sipping coffee, some half liters of beer, all under the spell of a warm spring afternoon with the intoxicating scent of lilacs in the air. In between the cafes there was not a vacant storefront, and the sidewalk buzzed with activity: doors to the pharmacy swung open and shut, next to a store with colorful wooden toys and traditional-looking baby buggies. Next to that a woman inspected carrots and onions at a produce market, which was next to a boutique offering locally designed fashion amid a setting that was all hip and edge and far out of my personal price and fashion comfort range.
Just about every block has its own bakery, and what a lovely concept this is. Germans love their bread, and they do it better than anyone else on Earth. On the next block, wafts of sweet air dance in from their doorways, where dozens of different types of dense loaves in all shades of brown await hungry customers. On the sidewalk patrons sip espresso and pick apart pastries, and I saw people chatting with friends, people watching the daily urban parade pass by, others filling sketchbooks with whatever moved them, reading newspapers, typing on computers.
The third block was more of the same, an outdoor festival under the budding shade of the tree-lined streets, a slice of daily life that I longed to be a part of. Trams and buses hustled denizens to parts unknown; bicycles zipped past; and pedestrians took up the rest of the wide sidewalks. A woman helped a customer select frames for his glasses. A man in a white apron watered flowers in front of a Vietnamese restaurant. A small boy played the accordion on the corner.
The third corner. I looked around for the bank: a hotel, two restaurants, a bakery, a travel agency, a leather-goods shop, a small plaza with benches, a store with a dozen bicycles in front. No bank. I stopped a man on the street and asked, “Wo ist die bank?” If I understood him correctly, he said to go three blocks to left. Maybe next time I’ll just go to the ATM, I thought. But I didn’t mind. Each block was a new world. I started walking without a Euro in my pocket, enriched.
Publicado: 8 May 2010
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Excitement fills me when I arrive at a new destination, and I hit the ground running. Here are some images from my first 24 hours in Berlin.
Berlin’s personality alternates between a squeaky-clean model of efficiency and a gritty poster for personal expression. This dichotomy makes for fascinating urban exploration. If you’re willing to wear out your shoes a little bit, you’ll be rewarded with a closeness to Europe’s artistic capital that you just can ‘t get on a package tour.
Climb the stairs of the Berliner Dom, the city’s rebuilt cathedral, and you’ll be rewarded with sweeping views of the entire cityscape. Skyscrapers are rare, so the only thing that impedes your view is the curvature of the Earth.
A city once divided now only has vestiges of the old wall. Berlin has been unified for over 20 years, and denizens happily move about freely. The above picture is from Mauerpark, which is dedicated to the wall.
Berlin is also a young city. Aspiring musicians, artists, writers and hangers-on flock to the city, infusing day and night with a vibrancy few cities can match.
Buildings become canvases, too. Artistic expression enlivens spaces all over. Above, a small cafe on a side street outside of Mitte, downtown.
Publicado: 5 May 2010
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Over the next three weeks, I will be traveling through central Europe. Berlin, Prague, Slovenia, Milan, Switzerland and Amsterdam are names that hold a magical appeal to me and live in my memory only as old National Geographic articles that I used to read in my parent’s garage. As a child I would page through the musty magazines, analyzing the photographs, marveling at imposing castles, the snow-capped peaks of the Alps, and villages that looked like the setting for a fairy tale. They all seemed so impossibly foreign, accessible only to retirees or debonaire millionaires or adventurous hippies with rucksacks and rich parents. Europe was but a fuzzy concept. Growing up, travel took place in a automobile, and the road ends at the ocean. Never did I think I would actually travel to those distant, exotic lands, much less at the tender young age of 31 (and far from a debonaire millionaire), and even less with my mother and sister. Yet here the three of us sit in the airport in Newark, where we will board a flight shortly that will take us to Berlin. For my mother and sister, this will be their first trip across the pond. The anticipation leading up to this moment has been great.
Half the fun of traveling is the anticipation. You study the map and research possible destinations like randy singles browsing a dating site. You buy new clothes, get ready, pack your bags and find out as much as possible about where you’re going. Mild curiosity crescendos into a consuming anticipation as the takeoff date approaches. Once you check in at the airport, it’s like a final phone call: Hello, Berlin, I’ll be stopping by shortly. I hope you’re ready. I know I am.
I asked my mother how she slept last night.
“Gosh,” she said. “I don’t think I slept a wink. I was just too wound up.”
“Yeah,” my sister Marija said. “I didn’t sleep too much either.”
I, of course, am much too cool to admit that much. “Huh,” I said. “I slept fine.” I am the International Traveler, the Tripmaster, after all, and I have a reputation to uphold. It is also true that my sense of anticipation has dulled slightly over the years, as I travel internationally several times a year. And yet there I was, wide awake at 2am, wondering about the language barrier and strange foods, about moving about, about currency conversions and train rides and strange lunches and cramped hostels and crowds bouncing to techno music and fresh rolls and…
And then it was 6am and the alarm went off. Like the National Geographic-reading boy on Christmas morning, I scampered downstairs to see what the day would bring. The difference now, I guess, is that I had to stop to make coffee. And I didn’t unwrap anything. I’ll do that in about 12 hours, when I finally unpack in Berlin. Christmas is unfolding slowly, and the sense of anxious wonder only grows. I look forward to celebrating soon.
Publicado: 4 May 2010
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