I Heart Berlin

I arrived in Berlin Friday morning, courtesy of an Easy Jet flight that deposited me at Schönefeld Airport. Schönefeld, as I discovered once I stepped off the tarmac, is about an hour away from Alexanderplatz, the commercial center of East Berlin and the closest train station to my sister's apartment. Line was a trooper and managed to drag herself out of bed by 10 in order to get to Schönefeld by 11 and pick my ass up, only to turn around and repeat the one-hour journey in reverse.

First thoughts after I dropped my pack off at Line's apartment: I love German. And damn, the Germans (in Berlin at least) love their bikes.

First, the bikes. They're everywhere. As ubiquitous as cars in Miami. What's more, the city is designed for them. I've heard of such cities in Northern Europe (Copenhagen comes to mind), but this was my first time in a true biker's city. Bikers rule, and boy don't they know it. Line schooled me pretty well in Berlin's pedestrian rules of navigation ("Don't ever, EVER step into a bike lane without checking for bikers.") But given the fact that I pretty much live my life in a perpetual state of blissful unawareness, I'll confess that each time I set food outside, I was haunted by visions of me catapulting some poor biker off the bike lane. Accidentally, of course.

No such misfortune, thankfully. Although I drove Line a bit nuts walking around Berlin.
Me: Watch out! That's a bike lane!
Line: No, Katie.
Me: Wait, but then are we on the bike lane now? Shit, move, there's a biker behind you!
Line: No, no! Just relax!

And few minutes later, crossing a street...
Me: No one's coming, let's go!
Line: Katie, no! It's the bikers' turn now!
Me: They get their own turn?

Yeah, I was confused most of the time. But at least I wasn't the target of an irate German biker's German curses and insults.

Second, and briefly, the German. I love it. I know many people will disagree with me and argue that it is an ugly-sounding language, filled with harsh "rr"s and "sch"s. To you naysayers, I blow a raspberry and beg you to rent a German film like "Das leben der anderen" ("The Lives of Others") or "Lola rennt" ("Run, Lola, Run") to remind yourselves of what German actually sounds like (it is NOT, as most imagine, best represented by old film reels of Hitler and his Nazi brethren orating and spewing hatred; instead, think Goethe, think the poetry of Schiller, the music of Beethoven).

So yes, I want to study German again. And not just for the sake of the language. I sort of fell for Berlin the first day I arrived, and what sort of love affair can I hope to have without speaking the language of the object of my affection?

That first night, I was invited out by a friend who is currently on leave from Harvard and living in Berlin. It was all the product of happenstance. I happened to be in Berlin, and I happened to post my location on Facebook. My friend, Clara, happened to also be in Berlin, happened to be on Facebook at the same moment as me, and happened to chat me before I signed off (an aside: I will no longer moan and groan about new Facebook features: Facebook chat IS, in fact, a useful tool). And my sister happened to have other plans, so I was free to go.

I left my sister's place on Prenzlauer Allee (say it!) with some beer already in my system. I hadn't realized, yet, that there was no need to limit my pre-gaming to her apartment. When I wobbled into the train station, it hit me: everyone, and I mean everyone, was drinking beer. Out of bottles, not brown paper bags. Pilsners, weiss biers, even Smirnoff Ices.

Berlin really is this tolerant.

The train ride to Kortbusser Tor is kinda hazy at this point; the only memorable moment occurred when I got off at my stop and encountered the biggest, hairiest dog-creature I've ever seen. More bear than canine, just chilling at the station with its owner. Not seeing a muzzle (which I think may be mandatory in France, since all dogs hanging out in public sport them), I pumped my legs hard and fast to get by. I swear the animal had dreadlocks.

And then, something else I'd never seen. A group of animated young people, all probably early to mid-twenties. It took me a few seconds to figure out why they had caught my eye. They were talking like they had parrots for hands. It hit me: they were deaf. They stood around in a varied formation, signing away with excitement, patting each other on the back, smiling, reveling in the promise of a Friday night. I watched them for a minute or two before continuing on to the party.

In retrospect, I have mixed feelings about my reaction. It's not like I would usually stop and stare at a group of friends hanging out in a train station. But what can I say, I found this unusual and therefore interesting. I think most societies tend to keep its members with disabilities out of sight and out of mind. I was glad and grateful for another reminder of how diverse we are as a species, and how very much alike.

I arrived at the party location, a club in a predominantly gay area of the city, and headed straight to the bar to refuel. I wasn't sure what to expect at a celebration for the Berlin Porn Film Festival, and I am easily intimidated by men in leather with nipple rings, topless waitresses, outfitted in S&M garb, selling lube and condoms in old fashioned cigarette and candy trays, and the effortlessly cool ambiguous artist crowd.

Oh yeah, did I forget to mention this was a party for the Berlin Porn Film Festival?

Headlining the party's musical entertainment was Azukita, an Argentine duo with pretty craptacular music but one of the kitschiest, campiest, most bizarre performances I've ever seen. I'm still deciding if I liked it.

In what I can only describe as porn karaoke, the two members of Azukita (a boy and a girl) performed the soundtrack of porn vignettes they had filmed of themselves together, as the short films were projected onto a screen in the dance hall. The films were linked by the presence of an evil, bloodthirsty masked man. This villain, in classic, scary movie style, would creep up and (literally) cut short the couple's fornication by slash, slash, slashing at their flesh and splattering blood everywhere. The live soundtrack provided a level of mediation tantamount to the dubbing in camp classics like Godzilla. In short, it was sexual, sickening, and hilarious all at once.

Azukita drew Argentines out of the Berlin woodwork: the party was teeming with them. I asked Clara, why so many argentinos, to which she replied:
"Katie, if you do theater, if you're an artist, if you are creative and you want to study and party with the best, you come here. To Berlin."

Sign me up!