Lost in Translation

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.

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