Berlin by Bike
After waiting [im]patiently for weeks, I finally got my bike from Michi, a friend from my church small group who runs a bike workshop/after-school youth program for Turkish boys (their motto is "Statt Fahrrad klauen, Fahrrad bauen!"--instead of stealing bikes, building bikes). I am now the proud owner of my first real bike ever: Dexy, a sturdy seven-gear Shimano blue-grey lady's bike with manly wheels. Michi outfitted him with a white basket in the back and a small red one in front, and since I got him last Monday I've been riding Dexy all over town: from my apartment to the Staatsbibliothek at Potsdamer Platz, to my internship at the Berlinische Galerie, to Friedrichsstrasse/Unter den Linden...from my place to all those central spots it takes about fifteen minutes or a little more, if you're lazy and out of shape like me.
I just read a statistic about the size of Berlin--its area is 891 square kilometers/556 sq miles which means it's nine times the size of Paris and twenty-four times the size of Manhattan. No wonder everyone here has a Fahrrad. It comes the ubiquitous Berlin look: a rugged and worn bike with at least one basket, decked out with lights and the works (otherwise the Polizei can give you a ticket), a zip-up hoody, Puma or Asics sneakers, plus the must-have item--namely a vinyl Freitag or IchIchIch bag slung across one's body. I've deeply considered in investing in one of these key Berliner accessories, but am I seriously going to relinquish my aversion to vinyl and drop 90+ euros on this quintessentially eurotrash fashion statement that I frankly can't (and don't want to) pull off? The answer: nein.
Having spent so much time underground in the U-Bahns, I'd nearly forgotten what streets with actual cars looked like. Okay well not really, but in any case being on a bike really gives you a better idea of how the city is laid out. Plus it's just much nicer to get a workout AND see the city at the same time. Even for a person born without a sense of direction like myself, it's not that hard to navigate or negotiate the streetes here since practically every major thoroughfare has a bike lane. The auto drivers are generally pretty nice considering how many times I've screwed up with "jayriding" or going on the wrong side of the road. I don't leave my house without my handy ADAC TaschenAtlas though.
Yesterday I went on Dan's bike tour through the hotspots of the Mitte district, and it was cool to tag along and ride from Hackesher Markt to the New Synagogue, along the River Spree to the Reichstag, then through Tiergarten to see the Victory Column, past Schloss Bellevue and then along the Strasse des 17. Juni through the Brandenburger Tor. The stretch through Tiergarten especially was magical--it was gray, cloudy, drizzly, but somehow the rain through the greenery made it all seem very pensive and moody. I could totally imagine Prussian generals galloping through the woods here for their fox hunts, or ladies twirling their parasols in barouches.
Unfortunately the weather was so disgusting that I had to quit when we got to Pariser Platz because a) I wanted to cry it was so miserable; b) I'd planned on going to the Max Liebermann Haus to see the exhibtion on Paul Cassirer anyway. It was an interesting exhibition--Cassirer was one of the first major German collectors to collect the French Impressionists, was close friend and champion of Realist Max Liebermann, early proponent of Expressionsim and founder of a publishing house with his cousin Bruno which published progressive poets and thinkers like Else Lasker-Schüler. You can actually see the Max Liebermann house in this painting by Oskar Kokokscha. It's the one directly to the right of the Brandenburg Gate. 
Then I hauled my wet and shivering ass home (I schlepped Dexy to the U-Bahn and took him four stops. What, don't hate). I spent a good half hour in the shower, felt 200% better, then got dressed and went to Sandra's apartment to drink lots of Rioja with her and Amy, and tripped screaming through the rain in our heels to the Maxim Gorki Theater to see Die Dreigroschenoper. It was...good in some respects (Polly was fantastic, Macheath was good too) but some other parts really really bothered me, like how the homoerotic undertone between Tiger Brown and Mackie became THE central point of the play. Oh well, the music was great and we spent the rest of the evening stumbling around Sandra's apartment to her three different versions of "Mack the Knife".
Heimweh/Homesickness/鄉愁
While flipping through Zitty randomly last Wednesday I noticed that Woody Allen's Manhattan was screening at Lichtblick Kino in Prenzlauerberg, a tiny dive of a cinema presently running a Woody Allen retrospective. I'm embarassed to say I'd never seen the movie before--nor have I (get ready to gag) ever seen any other Woody Allen movie. There, that's my confession--for how can any self-respecting New Yorker have gone without memorizing one or two key lines from Annie Hall or Stardust Memories? I'd only ever seen Zelig, but that was part of a random Bioethics class I took in high school as an exercise in gullibility by way of a mockumentary. So late on a Mittwoch abend I ventured to Kastanienallee by myself, and for 5 euros (4 for the ticket, 1 for the bottle of Beck's) I gained entry to the screening room that sat about 50 people total. All the seats were taken, the lights dimmed, then--the clarinet, the orchestra, the city, the glory, the beauty!
"Kapitel Eins. Er war in New York verliebt. Er hat sie übertrieblich vergöttet--nein, es heißt, er hat sie übertrieblich idealisiert. Ja." And so on and so forth, a German Woody Allen stuttered and mumbled and ranted his way through two hours of wry comedy puncutated by lovely Gershwin tunes. I could only sit there and smile with my mouth half open as I marveled at how photogenic New York was. And I remembered realizing how magical a New York night could be, how endless the possibilities and recognizing that yes, one could wander over to the Brooklyn Bridge at three in the morning after picking up a burger at a diner if one wanted to. Or wander into the Planetarium randomly. Or ride through Central Park in a horse and buggy at night. (Okay, the last thing not really, but still...) It was certainly weird to see this canonical film about New York auf deutsch, and some of the translations I'm sure didn't quite carry over ("mir geht es fabelhaft"), and the woman who dubbed Diane Keaton was annoying as hell, but still--that's quite something, to see Manhattan for the first time in Berlin in German. This wave of New York Nostalgia couldn't have come at a worse time. I was just wishing to myself that spring could truly bloom in Berlin as it is already doing in New York. It must be so warm there by now. I can see the crowds of people milling around Sheep Meadow, the Saturday street fairs, and most of all at Columbia--chilling on the Low Steps, dudes throwing Frisbees, random stickball games, endless barbeques on the Van Am Quad.
I rode all the way home piping Ella Fitzgerald sings Gershwin from my iPod: "Autumn in New York," "Prelude to a Kiss," "Tenderly," and of course, "Manhattan"...I felt pangs of homesickness with every step of the way back to my apartment from the U-Bahn station. I know I've only been living there for three years but I definitely consider it my home. No longer second to Hong Kong, but rather a city to call my own--in fact, a place I probably know better, but in different ways, than Hong Kong. Actually the film made me realize how privileged I was to live in such a wonderful city with its wonderful[ly neurotic] people. So what if the film romanticizes the City to an absurd extent? That's what kitsch is for, and that's why kitsch is healthy--Jane Jacobs would say the myth of the City makes it liveable, but I actually believe that New York is a place where myth turns into reality. That's why I love it. It's gritty and terrible at times, but that's what's charming about it. That despite all its flaws, it's so damn fun and exciting and crazy.
Friday night I did indeed go to the Salon Noir at the Neue Nationalgalerie for In the Mood for Love, aka. my all-time favorite obsession, I mean, movie. I want to be Maggie Cheung. Or at least be able to wear her cheong-sams and have a torrid non-affair with Tony Leung in 1960s Hong Kong when street hawkers sold peanut candy and amahs toted bamboo poles and people (not tourists) had to ride the ferry everywhere. My mom told me that she remembered when all the women wore cheong-sams normally just to work and stuff. They're so beautiful because they're so sexy in a demure kind of way. Subtle and high-collared, yet they emphasize every womanly curve--so much more provocative than something entirely low-cut or skimpy, for example. 
I'd looked forward so much to hearing Cantonese again, so needless to say it was quite a rude shock to hear them speaking German. Thank goodness there isn't a whole lot of talking in Wong Kar-Wai films. I still reveled in the gorgeous colors, the languid long shots, the pregnant pauses and the beautifully tragic music. The movie itself was filmed in Bangkok and Macau because streets like the ones Wong Kar-Wai wanted to film simply don't exist in money-obsessed, glitzy, Cyberported-out Hong Kong anymore. Eventhough I never actually knew the Hong Kong portrayed in the film, it's still romantic to think that those streets could have been the places that my parents roamed in as children and teens. I know it's absurd to say I got homesick from seeing what is in a sense a mythical city for me, but I still recognized that same tragic aura fromr the damp and claustrophobic alleys of old Hong Kong, the quaint mom and pop grocery stores and grimy smoky diners.
I guess it's just my form of Ostalgie.
Tee und Mitleid
Back at the Cafe Sarotti-Hoefe, known as my second home. My actual home's Internet is kaputt, so I have to haul Günther everywhere (for the uninitiated, Günther is the name of my darling laptop) to enjoy access to the online world. There's been so much going on that I don't know where to begin. I guess I'll just describe my daily thrills and spills which add up to a mosaic of happiness.
I've now included a link on my blog to Another Country, the wonderfully quaint English secondhand bookstore around the corner from my apartment. Amy and I met Sean, originally from Philly but now working a theater technician and celebrating his 12th year in Berlin. He spoke English softly and haltingly, his accent no doubt tempered by years of speaking deutsch. "I was originally doing a round-the-world trip, but I somehow stuck around Berlin. My son was born here and now he's 11. Whoa!" He told us, seemingly surprised himself by this fact. Sean told us about Alan, the British man who founded and owns the bookstore, whom I had the pleasure to meet a couple of days later. While holding a big pot of cabbage soup he told Kate and I about his Friday dinner/movie/book group meetings in which he cooks dinner for twenty plus people...Amy and I vow one of these days to go there and flirt with members of the Berlin expat intellegentsia. And also to stalk Jeffrey Eugenides, who apparently lives in Kreuzberg. My roomate Esther has spotted him and I am determined to have some literary-celebrity sightings myself.
(Random side note: the cafe is now playing a German version of Puff the Magic Dragon. And the disco ball is turning around and around. I finally put two and two together yesterday and realized that the reason why all the waiters in this cafe seemed a little "alternative" may have something to do with the fact that the Schwules (Gay) Museum is one door down. Ah, Kreuzberg.)
My new favorite museum in Berlin: the Pergamon Museum. I never thought I'd care so much about ancient Greek and Roman art, but I was quite taken with the sculptures in this place. As soon as one enters one is confronted with a huge reconstruction of the Athena altar at Pergamon, an ancient capital of Greece. Funnily enough I was reminded of the
Low Steps at Columbia--in terms of the marble flight of steps, creating an imposing facade sitting high above everything else. There was an incredible frieze that narrated the story of Telephos, the mythical founder of Pergamon who was wronged by Achilles and sought revenge but ended up founding a cult instead. The Gates of Babylon were also incredible--the curator of the Pergmaon in the early 20s had basically lifted a huge section of gorgeous colored tiles from Babylon and reconstructed them in Berlin. I remember being slightly disturbed by the fact that these amazing artefacts were all in Berlin, and not in Athens, or Turkey, or Iran...my reaction is really a blend of incredulousness that they managed to transport these colossal works halfway across a continent, but I'm also reminded of the violence that must have been a part of acquiring and removing these things from situ to begin with. It is slightly troubling, I must admit. I'm still not very sure where I stand in terms of "art belonging to the nation" debate. I remember being convinced by Kwame Antony Appiah's argument, namely that it would be absurd to label one work of art as belonging to nations that a) no longer exist; b) never existed according to the contemporary geographical or cultural definition. The romantic part of me (I, who have never been to Greece or Turkey or Iran) somehow wished the statues of one specific grave could be displayed together in its original place, yet the rational part of me knows that had those works stayed in those countries, we probably would never have known about it--worse still, would probably be destroyed today. I also hopped over to the Alte Nationalgalerie but other than Manet's In the Conservatory, it didn't really have anything particularly breathtaking, unfortunately. And now the Neue Nationalgalerie is completely given over to the much touted Melancholie exhibit, which is much hype but not so great in reality...but I won't bitch about how badly the Caspar David Frierichs were hung, or how inexplicable the inclusion of certain fruit still lives were as they hung next to Goya portraits.
Kate was in town for the past week and I had a great time exploring and hanging out with her. I also went to the Stars concert at Magnet Club in Prenzlauerberg. I nearly got trampled by the crowds at the beginning, but it was totally worth it to get a view of Amy Milan and her Montreal men. The band was great and they also appreciated the audience--I'll never forget the guy who shouted "eins, zwei, drei, vier!" at one point during a song--the frontman really dug that. In his cute Canadian accent, he effusively said something about thanking
us that the Stars can be "a part of the soundtrack to your lives". That comment was pretty scoff-worthy at the time, but it occurred to me as I was running around Kreuzberg blasting Stars on my iPod a day later that yeah, they totally are part of the soundtrack to my life in Berlin--just like Sufjan on the beach, Iron and Wine on the plane (I'm seeing him and Calexico here in May), Wilco in the subway.
Saturday night a bunch of kids from the program celebrated the end of the verdammtes Sprachpraktikum by going to Weekend, a highly hyped club on Alexanderplatz. (For the exact level of hysterical hype from the NYT Travel section, please see my post below.) Weekend's big selling point was that it was located on the 12th floor of a building and boasted a view over Berlin. Um yeah, but that basically meant one looked over Soviet-era Plattenbau and DDR highways. One could say it was a wannabe version of Aqua or every other place in Hong Kong with its killer view of the Hong Kong Harbor. But I sound like a snob. A good time was had by all in any case.
Books: I finished reading Max Frisch's Homo Faber. It's fucking incredible. It completely blew me away. It tells the story of Walter Faber, a Swiss engineer going through a midlife crisis. I won't relate the details of the novel here, but it's basically a modern rewriting of Oedipus Rex--except the transgression is with his daughter and not his mother. In any case, it's incredible. I'm deciding whether or not to continue with Schnitzler's Traumnovelle (aka. Eyes Wide Shut) or finally read Mann ist Mann by Brecht, which I saw at the Berliner Ensemble last week. It is kind of ridiculous that theater tickets cost 7 euros, opera tickets 8 euros--two weeks ago the Academic Director of our program, Prof. David Levin
got us tickets to the Generalprobe (dress rehearsal) of the new production of Tristan and Isolde. It couldn't have been more different from the version I saw in Vienna. The stage was set up like a panoramic cinema screen, none of the characters touched or looked at each other really, and the entire 'scape was very dreamlike and slow. Whoever lit it was a genius. The Verfremdungseffekt doesn't quite work for Wagner, unfortunately--still it was cool to get to go to the staff cafeteria, under and past backstage in the Staatsoper, rubbing shoulders with the members of the cast and crew.
Film: Saw Das Leben der Anderen, a film about the Stasi in DDR. It's making a huge splash here in Germany because it's apparently the first serious film that has to do with the East/West divide (after Goodbye Lenin! and Sonnenalle). I found it fascinating because I guess I hadn't realized how seriously the secret police had infiltrated every level of life in the DDR. I talked to my roomate who grew up in the East, and she'd told me that even as a four year old she'd already realized the terribly suffocating atmosphere of society there. "There was always this latent paranoia in the air, that people could not freely speak and think as they'd like. I remember coming home from the Kindergarten one day, proudly singing a song we'd been taught--"Glory to the Army" or something like that, and I'll never forget how angry my mother became. 'Do you know what that song is about??' she shouted. That's when I first knew that I had to leave the country, so I got out when I was 14 to start my studies in the West." She did her undergrad degree at the Free University in linguistics and speaks German, French, English, Italian, Hebrew--and wants to do her thesis on museum education. "Sometimes I think it's funny that the country I grew up in doesn't exist anymore. What a funny concept, oder?" But in no way is it Ostalgie. Actually, the city I grew up in doesn't exist anymore as I knew it--it's not Hong Kong the British colony, but rather Hong Kong the Special Administrative Region of China. As I reluctantly told someone at the Kreuzberg city hall while I was getting my police registration, Hong Kong is part of China, no matter how much I refuse to write that in at the end of my mailing address.
This coming Friday the Salon Noir in the Neue Nationalgalerie is screening In the Mood for Love as part of its Melancholie events. 
I will go watch my all-time favorite movie and get very very homesick. Found the video rental places near Bergmannstrasse--one namely the Kim's of Berlin, "Videodrom". I'm definitely looking forward to those lazy nights where I'll snuggle down under my thick German down blanket and watch a "deh-fau-deh."
Am off to make some dinner and then feier the completion of Amy's Junior Paper. Work? What work? Classes haven't started yet...and considering I registered for Columbia classes today, that is slightly ridiculous.
I saw this statue in the Pergamon and immediately thought of the Catherine statue from Jules et Jim. Richtig schön, oder?
Color must be seen!
Another dispatch from the Kreuzberg front. It is a gorgeous spring day, kind of moodily on and off rainy/sunny, but it's finally warm. People are sitting outside on sidewalk cafes, the flea market is out in full force, and everyone has a smile on his/her face. I'm inside the gorgeous Cafe Sarotti on Mehringdamm about five minutes from my new apartment, for which I just got the keys and paid the deposit. As I type, a huge bouquet of pink tulips next to me nod to the Amelie soundtrack. Plus there is wireless internet here. Right this moment, life is perfect.
I had a very Christopher Isherwood moment two days ago when my host mother asked me to be the English tutor for her two little boys, Augustin (4) and Maximilian (8). I gladly accepted--it basically entails mostly speaking exercises, conversational English and helping them develop a lovely American accent. Ha! I bought Augustin (if you haven't seen the adorable picture of him on my Facebook profile yet, you must now and simply melt) "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" and Maxi "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," which might be a tad too hard for him now, but it'll be a good goal for us to work for. It'll be great to keep in touch with my host family that way, plus it's a good gesture for me to pay them back somehow while earning a bit of pocket change every week.
I really should be working on my presentation for my language practicum class now, considering I have an appointment with my Tutorin in less than two hours. It's on an essay by Boris Groys on Walter Benjamin's famous essay "Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit", on the loss of the aura of the original artwork through modern methods of reproduction. Needless to say it's quite frustrating trying to figure out how to say the things I want to say in German. Groys' thesis is a reaction to and an expansion of Benjamin's assertion that the original is defined by its tie to a particular historical and topological place. Benjamin concedes that the overflow of reproduction is a necessary condition of Modernity, and that it actually enables the masses to experience art for themselves. His whole point about the necessary violence that comes with the destruction of aura is very Marxist indeed, but as a Berlin writer in 1936 he was railing against the Fascist takeover in Germany. Groys kind of runs off with his own argument in an inexplicable fashion--he says that because art on the Internet is grounded in a "website" and "net address", and is accompanied by historical "archives", the Internet hence re-territorializes art and makes it original. The essay becomes positively hysterical towards the end, with Groys going on about the magic and conjuration of spirits and ghosts from one's computer screen. Um.
I've been reading Max Frisch's Homo Faber. I borrowed the copy from my host father and it's a small little paperback from 1969 (the book was published in 1957). Again, another St. Paul's Deutschfamilie moment--one of my favorite experiences in German class was putting on Max Frisch's famous theatrical piece "Biedermann und die Brandstifter". I seriously rely on specific stuff I learned from Frau Hornor every day here and I'm so glad that I re-learned German from scratch from her. I'm also glad she made sure we all had good accents. There are some people in my class who write relatively well and speak without humongous grammatical flaws, but ohmygod when they open their mouths and say their "dRRy vieRRtel Stunde spAYter" I just want to cringe, curl up and stuff my ears with beeswax. The accent is not separate from the foreign language, it's a condition of speaking that language. There's absolutely no excuse to not try rolling one's r's or listening a little more carefully to how people speak to make the sounds you create to imitate theirs. It's also a great way to hide my Americanness, which as I realized is more prominent than I'd thought.
Yesterday and the day before I borrowed my host family's bike and went for a little spin around suburbia. It reminded me of the idyllic suburban childhood I never had. Ha. It made me really excited to get a bike, except for the fact that I'm scared shitless of traffic and I'll kind of be using it a lot in the middle of the city. Isn't the old SPS Brewster crew so proud of their Athlete Hon Hau? Who knew that three years later the girl who couldn't find her center of balance would be manoevering the streets of Berlin? (well, I will be, soon.)
I am so excited for the weather to get even warmer. And I'm excited for Easter break. And I'm excited for my classes at the university to start. I'm excited for people to come visit Berlin. I'm also very excited--but slightly nervous--to meet the curator of Berlinische Galerie tomorrow. Then I will find out what my internship entails, what my hours are, etc. Back to Groys' insanity...
