Wednesday, October 7, 2009

German Oddities

I.  The current German fashion must-have is a long, soft scarf, wrapped around the neck the way Isadora Duncan's must have been wrapped around that hubcap. Around and around and around. Weather and temperature make no difference - 60 degrees and raining, scarves abound. 70 and sunny, ditto. I like a scarf myself, when my neck is cold, which it is NOT when it is 70 degrees outside. One day in early September Hannah and I were on the S-Bahn going to Ikea. It was quite warm, so Hannah opened the top window so we could at least get some air movement. A woman in the seat across from us made quite a point of rewrapping her scarf and pulling it up OVER HER CHIN. Sheesh.

II.  Maggie and I have found a small off-leash area at the Friedrichshain Volkspark. The offleash parks I've been to at home are usually occupied by people chatting and throwing balls and dogs running to chase things. At this one, however, the people just stand around. They lean against the fence, don't talk to each other and mostly they don't throw balls, which means that mostly the dogs just stand around, too, not talking to each other and not chasing things. Maggie tries her hardest to get a game going but these German dogs just don't seem much interested. Perhaps it's the language barrier. Once Maggie begins to just stand around I know it is time to go home. Again I say, sheesh.

III.  Street food is abundant and ubiquitous here; you can get just about anything: wursts of all kinds, hot dogs, Turkish döner and falaffel, pizza, sushi, Asian noodles and egg rolls, local bakery goods, Italian gelato, potatoes, sandwiches, fresh fruit, crepes, American hamburgers (and I don't mean McDonald's. These are honest-to-goodness real old-fashioned American burgers!). One of the most popular treats is the currywurst, which I felt obliged to try one day at the flea market. Never let it be said I don't sample the local specialties when they present themselves. This particular local specialty consisted of a large bland bratwurst, conveniently cut into rounds in a paper boat, sprinkled with a soupçon of curry powder, and then doused with catsup-based barbecue sauce. Served with a toothpick for tidy dining; this is one local specialty I won't be resampling.

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Reunification

This weekend was the celebration of the 20th Anniversary of German Reunification and the Fall of the Wall. One of the big attractions (oh, this is an unintentional pun) here in Berlin was the 3-day performance by 2 gigantic French marionettes ("Die Riesen"), a little girl looking for her uncle who, inexplicably, is dressed in a deep-sea diving costume, and stands 15 meters high. For two days they meandered separately around the center of Berlin, with their teams of cranes and people swinging from cables to move their limbs, and on the evening of the second day they were, yes, reunited, and spent Sunday wandering together, eventually leaving in a boat. Did I mention they were French?

I saw a brief video clip of their previous performance of this drama in the streets of Paris (funny, I don't remember a reunification issue in France), and decided it would be an interesting spectacle.  I invited Hannah to go with me to Pariser Platz on Saturday for the experience. Crowded doesn't begin to describe it. Even when viewing pre-Popemobile John Paul II in Paris 30 years ago, I don't know that I've been part of such a large mass of living organisms all trying to see the same thing at the same time. (I'm sure the crowd would have reduced its volume by at least a third had those huge baby strollers been banned. There's a reason why the Victorian pram became outmoded! Why don't people understand this?)  And had I not misunderstood the printed schedule, we might actually have been able to see at least one of the puppets in action.

I thought they finished at 3:00, so we went down around 2:00. No, apparently they took a midday break and didn't begin again until 3:00, so what we saw was the girl puppet sleeping, complete with snoring sound effects. That's it. A few giant snores and a half million Germans. Hannah had brought a friend and neither of them wanted to wait a long time to see if something would transpire, so we exited Pariser Platz and went to a large special-event flea market at Ostbanhof instead. It, too, alas, was a flop. Nary a trinket caught my eye nor was Hannah satisfied in her continual search for furniture.

On my way home I had the oddest sensation of being in Seattle. There is a tram stop near a bridge that has the same feel to it as any of a number of the Seattle bridges, and the street even feels a bit like First Avenue. Very dreamlike and disorienting; surreal; like waking up and not knowing where you are. Perhaps I was unconsciously imitating the little giant girl who perhaps should have awakened in Paris...