John Wise

The train in Germany is a culture all to itself. Do not make eye contact, which you can’t do anyway because nobody is looking at you. Sit next to someone, and they’ll move to the edge of the seat to ensure they have created the maximum distance between the two of you. However, if you are a testosterone-driven creeper, you move for no one as you attempt to take up extra space. This last move is the young thug-wanna-be putting on the “I’m too cool for you” pose.

Earbuds were the perfect invention for Germans, allowing them to retreat into their own silence. Add the now ubiquitous phone in their clutch, and denying eye contact has been elevated to the level of not even needing to try.

Unless there are children on board, the train is quiet besides the sound of the steel wheels and the electric whir of the motors pushing the train forward. I believe the majority of the phones, including people’s phones on the streets, are set to vibrate mode as if to reduce the risk of disturbing others. Again, the young hooligan will act to negate this unwritten law, as his mission is to annoy people. And yes, I know that this polite phone etiquette contradicts what I recently wrote while on the train to Berlin.

If you are under 30, male, and traveling by bike, you are likely wearing Air Jordans in black, have straight-legged black jeans on, and a black baseball cap while your t-shirt is light and airy to make sure the sense of being careless is properly conveyed. To finish off the ensemble and ensure the uniform is complete, earbuds are de rigueur.

Most everyone is carrying a bag of some sort to move things around during the day or to pack up stuff they’ve shopped for. Very few people are carrying drinks. At first, I thought it was an aversion to throw-away single-use containers, but there are no thermoses or plastic cups either. The occasional gruff old dude or some young one on his way to being a gruff old dude will have a bottle of beer with them, but that’s relatively rare. There is an exception to this rule on Friday and Saturday nights when it seems like everyone is drinking on the trains while en route to a party.

I don’t wait for more than about 6 minutes for a train, often only 2 or 3 minutes. This morning’s journey takes me across Berlin using two trains, requiring a little more than an hour to travel from Schöneweide station to Südkreuz, where I’m transferring to Pankow.

I have no great reason for this as my destination, other than it’s a place to explore away from Mitte. The idea is to walk the 8km back to the city center on a slow route, allowing me to take in the suburbs. I’d originally had a reservation to visit the Bundestag today; I’ll save that for a visit with Caroline in the future.

By the time we pull into Humboldt station, only a few people remain on the train, it makes sense as most people are heading into town for work instead of going off to the burbs for some wandering around.

The first time I explored my environs around Germany, I knew nothing of the language, food, or things to look for. Landing in Pankow, I asked the first person I could where the Hauptstrasse was, and she asked me back in German what exactly I was looking for. I told her it didn’t matter, that I wanted to walk around the main shopping area or anywhere else of interest. With the info she shared, I was soon headed in the general direction when a place offering coffee and Frühstück (breakfast) appeared.

Sitting in this cafe while enjoying my breakfast, I reconsidered my options yet again and felt that the 8km walk wasn’t challenging enough, so I decided to detour to Charlottenburg. By the way, the two eggs, salami, and pickle served on an open-face slice of course rye with coffee and a bottle of sparkling water was only €5,50 or $6.

A note about the cafe I’m in: there’s a diversity of products here, from baked sweets to more than a dozen types of bread and rolls. There are sandwiches, salads, some hot dishes, yogurt mixes, coffee drinks, and various cold bottled drinks. It’s simply your average everyday quick-stop cafe that dots the German landscape. There is no drive-thru; there never is.

Thirty-five years ago, I was enchanted with posters and flyers being plastered everywhere here in Germany as a means to share cultural events that were coming up on the calendar. Then, after getting used to them, I took them for granted. These last couple of visits have struck me how vibrant the live entertainment scene is for Europeans. You may not be able to make out what these posters are advertising, so I’ll share Bach Fest, a didgeridoo, accordion, and jaw harp jam session, an Art & Design Market, and a piano concert with Martin Herzberg. On other postings, I’ve seen announcements for Vivaldi, more Bach, some reggae, DJs, and as you can see on the top post, Lollapalooza Berlin is happening in September.

Parking is the nemesis of almost everyone who lives in Germany’s big cities. It’s a major contributing factor to why so many take public transportation or use bicycles. On spring days, things look idyllic, but on wet, snowy days, German cities can be grim, depressing places where life can feel like a slog.

The Fahrradklingel a.k.a. the bicycle bell. When the sound of one goes off right behind you, it can make you leap gazelle-like, bounding out of the way of the angry cyclist. Normally, though, it’s just a beautifully pleasant sound letting you know that you are sharing pathways with a culture that cherishes their ability to navigate cities on a bike. When I walk around European cities, I’m hard-pressed not to press the lever of bells on parked bikes so I can hear the Klingel while delighting in it.

The kind of shop that sells cigarettes, papers, drinks, lighters, knives, lottery tickets, tobacco, newspapers, magazines, a model car, or some trinkets along with some alcohol. They seem to have pretty much about 90% of what a neighborhood needs aside from hot pizza and fresh strawberries.

A gaggle of brightly colored children going on a field trip, probably to check out adult clothes stores to get them ready for their black and gray wardrobe when they grow up. Why do Germans insist on wearing depressingly dark clothes all the time when as kids, they are allowed to demonstrate some individuality? Not to say that some tight black latex pants don’t normally look great on anyone who wears them; male or female.

Note – I just remembered Edith Massey as Aunt Ida in the John Waters film Female Trouble, and I think I have to make an exception as to who looks great in latex.

Street trains are not as ubiquitous in Berlin as they are in Frankfurt; maybe my wife can help explain this.

More graffiti because a look at Berlin without it would be a lie.

This picture? Well, it’s only here as a nod to Scott Jaeger of Industrial Music Electronics. It’s the Berlin offices of Bayer.

It’s noon; time for a break. There’s a bench here next to the Nordhafen waterway, which right now looks like the perfect opportunity to pause. My walk has covered nearly five miles that have taken me out of a mainly white German neighborhood through an ethnically mixed community and into an industrial zone. Ever-present throughout these changes have been the songbirds who sound especially joyous while celebrating this warm, breezy day.

It’s nice to just sit here in the sun with my sweater off. The water glistens as the wind glides over its surface creating disturbances and undulations that grasp the sunrays to shoot them over to me as sparkles. Occasionally, ducks peel off and swoop around the lake. Other water-loving birds hover overhead, likely looking to snatch an unsuspecting morsel out of the water before moving on. The guy who had been fishing has since left, as has the person who sat here at the opposite end of the bench and smoked a cigarette. An emergency vehicle darts by with its siren blaring, cutting through my hypnotized state with its characteristic “Tatue Tata” sound. Think I’ll get moving again now that my feet have cooled off.

For nearly 800 years, Berlin has been in a cycle of growth, building, destruction, and new construction. Following the fall of the wall and reunification, Germany has been on a tangent to absorb the former East and integrate its population into a modern, thriving economy. Cranes have never left the skyline of Berlin since the rebuilding of the city following VE Day back on May 8th, 1945. Victory over Europe notes the day Germany unconditionally surrendered 74 years ago today. Like Frankfurt, Dresden, Hamburg, and Kassel, the city of Berlin was heavily damaged by prolonged bombing campaigns by the Allies. Evidence of those bombing raids is still evident when old munitions are found buried underground and might still be explosive.

To the left of the current train tracks is a massive construction site with new rail lines being brought into the city. The project extends for hundreds of meters where it appears there will be further building once the overhead train lines are finished being built. From renovating apartment buildings to digging up streets for laying new infrastructure, Berlin is constantly busy trying to meet the needs of a modernizing metropolis.

I will become one with döner while in Berlin. They are everywhere until you are hungry, and then it seems they are hard to find. Harder to find is McDonald’s, which doesn’t bother me in the least. Speaking of burgers, there is a trend here in Berlin right now – apparently, the thing to do is to open an American-style gourmet burger joint. I wonder when the burrito will gain a foothold. Hmmm, the döner-burrito?

Had to think about Kenny Lorenz over at HEK Yeah BBQ in Phoenix upon seeing this guy who even reminded me a bit of Kenny. A portable smoker the guy is dragging around to markets where he’s selling smoked fish has me thinking of a new line in marketing smoked meats in the Phoenix, Arizona, area. Hint hint.

When people think of Berlin, I’d bet a dollar they don’t think about the many canals that run through the city. I’m not sure the river Spree feeds them all, but as I walk across town I’m impressed by just how much water courses through Germany’s capital. Strange that I’ve not seen a single kayaker or private craft on the waterways. In the city center, there are plenty of sightseeing boats offering simple tours and evening wine and food tours, though I can’t say I’m really interested in that spectacle of bland consumerism.

This has been a seriously long walk to get to the palace in Charlottenburg from Pankow

Out of the bustle of the city and away from its traffic, I started to walk along one of the canals on my way to Tiergarten. At this point, I’ve walked over 10 miles or 16km, and my feet are feeling it, but I still have another 4 miles (7km) to go before I reach the train station I have in my mind for the goal of my long walk across Berlin today.

Maybe because it’s Tuesday, but the park is not crowded. I expected throngs of people here, but instead, I found an oasis of tranquility amidst the bustle of Berlin.

Would you believe that I did not encounter a single mosquito?

Just as graffiti, posters, and flyers are plastered on larger flat surfaces across Berlin, stickers are slapped on everything else. Knowing my wife, the pink sticker will elicit a giggle from her.

Stolpersteine are stumbling stones that effectively note on sidewalks where Jewish residents were pulled from their homes and either executed on the spot or were taken away to death camps. Until today I thought this project was only going on in Frankfurt, turns out that there are over 70,000 of these installed across parts of Europe, making it the largest decentralized memorials on Earth. It seems like this is a good point to stop my trek through the capital today and give my feet a break.

Staying up to date with my writing is going to be a minor chore, as I feel that I need to finish with the previous day before embarking on a new one. Last year’s trip to Europe tracked my step count; this one is tracking my word count. Three days into this exercise and I’m somewhere near 4,400 words put on to the page. You may notice I said three days while only two blog entries exist so far. While I left on the 4^th, that travel day blurred into the 5^th because after leaving Arizona in the evening, I landed in Germany the next day. I felt that since I left Phoenix and did not have a night of sleep and arrived in Frankfurt for the evening, the flight ended up being a teleportation problem with timing, and I simply needed to finish the 4^th on the streets of Frankfurt. Enough of those details. Above is my Airbnb.

The sky was overcast when I woke at 6:30 with a startle that it already felt late. Well, that early in the morning was certainly not late, as I’d finally gone to sleep last night at 23:30 and dreamed of sleeping until at least 8:00 to settle my jet lag. After the obligatory things one does when preparing for the day, I was finally out in the breezy cool of a clearing sky and heading to the Schöneweide station.

I needed to buy a train ticket for the next six days to avoid the hassle of having change or cash every day to do so. That should have been easy enough, but the English version of the menus offered choices that were ambiguous. Settled with my choice, I find that I cannot buy this with my credit card as I don’t have a PIN for this particular card. Feeling the pressure to finish my transaction so others don’t have to wait for the amateur to figure things out, I threw a 50 Euro bill into the machine, received my 8 Euros in change, and had a ticket. A message flashes momentarily on the screen to inform me I need to validate my ticket before starting to use it. Where does one do that? With my ignorance reeling at having to deal with the situation, I ask myself if I should or can get validated on the train with my new 6-day pass.

Arriving at Neukölln via the S45 to transfer to the U7, I see a guy sticking a ticket like mine into a red unmarked box that, with a stamping sound, spits his ticket back out at him. This must be the act of validating one’s ticket, so I do the same, and with that, my ticket now has a time and date stamp. Makes sense now that maybe the buyer purchased the ticket the night before when leaving the station and doesn’t want to lose 10 hours of usage.

Read your instructions beforehand, or else the place you think you are going might turn out not to exist on the high-level overview maps found in train stations. The first person I asked could not tell me which side of the track went to Mittenwald. Upon checking my itinerary I see that my location is on Mittenwalderstrasse near the Gneisenaustrasse U-Bahn stop. That the guy I asked about the “Neesen au Strasse” stop was able to decipher this was amazing. On the train, I learned my stop was called “GaNeezen au Strasse.”

So here I am, sitting in the bakery at the intersection of those aforementioned streets, waiting for Die WollLust yarn store to open at 11:00. It’s nice to sit down to write a short while and indulge with an Erdbeer-Vanille Plunder (strawberry vanilla croissant), a double espresso, and water before going shopping for the wife. Whatever I end up getting her, I’ll also be looking for some sock yarn for myself.

Sock yarn heaven for the spoiled man whose feet only know the pleasure of being wrapped in hand-knitted love. Caroline being absent from this leg of the trip required me to stand in for her yarn store pose and ask the co-proprietor to take my camera and deal with the fat old guy looking silly; somehow Caroline looks far cuter in this pose than I do. Also, I rather enjoy (I mean tolerate) watching her shop for all the unnecessary new yarn supplies she inevitably adds to the hoard when we travel, but with her still in America, I had to shop for her. So what’s a good husband to do?

You buy all the yarn. And that yellow she asked me not to buy (she was very specific about this; I quote her email here: “No pink/black/yellow – something more neutral, please don’t get something super bright just to “teach me to get out of my comfort zone,” but if you think it is beautiful, I trust you.”) well, I bought yellow, it’s peeking out from underneath the red. Sadly, they were fresh out of pink. Hah, no, they weren’t, but my cruelty has boundaries.

With a full day ahead of me plus the fact I have some issues, some aversion issues, to carrying bags in public, the husband standing in for his relatively famous wife Birgit Freyer, who owns this shop called Die WollLust (I’ll translate that as Yarn Fetish) threw a fellow guy a favor and kept this nearly 2kg of yarn and stuff and is sending it to us just before we go home.

This was the last view of the kid looking at the fountain before I punted it into the center cup of water down at the end. It was worth 40 points, which translated into 3 euros off my lunch. That probably didn’t happen, but don’t go thinking I wasn’t imagining it. Okay, so I wasn’t really imagining it, but I needed to write up something for this photo that I found appealing, so some nonsense felt in order.

In my goal to separate myself from the main tourist area, I found an outdoor table in front of the Marheineke Markthalle, where I sat down for a bite to eat. With some ravenous birds pooping on all the chairs, it wasn’t easy to find a poop-free one, but perseverance paid off. Now, under the shady trees, I’m watching parents, hippies, oldies, fascists, and students walk by. It’s quiet here compared to the bustle of yesterday. Interestingly, there are more bicycles riding by than there are cars here; next up are people pushing strollers, though people on foot definitely dominate.

Many of the people are with friends. Most are dressed smartly even though there’s a dearth of vibrant colors. I can count dozens of people going by, and morbid obesity has missed this neighborhood. Of the 100 or more students walking by, not a single fat kid was among them. Some boisterous teen boys are showing off their adolescence with raucous boy behavior, but they are not the rule. The amount of English being spoken is interesting, more than I thought I’d hear. One of the tables near me was talking about VR and all things 3D, while the next table was discussing the pros and cons of social media. As for countries of origin strolling these streets, it looks like we could be in Los Angeles.

Under these bright green trees, the day could not be more spectacular. The occasional light breeze rustles the leaves that silently flutter and paint the ground with undulating shadows. If the sun dips behind some clouds, the effect on the temperature is nearly instantaneous. Still, here we are on a Tuesday afternoon, and it’s well after lunch, but people are hanging out, taking extended pauses while they linger over a coffee or conversation.

The people hanging out here are seriously hanging out, some for nearly 300 years. Not one is drinking coffee. What brought me to a cemetery in Berlin, you might ask? A right turn that suggested this old place could be a tad more interesting than the busy street. I didn’t recognize any famous people, but maybe that’s because their names are all in German.

There’s an extraordinary amount of graffiti strewn about the German capital; though much looks similar to the work of others, there are some serious works of art. Unfortunately, I’ve either been on the train and couldn’t capture them, or something is obscuring them from getting the shot that would show them in their best light. This is typical of the more common stuff seen all over town.

The Landwehrkanal runs through Böckler Park near Kreuzberg. I suppose it’s easy enough to see what the attraction is to walking the dirt path on a nice sunny day with swans in the water preening themselves. So, I’ll just leave any other descriptions to your own imagination.

The holy land a.k.a. Schneiders Laden. This icon of the Eurorack synthesizer community is directly across from Kottbusser Tor and nearly impossible to find. Be careful here as the area is trying to find you; well, the cast of shady characters might be. While not overrun by skinheads, this corner of Berlin certainly has its fair share of sketchy-looking people who might qualify as thugs. Once you get past that and find the hidden door, you are in for some wallet/bank account emptying Goal Acquisition Syndrome (G.A.S.) gone rampant. Try to get out without your dream modules. Somehow, I did just that, but that might be true because I have just about everything I could want. The module or two I’d really love have not been released yet, so I felt safe to go into the den of temptation.

Schneiders Laden is the sponsor of Superbooth, which starts this Thursday. One of the salespeople at the shop was telling me of her performance this Thursday at Seaside starting at 19:00. Her name is Jessica Kert, and her Bandcamp page can be found here. Another woman in the shop I spent some time talking with was from Florida and only recently got the bug; she got it bad from all indicators. While talking with her, Brandon Fessler of Mordax showed up weighed down heavily by severe jetlag. Moments after that, Scott Jaeger of Industrial Music Electronics texted me that he just landed and was wrecked. Hopefully, everyone recovers in time to re-exhaust themselves with some very long days and nights at the conference.

Time to find some dinner; little did I know that exercise would take nearly two hours. I get hungry, and I get picky. The walk I took was nice, but the food looked dull, so I kept on walking.

I didn’t walk long as I had to give in to the call of nature in the worst way. Half a dozen times, I considered just going homeless guy style and discretely pissing against a tree or in a corner so no one could see my junk, but then this magic toilet house appeared. I put my 50 cents in, the doors slid open, I walked in and the doors would not shut. I tried all the buttons, I tried waiting, I looked for a sensor I could flail at, but those doors just stood wide open. So I did what I had to do: I stood there with my back to passersby and took my much-needed pee. With the pressure ratcheted down, I felt I could focus better on compromising for some food and just get whatever, but just as Caroline already knows, that’s not in my playbook. I kept walking until I found exactly what I didn’t know I wanted.

Berlin cuisine looks like shit to me. No wonder everywhere you look, you find Vietnamese, Thai, Indian, and Middle Eastern, while döner kebab shops are everywhere. Sausages are fairly ubiquitous, too, but nothing struck me as truly inspired. So what did I do? Did I visit a Michelin 3-star joint? Nope, I opted for the Berlin famous döner. So why the photo of the canal? Well, sometimes the photos of döner look like someone took a dump in a pita pocket.

Meet Can (pronounced J’chon, kind of like John), aged 19, from Turkey, and Aleks, aged 25, from Croatia. I did tonight, and it was great chatting with these guys, mostly in German too. Coffee Fellows is one of the coffee shops open relatively late here in Berlin so I stopped here after dinner for some caffeine to keep me going and to give me a place to do some writing. It was awesome to talk to these two young men about politics and nature, how dangerous conservatism is, how amazing the world’s cultures are, and how important enjoying life is. It’s kind of funny how American these two really are, meaning they are very outgoing and enthusiastic to talk with me. They are the future of Europe as long as extremism is able to be held back.