Day 75 - WAY East village

Today we went to visit Kreutzburg. It is an area of Berlin that was, if not all on the East side of the Wall, was at least divided by it. The atmosphere was much like the best parts of East Village - quirky and artsy, a little scruffy in some parts, full of all sorts of different people.

Our first stop was an art gallery showing the work of an up-and-coming artist who blurs the line between fashion and sculpture. Here pieces were visually arresting, and I enjoyed the visit very much, but I couldn't help thinking (a little conceitedly maybe), that my peers and I had had most of those ideas already. As we learned in grad school - There are only 7 good ideas in the world, it's just how we present them that differs.

From there, we went to the park. It is huge and leafy - Berlin is, I think, the greenest city in Germany, and very in keeping with the rest of the area. There are wavy slides that are the fastest I have ever slid down, walking paths, and playgrounds. all this fun practically rubs shoulders with a think tank and experimental area testing green energy, and watchtowers from when this was the dead zone around the wall. The watchtowers I think are the most striking. What was once such a symbol of fear, literally a source of death, is now a canvas for graffiti.

We wandered our way down to the Badenschiff (literally swimboat), an old cargo barge, now filled with water, and converted to a floating public pool. It is a plce to see and be seen, though we opted out, as it was quite cold outside. Also in the vicinity of the swimming boat were a number of performance space and restaurants. We had a light meal at one, the Frei Swim, and were entertained by an assortment of swans, ducks, and sparrows. On the other side of the river stands a sculpture that Jeff Koons did (H and B met him a while back and has an autographed postcard, and two posters that their daughters now have).

Over lunch, B talked a little bit about growing up in E Berlin, how everyone listened to the forbidden radio stations, but no one talked about it. Afterwards, as we were driving home, I was thinking about Berlin, and all the changes it has seen in recent years. In my own lifetime, I have been to the Wall, or where the wall was, at least once a decade since 1987. In 1987, I was just a kid, and didn't really understand what I was being shown. My main memory of it is lots of graffiti, and how the wall seemed to just fit between the buildings on either side. Oddly, I was struck most by how ordinary it seemed.

In 1989, I received a t-shirt from my mom's cousin G with a picture of the Brandenburg Gate, and the date 1989 printed large. I'm not sure if that t-shirt is floating around somewhere in family storage, but I remember my mom telling me that the date and the image were very important.

1995-ish, I went to visit the Berlin family, and friends from high school (B and HS, we saw them in delft this visit). Potsdammer Platz and much of Berlin was under construction - cranes and mounds of earth interspersed with shiny new buildings where once there had been nothing but Wall and dead space. We even went to a concert in the foyer of the Neue National Gallery, one of the new projects in that space. Oddly, the main event of the concert was not Ode To Joy, or something similarly exuberant. It was Tchaichovsky's 6th Symphony, The Pathetic Symphony. A haunting and bittersweet piece, most appropriate for the time and place, I think.

2004 Cz and I visited Berlin as part of our honeymoon tour. There was still quite a bit of construction going on, but the city was bustling and modern, the line between East and West decidedly blurred. We saw Blue Man Group perform in a large, new theatre right on Potsdammer Platz.

This trip, Berlin is as dynamic as ever. It is an exciting city, managing somehow to be industrial and arty all at once with muscular grace. As we walked by ourselves, Cz and I had a hard time distinguishing which side of the city we were on. To our untrained eyes, the only demarcation of east and West in the city center was a simple line of paving stones, and whether the red and green walk/don't walk signal men wore hats or not.

It's hard to believe how much has changed in such few years. It will be interesting to see what happens as the presence of the divide fades first into memory, and then into history. Berlin is an old city which feels young. In a way, the wall coming down stripped away the years, giving the city a chance to start fresh. As it rolls into the future, I wonder if Berlin will keep that youthful energy, or will become another Grande Dame of the European capitals. Only time will tell, I suppose.