GDR

Boulevard of broken dreams

DSCN3537By this stage we had consumed enough Schnitzel and wurst to keep a currywurst vendor in business so we headed for some real curry at the Indian joint just a couple of doors down the street. Currywust, a Berlin favourite, is my least favourite wurst by the way. It’s basically just a frankfurt with awful curry sauce. The Indian place near our apartment on the other hand was real Indian – different to Australian Indian but Indian flavours nonetheless. The prices were so cheap we over ordered a bit. At two euros a serve, we figured the samosas came singularly so we ordered two serves. They turned out to be normal sized, homemade and really yummy. The alloo mutter was really, really good as you might expect from a country famed for its potato dishes. The chicken tikka was a bit different to what we’re used to. It came on a sizzling plate with lots of onions and capsicums and while it was quite tasty, it didn’t taste anything like the chicken tikka from the tandoor oven that we’re used to. Each main was served with rice and salad. The Naan bread was pretty good. And because it was a German restaurant the drinks list was longer than the food menu, including cocktails I haven’t heard of in years and beer was cheaper per litre than water.

After stuffing ourselves and still leaving food on the plate, we decided it was time to get out and see some stuff. We had seen many of the attractions that interested us on our last visit – we had walked much of the remaining wall, visited the holocaust museum, checkpoint Charlie, the Brandenburg Tor, walked Unter den Linden, seen the TV Tower and visited every Christmas Market in our path. I was keen to walk Karl Marx Allee to get an appreciation of the spaces where the massive GDR marches would have been held. That is after we actually found Karl Mark Allee. (Sheena is a Punk Rocker – The Ramones – lack of music complexity aside (and really who expects that from Joey and co), this is one of my favourite Ramones tunes. My love of punk rock and teen drama collided when Gossip Girl used this tune as the basis for an impromptu fashion show and I’ve got to admit the visual mix that accompanied it on the show was perfect – even if it probably made a few of the gritty CBGB regulars roll over in their graves.)

At its Alexanderplatz end, the boulevard named after the grandfather of communism doesn’t look like much – surrounded by decaying buildings that look close to an undignified end from a wrecking ball with the middle of the avenue converted to a parking lot like so many wide roads before it. But as you wander further along the boulevard, its former glory days in the 1960s start to hit home with architectural references and the magnificence of median strip and the rows of trees either side.

And there just peeking out on the left hand side was a modern update- just for Dan – The Computer Games Museum. We decided to limit ourselves to checking out the gift shop – good museums usually have a pretty awesome gift shop and as has been long established I love a good gift shop. There were a few good things in here but in the end we kept it conservative and got a postcard to prove we’d been.

DSCN3484

As we wandered further up the Allee, the history came into sharper focus as row upon row of magnificently designed housing rose from the sidelines to provide the grandeur (and symmetry) that one expects from a communist regime. Standing there, with the traffic stopped at lights further along, if you squinted you could almost see the goose stepping and hear the bullhorns. All we needed was the crackly loudspeaker from the Dülmen train station that sounded like it had stepped through a time warp to echo broadcasts of the Nazi and GDR era. It was unnerving sitting at the Dülmen train station late at night but you could imagine it here blaring from loudspeakers on the street during displays of GDR military might. (Bone Machine – The Pixies – I always get there on any trip but The Pixies have taken a long time to surface in my MP3 roster this time around. Well enjoyed though as always)

At the Frankfurter Tor end of the Allee, the buildings were most magnificent, actually designed as part of a 1950s design competition for nine – storey apartments with trade and public institutions at street level. The buildings were gran, modern and with all the symmetry you expect. The competition winners – five or six of them – were given a section to design for – all had the same design sensibility and the resulting buildings created a right angled harmony of form broken only by the traffic circle at the frankfurter Tor intersection – yes roundabouts are not just a modern traffic flow device but were also used to create a sense of order and symmetry in modernist town planning. Sadly, the Stalin Allee project was never completely realised but the buildings around Frankfurter Tor are an example of how town planning and architecture without democracy produces a grand order much like the neatly hedge rowed formal gardens that surround many of Europe’s Palaces but on a larger scale.

We mused at the ability of communist regimes to embark on massive infrastructure projects, creating unified design outcomes and housing for the populous. Of course the housing model is based on a one size fits all solution, and they ran out of cash so never completed their utopian dream here. Perhaps it speaks to the broader reasons for the doctrine’s collapse – the reality never matched the utopian dream and the egalitarian philosophy belied the need for individuality. Still, it is interesting to ponder the planning possibilities that are available without the influence of big business, the bureaucracy of local government, development driven by economists or the grass roots nimbyism that limits utopian dreamers in the 21st century.

As we wandered along the Boulevard Dan hadn’t just been noticing the GDR era planning but also the post-reunification capitalism. The ground floor public institution spaces were filled with high end outdoors stores, cafes and (of course) a model shop. I found a café down the street that advertised hand roasted beans and had a flat white on the menu. A flat white. In Germany. I ordered one and some water and sat down at the extremely hipster looking Coffee Profilers and contemplated our next destination to explore. The coffee, by the way, was awesome – really strong but creamy and very well made. I thoroughly recommend seeking out this little gem if you are in Friedrichshain (or have a model kit obsessed travelling companion). Dan emerged from the model shop without purchase as he wanted to contemplate a coveted model – of the Unimog I heard so much about at the Mercedes museum – overnight. By this stage it was close to 7pm and exhausted by our busy afternoon (and lack of overnight train slumber) we headed to Frankfurter Tor (where by the way there doesn’t seem to be an actual gate anymore) and grabbed the U-Bahn back to our apartment for the rest of the evening. (Special K – Placebo – for some reason this song reminds me of summer nights and parties in the 90s. Placebo were never the core of my track list but there was a time there where I swear I heard this tune every time I left my house.)

Shoe purchases – 2  Tank Museums – 0  Model purchases – 0 (yet)

Guten Morgen Berlin

We thought Berlin would be easy because we had been there before – but that was a year and a half before and we hadn’t expected to be returning so didn’t really commit any of it to memory. We were also really tired. Eventually we worked out which station we needed to head to and how to get there. Then we had to deal with the ticketing system which not only serves the local S-Bahn and U-Bahn networks but also the wider German train network. Eventually we deciphered how to get a day pass for the local network. The kicker was that the machine wasn’t accepting cash and didn’t except credit cards which made my travel card kind of useless. The maestro network saved the day and I used my savings withdrawal card.

The next dilemma was remembering the right station to get off at (and how to get there). We vaguely remembered we had to change trains somewhere – probably between the S-Bahn and U-Bahn networks. In most parts of Germany, the S-Bahn is the train network and the U-Bahn is the tram or light rail system. In Berlin these are called trams. The S-Bahn network is an electrified third rail network that in the central part of the city runs through the same stations inter-city trains stop at. The U-Bahn is the underground/ above ground network that transitions from underground tracks to a kind of high line. While both networks existed during the cold war, more of the U-Bahn stations were in the West and several in the East were closed down. Where the Western trains travelled through the east, the stations remained closed and well-guarded and became known as ghost stations. In the early years after the division, the GDR used to sell duty free items to West Berliners at a number of stations situated under East Berlin. Given some of the U-Bahn stations had been repurposed and routes altered, it took a little while to put the system back together after reunification.

Eventually after surveying the station map, (and the GPS) we remembered Ebswalder Strasse station on the U-Bahn and then traced the nearest S-Bahn station as Alexanderplatz. We got to the U-Bahn station at Alexanderplatz after an epic journey up and down stairs between the two stations. The night before Dan had mentioned that he was wary of one of us missing a train when we did our dice with the schedule at München Ost. Several years ago we had found ourselves in an interesting position when Dan had got off the train we just boarded at the Gold Coast in order to take a phone call, leaving me on board with all our luggage as the train pulled away. Two hours later I waited about half an hour in Brisbane after struggling to offload the luggage with some assistance from some very helpful fellow passengers. This morning, because he was tired Dan rushed to catch the train, forgetting that my strapped foot preclude me from moving fast, especially while towing my luggage. He got off at the next station and waited for my train. He found me again but not until after I had a run in with a ticket inspector who harangued me for not validating my ticket on the platform. She subsequently signed the ticket and outlined to me several times that her signature was in place of a validation. The funniest part – the trains were less than five minutes apart. (Woman in Chains – Tears for Fears one of their lesser known numbers, but one of my faves. The Hurting was one of my first three band albums (along with Adam and the Ants’ Prince Charming and Madness’ One Step Beyond). Their new wave appearance and love of synthesisers belied lyrics as dark and miserable as any written by Morrissey and The Cure.)

When we got off at Ebswalderstrasse everything was familiar, yet different. Last time we were in Berlin, it was the middle of winter – we arrived two days before Christmas in fact. There was no snow but the streets were cold and dark and there were carry few people milling about. The only place we found them in Prenzlauerberg was in the restaurants and bars and even those were closed from midday Christmas Day. On this visit mid-summer, the street was alive with people, there was outdoor seating everywhere with patrons enjoying brunch, and there was lush foliage on the trees that framed the streets of vintage and indy stores that are Prenzlauerberg’s hallmark. These hadn’t opened yet as it was still only 9am. Given the timing of our last visit, we hadn’t actually met our hosts. We retrieved our keys from the lock box when we arrived and deposited them on our departure.

This time we were warmly greeted and shown to our apartment, just as we had expected it to be – A simple old school East Berlin bedsit apartment with a few modern touches – a great kitchen, plenty of space to sprawl and a quiet homey feel. The apartment on the first floor, like many similar apartments in the area had windows that opened into the central courtyard – while the view below was to the garbage collection area, the windows and the slightly more reasonable temperatures allowed us to sleep with fresh air and birdsong through the open windows. The windows themselves were similar to those a friend has installed in his beautifully renovated terrace in Sydney – double glazed and opening in two directions on a 10 degree plane to the window with the opening to the top to allow airflow in but maintain security and wide open on a hinge like a door.

Dan had a bit of a snooze while I did some essential washing to keep us going. I remembered where the waschsalon was and indeed how the system there worked. Of course it was complicated by the assistant who didn’t seem to understand that I would prefer to lose a Euro in the machine that didn’t return money than use a dryer with only a hot setting to dry my bras, shirred back sundresses and quick dry travel gear. Eventually I came to an arrangement with an older kiwi lady (who didn’t seem to care if her clothes shrank if it would get her out of the laundromat quicker. Clothes done I headed back to the apartment to get Dan up so he didn’t end up sleeping the whole day away. (What’s the matter with parents today – NOFX – a song that reminds me of what I fear most… that young folks at the shows I go to will look at me and think what the hell is that sad old person doing here? Wrinkles don’t worry me (too much) and I found my first grey hair at 16. It is the expectation that I am required to be an adult when I get old and stop doing the things I love that scares me. For the wreck chord, Fat Mike is older than me)