I spent 5 glorious weeks in Berlin, three of them on my own, working on a new novel. I fell in love with the city for so many reasons and it was terribly hard to say goodbye. While I was there, I posted Berlin tid-bits on my Facebook page. I have now collected those and am copying them below and adding them to my poor, ignored Blog. Enjoy! Cheers!

Berlin Tid-Bits By Lori (May 25 – June 28, 2014)

• Older women wander this former eastern neighbourhood, Friedrichshain, like relics from a by-gone era, wearing tan walking shoes and heavy nylons, pressed skirts and jackets with flowered broaches. They pull their shopping carts, stopping to greet each other in a secret language only they share, bemusing the changes they’ve seen in the last 30 years, scorning the hipsters and punks, with their tattoos and piercings and big black dogs.

• Debates rage fast and furious over who makes the best currywurst in this town and remind me a bit of the bagel wars in Montreal: Saint-Viateur or Fairmount?

• Stylish young men wear scarves and leather shoes here and I have yet to see many sandals. Even when it’s about 20 degrees, people wear scarves and even coats. I am sweltering everywhere. The U-Bahn is stifling, so are the stores. But people seem so bundled. My teacher laughs and says it’s because I’m Canadian and anything about -10 seems hot to me. Maybe …

• Bikes are everywhere, on the roads, the sidewalks, the U-Bahns. Sometimes the bike path cuts right in front of where you exit a U-Bahn station and, if you forget that and step out, you are likely to be run over, unapologetically. Training starts young – even little kids zip in and out of people, cars and whatever else is in their way. It’s kind of a neat orchestration to watch – from a safe distance.

• Tough-looking men with loads of tattoos and piercings walk with 2 or 3 dogs following at their heels like dark furry shadows, all off-leash and rather scraggly looking. In the U-Bahn they curl at the mens’ feet like guardians and send mean looks to dog-phobic Canadians like me. Makes me think of Bill Sykes and his pit-bull in Oliver. Creepy!

• To get both the garbage and recycling bins from the inner courtyards of these old tall buildings, the workers have keys to enter EACH dwelling, so they pull the bins through the lobby and hook them to the trucks outside. What a long process! And drivers in cars stuck behind the trucks just wait patiently. I can see why people say Berliners are very chill!

• I am mind-boggled by how many Berliners smoke; cigarette butts clog the cobblestone streets like odd stationary caterpillars, sometimes piled so thick outside entranceways you feel them squish under your feet.

• Kids seem less coddled here; the very young walk more (fewer strollers) and have to cope with the challenges of navigating city sidewalks. In fact, everyone seems a little less coddled here – convenience and comfort are more of a North American preoccupation. Water is expensive, hence no long luxury showers or automatic glasses of ice-water in restaurants (which I sorely miss). Even bathrooms cost money, so “going” can be a challenge.

• Many U-Bahn stations are works of art. My two favourite so far are Wittenbergplatz and Rathaus Spandau, pictured below. The entire system is quick and vast and might account for why there are so few cars on the road. For a big city there is very little traffic. The wide Soviet attempt at Parisien-style boulevards, Karl Marx Allee (formerly Stalin Allee) is eerily quiet, even at rush hour. I’d say there are more bikes than cars. I like it!

• Kino Intimes is now officially my favourite bar/café hangout in the area; it really is also an intimate movie theatre.

• The streetcars have a special button you can press if you’re getting off with a stroller so that the driver knows to hold the doors open for longer – cool! I’ve seen metro doors snap shut on strollers in Montreal, much to their passengers’ mothers’ horror (horrors?).

• The old Hamburger Bahnhoff (in Berlin) is now a huge contemporary art museum: literally kilometres of obscure and unfathomable work. The funnest thing is watching people’s faces as they try hard not to let it show that they have no @*&?ing idea what they’re looking at.

• Stores in my hip neighbourhood (Friedrichshain) are often just as hard to decode: I cut my hair at a place that sells kids’ clothing; yesterday I passed a shoe shop where people were eating pizza at a counter that ran down the middle. OK? Why not? After all, there is a barber shop in Montreal that moonlights as a bar!

• Blue-collar workers in this town are literally all in blue: royal blue overalls (seen below at Holocaust Memorial). I find it creepy, like they are part of some club or sub-class, and need to be easy to spot. I can’t decide if that’s treating people who do some not so pleasant work with more or less respect. In any case, something about it bugs me.

• You’re never far from a big fat delicious salty German pretzel, Milka chocolate bar, good cheap German beer, Berliners (jam-filled donuts which Berliners call Pfannkuchen, but everyone else in Germany calls Berliners), Curry Wurst, or, if you like beer mixed with sweet syrup (yuck!)Berliner Weisse. And food is CHEAP!!!

• World Cup fever is ON; I can watch the match in my flat with the sound down and know from the collective groans & roars that float up from the bars & cafes what is happening. German goals (Tors) are accompanied by flares and firecrackers. This sets off all the dogs, who joyously add to the din. (Have not seen one cat since I arrived.)

• Each city has its public transportation “look.” In Paris, people turn into statues with very unhappy faces; in Berlin the look is not quite as cold but it is definitely “stay-out-of-my-space.” Strangers rarely speak, except to ask people to remove their knapsacks when it’s crowded; if someone is hogging a seat with a bag you have the right to sit on it. It will be removed with a cold glance at the last second, without repercussion. And yet … if you ask for help or directions you will get both, and perhaps a smile to boot.

• Most German women favour short hair, very different from the Montreal long curly lock aesthetic; but short in really interestingly sculpted ways – I like it! (That is, unless they are in dread-locks.)

• More people read books on the U-Bahn here, I’d say, than listen to iPods; not sure if that’s true at home – don’t think so. And my sense is that newspapers are still quite popular here. Nice to see!

• “Vintage” clothing is just as over-priced and over-rated here as it is in Montreal. But there are some great second-hand shops. Fun!

• It is my last day in Berlin – so very sad. I have enjoyed my 5 weeks here immensely. I could write a whole essay on my thoughts on the city, but here are some final ones. Berlin has done an amazing job of not “disappearing” its Nazi past, while building toward to a modern, vibrant, and artistic future. I quite like the mix of old & new. I can’t imagine living somewhere that was all one way or the other; in fact, I love Montreal for the same reason. One thing that bothers me is just how much stuff is being geared toward 3-day tourists. I mean, why come to Berlin to visit a fake dungeon or see wax figures of Miley Cyrus or John F. Kennedy. I suppose many big cities have done this, but I loathe watching it happen. Another thing I have an issue with are the museums (like the DDR one – although I admit I didn’t go) which allow you to walk through a real GDR livingroom and open the kitchen cupboards to see just how bare and unvaried the goods were, or sit in a Trabi. It’s as though eastern Germans are extinct animals and we can now tour their unfortunate cages. It strikes me as disrespectful somehow. I took a picture of a huge apartment block in north-eastern Berlin from a U-Bahn window yesterday and felt crappy for the same reason; I mean, people live there and there I was taking a shot of their ugly building. It reminded me of how I felt visiting Taos Pueblo in New Mexico, looking at the adobe structures the native people live in. It was interesting, but I was never quite comfortable with gawking at real people and their living conditions. Then too, the image of a zoo kept coming to mind. So, yes there is real and very interesting history here and some of it is presented very tastefully (like at the Topography of Terrors), but some of it is just being used to make money. And the tour buses …. Don’t get me started on those??!!! The public transportation in this city is so fast and easy, yet thousands of people sit on those buses that clog and pollute the streets. Oh well …. Bla bla. I shouldn’t focus on what I dislike, in this – my last post from Berlin. There is so much I love: the different neighbourhoods for one. I love mine: Friedrichshain. Kreuzberg is great, especially the market. And there are so many others. So, farewell Berlin. Thanks for the memories. After tomorrow morning, ich will nicht mehr eine Berliner sein. Ciao!