berlin :: in :: lights

September

I know that EP posted the same poem by Hermann Hesse a couple of days ago, but I told him about it first! Strauss set the poem to music, and it is one of my favorite Lieder. It describes these last days so perfectly, it's as if it were written for me:

September
Der Garten trauert,
kühl sinkt in die Blumen der Regen.
Der Sommer schauert
still seinem Ende entgegen.

Golden tropft Blatt um Blatt
nieder vom hohen Akazienbaum.
Sommer lächelt erstaunt und matt
in den sterbenden Gartentraum.

Lange noch bei den Rosen
bleibt er stehn, sehnt sich nach Ruh,
langsam tut er
die müdgeword'nen Augen zu.

September
The garden is in mourning:
the rain falls cool among the flowers.
Summer shivers quietly
on its way toward its end.

Golden leaf after leaf
falls from the tall acacia.
Summer smiles, astonished, feeble,
in this dying dream of a garden.

For a long while, yet, in the roses
she will linger on, yearning for peace,
and slowly
close her weary eyes. 

Spaetzeit

It's my last week in Berlin. I'm vacillating between a certain panic and a melancholy knowing that my time here, at least this summer, is running out. I think of that Hesse poem September:

Der Sommer schauert
still seinem Ende entgegen.

Summer shivers quietly
on its way toward its end.

The term Spaetzeit, literally, the "Late Time" or "Late Period" (ha, ha) is actually used to describe the very end of the Ancient Egyptian history, between the end of the Third Intermediate Period and the Ptolemaic Dynasty. I've adopted the term, both because of my love of Egypt, and also because it perfectly describes something that is almost at an end, in its Schwanengesang, its swan song. There are lots of variants of words that end with Zeit. Some are used as greetings during the course of the day, in particular Mahlzeit ("eating time") which is the greeting you give to your coleagues during the lunch break. In Bavaria they also say Brotzeit, "bread time," which is dumb as hell, and unsurprising that it is used in the Catholic bastion of National Socialism. Thank god for Preussen.

I can also make up words that use the word Zeit at the end of them, but that would be too naughty for this blogchen. So, the next, and probably final lesson in Neutdeutsch vocabulary is the term:

_____Zeit:  "______time".

For example: Neuzeit, or "new time":

"Berlin befindet sich seit der Mauerfall in einer glaenzenden Neuzeit," which means:
Since the fall of the wall, Berlin finds itself in a a glittering new time.

Oh, and there is also the word geliftet: "the state of  having had a face-lift."

"Ich bin mir sicher dass diese Schlampe Jenna Jameson geliftet ist."
"I am sure that that tramp Jenna Jameson has had work done."

I love the word Schlampe as well.

Speaking of Schlampen, I went out to the new Tresor last night with my work colleague SJ, MH and his girlfriend JM, whose apartment in Wedding I am subletting. The old Tresor, which was legendary, was located in the bank vault of the old Wertheim Department Store on Leipziger Platz, just on the east side of the Berlin Wall. Shortly after reunification, the club opened, and it was the center for all things electronic. The site, which is adjacent to Potsdamer Platz, is now slated for the return of yet another luxury department store. Wilkommen, Sarah Jessica Parker!

This is a picture of the department store looked like immediately after the War. The building itself was destroyed during the construction of the "death strip" adjacent to the Berlin Wall, but the vault was left intact, hence the original name of the club:

The new club is located in a defunct factory once owned by Vattenfall, who have relocated to a modern facitility by the Westhafen.

It definitely does not live up to its predecessor, and it doesn't hold a candle to either Weekend or Berghain. Not that I'm a club expert or anything, but the crowd was the Berlin equivalent of bridge and tunnel and total prollig (a pejorative German classist term that means: "totally proletariat.")

The space, which looks immense from the outside, only has two dance floors. One which was in the basement, with a very low ceiling. Also, the industrial chic look is very Berlin, but it's getting a bit old.

At Berghain, the industrial chic is wonderfully distilled and tempered: within the former industrial shell, there works of art by Wolfgang Tillmans and Piotr Nathan, the spaces are very high, and the windows long and elegant, giving one the feeling of, as one person said: dancing in French gothic cathedral, and floating on the air.

By "floating on the air" I do not think he meant that he discovered some remarkable drug; rather, the dance floor is constructed up off the floor, approximately at the midpoint between the floor and the ceiling of the factory space, which I estimate to be about 100 feet high. A grand staircase leads you up to lights and the boom of the music. The effect as you race up the stairs to get to the dancefloor is dramatic and thrilling.

The pictures that I dug up of Tresor (whose name is now pointless because we're not dancing in a vault anymore) are misleading:

I don't know if the architects who designed the space were forced by building code to partition the dancefloors, but they are tiny, and it's really hot. The effect of being in here is more accurately conveyed by this picture:

That is kinda cool for about five seconds. Also, the small spaces do not allow heat from the dance floor to rise, and within seconds you're drenched. Which has it's advantages and disadvantages.

For such a massive space, only a fraction of the building was actually used, and it was basically a boring black box. For such creative and original design, I need only to go back to New York.

This Friday the company is holding an Ausstandsparty ("goodbye party") for me. It's already gone around that we're going to Weekend afterward. I hope its good weather so we can party one last time above Berlin in lights.

Owwwwww

So, today I ran 5 kilometers with the company track team around the Schlachtensee. I am very out of shape. This endeavor was made even more difficult because one of the people on the team won a bronze medal at the Atlanta Olympic games in 1996 and two guys have run the Berlin marathon about 50 million times. My ass is beat. You know I will not be able to walk tomorrow. Trust.

I did, however, encounter my first Wildschwein during the run around the lake. Those things are huge! I scared it off, however, when I screamed out: "Holy sh*t.!" It was still pretty cool though.

Des Lebens Ruf an uns wird niemals enden... Wohlan denn, Herz, nimm Abschied und gesunde!

*

I know the poetry of Hermann Hesse only through Strauss' Vier Letzten Lieder. Tonight over dinner, Max Wagner told me about the poem Stufen (Steps). Hermann Hesse is quickly becoming my favorite poet. He's giving Goethe and von Eichendorff a run for their money. I somehow feel that discovery of this poem was meant for this summer, like a heavenly injunction whose import was unknown, like an order from God whose meaning was inscrutable**...

Stufen

Wie jede Blüte welkt und jede Jugend
Dem Alter weicht, blüht jede Lebensstufe,
Blüht jede Weisheit auch und jede Tugend
Zu ihrer Zeit und darf nicht ewig dauern.
Es muß das Herz bei jedem Lebensrufe
Bereit zum Abschied sein und Neubeginne,
Um sich in Tapferkeit und ohne Trauern
In andre, neue Bindungen zu geben.
Und jedem Anfang wohnt ein Zauber inne,
Der uns beschützt und der uns hilft, zu leben.

Wir sollen heiter Raum um Raum durchschreiten,
An keinem wie an einer Heimat hängen,
Der Weltgeist will nicht fesseln uns und engen,
Er will uns Stuf' um Stufe heben, weiten.
Kaum sind wir heimisch einem Lebenskreise
Und traulich eingewohnt, so droht Erschlaffen,
Nur wer bereit zu Aufbruch ist und Reise,
Mag lähmender Gewöhnung sich entraffen.

Es wird vielleicht auch noch die Todesstunde
Uns neuen Räumen jung entgegen senden,
Des Lebens Ruf an uns wird niemals enden...
Wohlan denn, Herz, nimm Abschied und gesunde!

Steps

Like ev'ry flower wilts, like youth is fading
and turns to age, so also one's achieving:
Each virtue and each wisdom needs parading
in one's own time, and must not last forever.
The heart must be, at each new call for leaving,
prepared to part and start without the tragic,
without the grief - with courage to endeavor
a novel bond, a disparate connection:
for each beginning bears a special magic
that nurtures living and bestows protection.

We'll walk from space to space in glad progression
and should not cling to one as homestead for us.
The cosmic spirit will not bind nor bore us;
it lifts and widens us in ev'ry session:
for hardly set in one of life's expanses
we make it home, and apathy commences.
But only he, who travels and takes chances,
can break the habits' paralyzing stances.

It even may be that the last of hours
will make us once again a youthful lover:
The call of life to us forever flowers...
Anon, my heart! Do part and do recover!

 

*The painting is by Caspar David Friedrich.

** I stole those words from Duras' The Lover
 

Another notch (back)

It's NOT what you think. Dirty.

I am losing weight. Maybe it was the move, or joining the company's track team, but I managed to fasten my belt this morning one notch tighter than normal.

That is, as T$ correctly points out, until I even look at currywurst.

Lest we forget

Today is the 46th anniversary of the official construction of the Berlin Wall. On the night of August 12th, 1961, the Soviet-controlled East German government began to run barbed wire around the lenght of the Eastern sector of the city, trapping hundreds of thousands of residents behind the "anti-fascist protection barrier."

For anyone who grows nostalgic for the East, or complains about the state of modern German affairs, it's hard for me not to smack them. Hard. For all of its troubles, Germany is one country again, prosperous, stable and at peace.

Stadtkindern

This weekend was totally insane. (My apologies to ZR for having reschedule his weekend visit to Berlin! Tut mir leid!)

On Saturday, rather than sleeping in after the exhausting week at work, I got up at the ass-crack of dawn (well, maybe a little later than that) and headed over to the apartment of by best friend Chris Rudolph to help him move to his new apartment which he just purchased, through the success of his books, his DJing and radio enterprises, and some help from his parents. Chris made breakfast, and then for the next five hours we moved all of Chris' stuff (he has a ton of stuff) from his old Gruenderzeit apartment in Pankow, in the North of Berlin, to his new duplex rooftop apartment in Prenzlauer Berg. It is a Neubau, but has the same proportions as the turn-of-the-century buildings around it. He faces onto a quiet interior courtyard. Maybe a bit to quiet for my tastes, but for a writer, it is ideal.

Even though we were sweating like pigs, and one chandelier broke, the event was so happy. There is something inspiring about helping someone move; it provides an example of how even in a city that until recently was economically depressed, people are moving up. As cheesy as it sounds, I couldn't help thinking: life keeps getting better. That is something my father, the eternal optimist, would definitely say.

Then I went to work, but I was so exhausted from the move, I didn't get much done; I had to go back in today in order to finish some work. Also, I was repeatedly highjacked by the Camp Nou competition team to help them write the text that accompanied their entry for the redesign of the stadium. I was planning on going out dancing and drinking at Berghain with some of the guys that helped with the move, but it just didn't happen. I slept like a baby.

After work today, I met up with Max Wagner, one of my oldest friends. He's in town on business on behalf of the Stuttgarter Kammerorchester and also to attend the birthday of his former roomate and mutual friend Katrin.

We met in Mitte, at the Indian restaurant on the Rochstrasse, coincidentally in the same building that I used to live in. We headed up to a park near the hip Monsieur Vong restaurant to meet Felix, a friend of mine whom I know through Max; I subletted Felix's incredible atelier apartment on the corner of Tucholskystrasse and Augustrasse, now, the heart of Berlin's booming gallery district, in the summer of 1998. He's now married, with a gorgeous wife and a beautiful two year old girl, Charlotte. They invited us over to an impromptu dinner in their spectacular apartment in the heart of baby-central, Prenzlauer Berg. The party grew larger when the upstairs neighbors who joined us with their adorable 2 year old Lars.

In the kitchen, I grew nostalgic, looking at he old cupboard and table that once used to eat on in the summer of 1998; Felix noticed me looking wistful and said: "so you remember the old furniture?" Their apartment is incredible. Their bathroom, and I'm not kidding or exaggerating when I say this, is larger than most NYC apartments. The building lost it's facade in the war, but the interior was perfectly preserved, complete with the old stucco, hardwood floors, 3 meter-high ceilings and French balcony.

Dinner was held in the dining room, with faced west and looked out over a brilliant sunset; the walls were lined with bookcases. The table, which Felix made himself, had been babyproofed for Charlotte: he had taped packs of Kleenex (or in Germany, Tempo Taschentuecher) to each corner. Ghetto, but brilliant. He has babyproofed the stove by constructing a frame around the range, so that Charlotte couldn't grab the pans or put her hands on the oven range. Words cannot describe how much I was in love with their place. The window of the living room looked out on the television tower, and also on the Metzstrasse, where in May of 2005 my parents and I had looked at a beautiful haut-parterre apartment. I kept thinking: we should have bought it. 2005, the market was so depressed, you could by a palace for a song. Although Berlin real estate is still cheap, and nowhere near the insane and astronomical prices that were a product of the NYC real-estate bubble,  they are starting to climb: the price of apartments was a topic of conversation that continued to return over the course of the evening. Katrin has also purchased a apartment in a converted abandoned factory not far from Felix.

The apartment is decorated with works of art by Max's father, Rainer Wagner. Each wall displayed a single work of art by both Rainer and other local young Berlin artists. It was wonderful.

I gave Lars and Charlotte too much chocolate and then proceeded to whip them into a frenzy until they were running and screaming around the table. I don't know if I'd be a good parent, but I'd be the best uncle and spoil kids rotten.

The evening was pure magic... the kids were put to bed by 8 PM, and the adults stayed up until 11, when the hosts politely told us it was time for bed for them, too. Max, Katrin and I walked back to Alexanderplatz by way of the apartment on Metzerstrasse that might of been mine. I looked up at it wistfully, but thought: it's not too late. One day like Chris and Felix, I'll have a place like this, too.

Waiting for Wagner

Why do I continue to think: after this deadline, things will calm down. Two days after my last deadline, I'm in the office at 2 AM again, and I'm going to be working Saturday and Sunday as well for another deadline on Monday. Sklaverei, no doubt, but I am still loving my firm.

I have so many overtime hours, however, that these last three weeks I hope to be able to take a couple of days off. As many of you know, I am trying to get tickets to this year's Wagner Festspiele in Bayreuth. Tickets generally are obtained eight years in advance. A friend of mine, however, is the editor of Das Orchester magazine here in Berlin, and he's also good friends with the woman who controls the tickets for the festival. (I refer to her as the Lord of the Ring.)

A couple of weeks ago he mentioned the possibility that he might be able to get me tickets to one of the performances, but on very VERY short notice: i.e., the DAY of the performance. Now, if I had a private jet, getting from Berlin to Bayreuth wouldn't be a problem. But I am restricted to more modest means of travel, which requires a bit more logistical resourcefulness.

On Thursday, he told me there might be a chance that I could get a ticket to Friday's performance of Die Walkuere. The Lord of the Ring, however, only knows this at 10 AM the morning of the performance, which starts at 4 PM. And when the doors shut to the festival house, there is no way to get in late. I went to the Deutsche Bahn website to see how I could get down to Bayreuth in time. There is only one train that would allow this possibility, leaving Berlin at 9:55 AM.

So this morning, I got all dressed up and headed to Berlin Hauptbahnhof, the capital's glittering new central railway station, taking a leap of faith that I might luck out. I stood in the magnificent arrival hall and stared at my cell phone, waiting for the call that would let me know if there was a seat available.

This was cutting it close; if a seat were available in Bayreuth, I would have to get on the train and buy a ticket en route.

So, there I am, standing by Gleis 10, and finally the call came, a bit earlier than I expected. But no luck. So, rather than heading to Bavaria, I got on the S-Bahn and headed, extremely overdressed, to work.

There is another chance that I might get a ticket to Tuesday's performance of Goetterdaemmerung. I am going to the train station again tomorrow to see if I can't get the cheaper fare of 29 Euros each way, provided that it's refundable. Because otherwise, I am going to be paying out of the ass get to get down there if I buy the ticket on the train.

Tomorrow, in addition to heading the office, I need to get up at 8 AM and head over to the old apartment of my friend Chris, who is moving up in the world and has purchased a sweet little pad in Prenzlauer Berg. I offered to help him move his stuff. You know I am so staying in his new downstairs guest room (yes, the apartment has two floors) when I come back.

Geschafft!

I realize that I haven't posted on this blogchen in a while. I have been working insane hours.

We finally finished our competition entry for the Goethe University in Frankfurt. Keep your fingers crossed.

My parking garage got a big place. And I met the requirement of 630 spots!

I am going to sleep. For a LONG time. Gute Nacht.

This is now how I imagine hell:

I'm on my 15th version of that parking garage. I think my spinal column has fused. Friday is the deadline. Pray for me.