The Week of Curiously-Awesome Activity Levels

It doesn’t happen too often but when you get a good run of back to back activities. A recent week:

Thursday, 15 April.

I met the preschool ("Kita") -Dad’s group out at a local soccer bar to watch the Europa Cup Quarterfinals between Liverpool and Dortmund. Usually when I go out with the dads group I mostly default to English but tonight I decided to try going an entire evening in Deutsch. Everyone obliged and I then had an exhausting evening of heavy concentration on syllables and remarks interspersed with soccer discussions and celebrating the goals. 

It was actually a good game, with Liverpool jumping out in front 2-0 in the first few minutes, then Dortmund coming back and ultimately it was 4-3 Dortmund on a corner kick in the final seconds. Also, there was the beer aspect. Big hangover from two litres of the Helle (light) beer the next morning. Germans may not drink good, Seattle microbrewery beer, what what they do drink, they drink a lot of. And the all-German aspect of the night made me realise that learning this language is within the realm of possibility, and that it will ultimately be a valuable part of these Berlin years.

Friday, 16 April.

On Friday night we attended a costume birthday party for new friends Simon and Becky. We went as rock music legends. I was Elton John and Cassandra was Cyndi Lauper. These guys are from the UK and we met them at the La Coquette French restaurant on Vorbergstrasse during our Valentines Day date night out. They are super hilarious and have kids similar ages to ours. They’ve been in Berlin for 8 years and have flawless German, which of course makes me jealous. I came home at 11:30 to relieve the babysitter, Maria, the Spanish girl that lives in the flat above ours. Cyndi stayed out later and caught the bday cake and singing, which occurred around midnight.

Saturday, 17 April

On Saturday we took the train out to the Grunewald forest that sits at the SW edge of town to get the kids out into the woods for a bit of fresh air. The station is also the site of the Gleis 17 (Platform 17) memorial, so we went over and took a look. Gleis 17 was the exit point for all the Berlin Jews who were sent to the camps between 1941 and 1945. (Once again, history intrudes on nearly everything you decide to do). Roughly 50K people boarding trains on these very platforms.

By way of a memorial, the old platforms and tracks themselves have been retained. Metal plates on the platform have the dates of the train departures, the number of people on board, and their final destinations. The tracks end in a forest and are cut off from the rest of the nearby rail network. People have left flowers on some of the plates.

On the other side of the station lies the expanse of the Grunewald Forest. Wide dirt paths bisect this forest to accommodate mountain bikers, hikers and horse riders from a local stable. Desperate to get the kids into the woods, we ambled along and let them stop at every log and tree to search for bugs or climb easy to reach branches. In the distance a hill arose in the forest with a bunch of decaying radar domes sticking out above the trees - this is the former US Cold War listening post. 

Built on the ruins of a former Nazi training academy, the Cold War complex was neglected for years after the Wall came down and is now surrounded by three huge fences to prevent curious people from sneaking in. They do tours of course, and for 7 Euro you can get a guy to walk you around the buildings and let you climb up into the unsecured radar domes to snoop around. Unlike the polished and snazzy aesthetic you find in other historical places in Berlin this is a bit slap-dash: a guy sitting under an umbrella near a break in the perimeter fencing will collect your money. Around him are old cars, caravans, spray-painted outbuildings and other things mostly recalling a junkyard. Holes in the fence where people have snipped through with wire cutters have been patched up with rusty bike frames and metal sheeting. A haze of barbed wire plies aimlessly along the top of the fencing. I’m curious to see the area so I’ll come back and do that at some point, but not today.

Radar dome barely visible through the fencing and spring buds.

Water tank storage outbuilding near the former US facility.

The “forested mountain” we’ve walked up also has its own story: It is not a naturally-occurring terrain feature. Here and there you notice fields of bricks and concrete alongside the trails in the forest. Why did they dump such stuff up here, some people might wonder. Other more informed people realize that the ENTIRE mountain is rubble from the bombed city, and those are just the pieces of it that happen to be sticking out. After the war and the division of East and West Berlin, the rubble from the bombed buildings had to be placed somewhere. In the east much of the rubble ended up in various places outside of the city; since Berlin lay deep within East Germany they could put the rubble wherever they wanted. 

In West Berlin this wasn't an option, so they had to find a place within the boundary of the Western side of the city. Most of it was put in the middle of the Grunewald forest, making a large terrain feature some 80 meters high. It was approx 25 million cubic yards of debris. Dirt was also dumped on the rubble and trees planted in the 1950’s which have now turned into the current forest. Today wild boar roam the forested glens, tearing up the dirt and leaves seeking roots and fungi. 

Where the soil is too thin, the bones of the "mountain" appear: bricks and rubble from the bombed-out city.

Back at the Grunewald S-Bahn station we happily found a wonderful biergarten. Germans are well-turned out when it comes to this: place a great restaurant with hearty meals and beer right next to the wilds. You get to have as much adventure as you wish and you are never more than a few miles from a beer, schnitzel and potato soup. By the time we got home we’d walked 8 miles. 

That night Cass and I went to a cabaret show in our Schöneberg neighborhood. Why cabaret? So much has been made of the “Paris between the wars” thing and the Lost Generation of Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ezra Pound. Berlin had its own mirror of this experience as well, as it attracted the wildest night life and open views on sexuality and vice of any city in Europe during those years. This was the tolerant era of Weimar Berlin, when cabaret shows and other craziness defined the scene. Ground zero for this was just a few blocks away from our current flat on Gleditchstrasse at the storied Nollendorf Platz. 

A British author named Christopher Isherwood made his home in Schöneberg in the early thirties and wrote his famous “Berlin Novels” during this time. These books profile various characters he met during his time in Berlin from 1930-1935. They are set against the backdrop of the political struggles between the Fascists, the Communists, and the centre party in the time just before Germany was sucked into the abyss. Isherwood’s work inspired the film “Cabaret." Bowie was a huge fan of the whole Weimar time, and actually met Isherwood when he lived in Schöneberg in the mid 70’s. (see my David Bowie entry for more on this).

The "Living Room" performance venue at Sally Bowles

Since we are here, I decided we should get to know this whole thing, so I found a bar that offers an authentic cabaret experience. Named “Sally Bowles” after a character in one of Isherwood’s novels, we packed into a tiny room with four tables. There was a welcome Prosecco, and then we were treated to a historical journey of the cabaret concept from its beginnings in Paris in the 1890’s at Le Chat Noir to Munich and finally to its ending stages in Berlin. Three players acted out the scenes and songs and spliced in historical references while performing typical cabaret acts. In a nod to the open and free aspect of the times, the male lead spent all of the third act wearing a tux and garter belt and stockings. Afterwards we bought the poster and I resolved to put Isherwood’s book on my birthday wish list. 

Full moon behind the Kirche on the walk home.

Sunday, 18 April

Today we went out to a children's concert at the Urania Theatre with said new friends from Friday night’s party and their kids. The kids had the unique experience of blowing an authentic Bavarian alpine horn. Cody took a few tries then finally nailed it. It is my dream to orchestrate a family Christmas card of us all in lederhosen standing on top of a mountain in Bavaria all blowing these long horns. It may remain just that, a dream, but at least two members of the family now have practice with the instruments.

Afterwards, we strolled back home with Simon and Becky and the sun came out. We got some beers at the corner store and engaged in the time-honoured Berliner parent tradition of standing around drinking beer at the playground while the kids whoop it up. Soon, the sun tilted behind the historical block rooflines opposite the church, a chill settled into the shadows, and we parted ways.

Kirche, in a different light. Playground is directly behind it.

Monday, 19 April

Nada Surf, a favourite band from our Seattle years, was in town. We trucked out to Neukölln on the U7, got off at Hermannplatz, and wandered over to Huxley’s Neue Welt on the border of Hasenheide volkspark and slipped in. No line (suspicious). It was 9:20 and the doors opened at 8pm. But there was an opening band so it seemed fine. Oops. Nada Surf started at 9 and we missed about five songs! Learning Moment! Rest of the concert was quite wonderful - hearing such familiar noise helps stave off any homesickness. 

Got home around 11:30pm. Whew what a night! Of course our night was just beginning, as we awoke at 1am to change Cody's sheets/give him a shower after he wet his bed. Then did it again at 5:30am. We are trying to break him from nighttime diapers and apparently once you start the transition to underwear, you can't go back as they will lose all the "progress." He's gone a week without any pee in his night time pull ups so we decided to start this process. So some mornings you just have a ton of laundry! It is a little tough since we are now used to sleeping all night...And when you go out to a show that evening...And when you are past 40.


Tuesday night we took a break and went to bed early.