berlin :: in :: lights

They're coming, too?

I just read this in Dlisted, which is hands-down my FAVORITE website for celebrity trash gossip. So vulgar, but so good:

    Monday, July 30th 2007        

So Long New Orleans!

       

      

 

   

                  

                                             

       

 

Brangelina might be on the move again according to reports. Apparently Brad wants to move his family to Berlin to keep his kids out of the limelight. Brad is quoted as telling The Daily Mirror,

 

“She wants to leave acting and support me with this. We also don’t want our kids to go to school in Hollywood - it will be best if they can go to school in Berlin. We love the city. Berlin is so quiet and balanced, away from paparazzi.”

 

Brad has one home in Berlin and is planning to build and design another in Potsdam. 

 

Angelina is not leaving acting. Trust. She has like a billion projects lined up including Beowulf. Above is a shot taken from the movie where Angie plays a seductive water demon. In one scene Angie comes out of a pool wearing nothing but a braid and hooves instead of human feet.

 

Hmmm...typecasting?

 

Wherever Brangelina go, the paps go. They should just move to Mars if they want to be left alone. Hey! That's not such a bad idea! I'm sure Tom Cruise can help them out with that.

 

Oh and I guess this mean they are over staying in New Orleans and "helping the victims of Katrina."



I mean, seriously, who doesn't love this city, doesn't have a pulse. End of discussion. But what the hell is Brad talking about when he says: "Berlin is so quiet and balanced." I mean, have you BEEN on the S-Bahn at 5 AM? Or to Berghain on a Sunday at 11 AM? It is anything but quiet here. Trust.

"Ein heisses Pflaster"

Whenever my work colleagues ask me where I live, and I answer: Wedding, their response is almost:

"Whoa. Tut mir leid."

This is accompanied by an expression by either pity or disbelief.

Now, I will admit, der Wedding is not the glamorous Unter den Linden. It is not hard-core Kreuzberg, or genteel Charlottenburg. Technically, it is part of Mitte, the central district of the city. But Berlin is enormous--six times the area of Paris--and it's divided by canals, rivers, abandoned industrial sites and, whenever the money was lacking to rebuild: parks. So, it takes 30 minutes or more to actually get across a single neighborhood.

It is considered by Berliners to be dangerous. Upon hearing of the location of my apartment, my colleauge Iwan declared: "Dass ist ja ein heises Pflaster!" (Literally: "That's a hot pavement." Or "Those are rough streets.") I looked at him incredulously and replied: "Um, ich komm von New York."  What Berliners define as dangerous, and what I define as dangerous, are two ENTIRELY different things.

To be fair, I tend to blend in amongst my neighbors. My street is filled with Turkish and Arab cousins, who eye me with a little bit of suspicion and confusion; we see each other during the course of the day, they watch me leave for work every morning and come every night. Most of them, however, remain a fixture in front of the Off-Track-Betting Parlor, or the local cell-phone shop. I think it's hysterical, and also very infuriating: these guys tell their mothers and sisters that they should stay at home, cook and clean for them, carry a veil, and god-forbid even looking at another man. Yet they waste their lives in a gambling hall, drinking and making cat-calls at girls that walk down the street. I always want to go up to them and say: Did you know that Muhammad's first wife was also his boss?



To most of them, I must seem like a traitor, a sellout to the West. I would say the older generation, like the Lebanese grocer, the Vietnames imbiss cook, and the Croatian woman who cuts my hair every two weeks are happy to see a different kind of "young Arab male" instead of the guys that loiter in front of their shops. To those that are really trying to make a living, when I tell them I'm working at Germany's biggest and most famous architecture firm, they think: we're moving up in Germany.

I know that I'm wading into dangerous waters with this, but I also think it's remarkable how East Asian immigrants, in particular, Koreans and Vietnamese, manage to integrate so much more rapidly into German society than my Arab and Turkish brethren.

I remember standing on line at an ice-cream stand behind a large Vietnamese family. Although they occasional used Vietnamese words, they spoke primarily in German. The children spoke it fluently, without an accent. The father spoke it near-fluently, but with a strong accent. I often wonder why some cultures manage to successfully integrate and adapt, and yet some choose to become almost hermetically sealed from the environment around them.

Work has been crazy. I went in on both Saturday and Sunday, I need to be back at 8 AM tomorrow. So more on Wedding tomorrow, while I wait for the laundry to finish. Assuming, of course, I even get home before 2 AM!

"O body swayed to music, O brightening glance, How can we know the dancer from the dance?"

(This entry could also be titled: Holy sh*t! I got in!)

Last night I finally went to week12end (or simply week-end) one of the two best known clubs in Berlin (of the moment.) Two colleagues of mine, both named Andrea, were leaving my firm for new jobs: one was staying in Berlin, but the other was moving to her boyfriend in Hannover. We made fun of the latter Andrea the whole night about her departure, saying: Hannover! Da geht es wirklich los! (Hannover! That's where it's really taking off!)

At 7 PM, the office held a farewell party for the two. I stayed for a few glasses of champagne before going back to my desk (I need to go back in on Sunday as well).  At  around 8:30, Hannover-Andrea came by with a wicked smile on her face and whispered: "We're going out to weekend!  Do you want to come along?" Since my arrival here, I've been telling everyone how much I've wanted to go to there. The problem, of course, has been that I'm either working or sleeping, or doing the laundry for 10 hours.

In the blink of an eye, I shut down my computer, and we were out the door ten minutes later. The Andrea that is staying in Berlin offered to drive us there, but since there were 6 of us, one member of the group had to ride in the trunk. Als Praktikant, sollte ich, I declared (As intern, I should do it.) The car was one of those hatchbacks, and although I was crammed  in with wine bottles, two bouquets, and a ton of books, it wasn't so bad. Whenever one of the passengers saw the police, they yelled "Tarek, duck!" and I had to slide down and cover myself with the flowers.

We raced down the Strasse des 17. Juni towards the Brandenburg Gate, but by the Grosser Stern and the Victory column, traffic suddenly came to a standstill: some dignitary was leaving the Chancellery, and the street was temporarily closed to traffic. After 10 minutes of flashing lights, sirens, and countless military and police vehicles driving by, the trip resumed. Finally, by way of Friedrichstrasse, Unter den Linden and Rosa Luxemburg Strasse, we arrived at the Haus des Reisens, an unassuming and ugly highriser on the Alexanderplatz. This, however, was the location of weekend:

When I first heard about this club, I immediately thought of the legendary club "The Twelfth Floor" which was immortalized in Andrew Holleran's classic novel of life in New York in the 1970s, Dancer From the Dance. The building, which is located south-west corner of  Broadway and Houston streets, is now filled with clothing stores and galleries with tacky art for housewives in Jersey to help them feel au courant. The club has disappeared long ago in the wake of the rabid Manhattan real estate frenzy.

Time and again, the word on the street is that Berlin today is like New York was like in 80s. The city is broke and poor, rents are cheap, but it exudes and imparts and indescribable thrill and energy. More than any place, week12end represents this odd mix of beauty, style, and the reinterpretation of ugly: The building itself is one of the more hideous ones on the Alexanderplatz, which, during the Cold War, was East Berlin's showcase for Stalinist/Socialist Modernism, decorated profusely with public art that glorified the common man/family:

The lobby was redesigned badly in the 1990s, which tacky polished marble. They left the ceiling decoration intact however, of which there is a variant in the weekend club that is very similar:

The anticipation mounting, we took the elevator up to the 15th floor, and then took two flights of stairs to come out on a breathtaking view of the city and a spectacular sunset. Alexanderplatz sits in the dead center of the city: around you, the boulevards and allees spread out towards Prenzlauer Berg, Friedrichshain, Kreuzberg, and Mitte/Unter den Linden. Next to you, looming and stylish in a particularly Socialist kind of way is the Television Tower (derisively knicknamed by Berliners the "television asparagus):

The roof deck is filled with banquettes, and to our surprise, we found the boss of the Berlin office sitting on one of them. He had beaten us there and was patiently waiting for our arrival, kindly saving a small niche for the rest of the group.

The next couple of hours went by in a blur--laughing talking, and I couldn't stop smiling, thinking: this is the coolest city in the world.  Some friends of my colleague Helge joined us; they worked for Graft, the up and coming design firm who designed the Los Angeles residence of Brangelina. The conversation eventually turned to Berlin's booming art scene I mentioned that two of my favorite artists, the German Thomas Demand and Icelandic Olafur Eliasson now called Berlin home. To my great surprise and elation my colleague Martin's best friend works for BOTH of the artists, who do a lot of construction/installation work that is highly architectural. He offered to hook me up with him so that I can get a tour of their studios and see their new work.

The people in my firm are wonderful, but time and again they are surprised by my interest in "speisig" German stuff like going to Weimar or my knowledge of obscure electromusic groups like Booka Shade. I often wonder if there is a certain prejudice regarding people from America. The boss from the Berlin office, the son of a baker from Salzgitter, could not believe I could rattle off all the famous churches in Hildesheim. He's like: have you ever heard of the Michaeliskirche? I was like: um, yeah, like the one with the famous 11th century painted cieling commissioned by Bishop Bernwad? Another colleague interjects saying: trust me, he knows everything about Germany!

By the time it became dark, the dj was playing an odd mix of techno-infused CLASSIC disco (finally! music is danceable again!) that made the scene even more like a flashback to New York of a different time. The deck was packed with young, beautiful, stylish and sweaty people.

By 2 AM, however, laying under the balmy night sky, with Berlin-in-lights spread out below me, I started to get sleepy. I told my disappointed colleagues: "next time, we do this on a Saturday, so we can take club naps, so that in addition to watching the sun go down, we can watch the sun come back up again."

Going out here again. Trust.

 

Die Fahrt ins Blaue, Part II

So, as promised, here is the video of the balloon trip. My colleague Andrea filmed a daredevil jumping out of the balloon. It's the commentary that is so amusing, though. Right before he jumps, you can here me say:

"Okay, vielliecht bin ich ein bisschen dankbar, dass ich jetzt nicht vom Flugzeug gesprungen habe."
(Okay, maybe I'm a little happy, that I didn't end up going skydiving.")

"Nim ein Bild von mir, danke, eh, ich will es an meinen Eltern schicken."
(Take a picture of me, thanks, eh, I want to send it to my parents.")

"Oh Gott, ein Film!"
(Oh god, a film!)

Then the guy jumps.

Everyone: (Gasping) Wo ist er? Wo ist er denn?!" (Where is he? Where is he?)

Andrea: "Der geht nicht auf!" (The parachute won't open!)

Me: "Hat er es geschafft?!" (Did he make it?!)

Me (petulantly): "Ich will auch ein Film machen." (I want to make a movie too!)

At the end of the video, a colleague looks out at the other balloon and says:

"Die sind hoeher als uns," (they are higher than us)

whereupon I say:

"Nein! Ich will hoeher gehen!" (No! I want to go higher!)

Penguins in the freezer

The penguins in the Zoologischer Garten nearly died today and so did I. They were moved to a freezer to keep them from perishing. If only I were so lucky.

The city is suffering from a horrible heatwave. Today, it climbed up to 38 degrees Celsius (that's about 100 Fahrenheit.) Northern Europe doesn't do the air-conditioning thing (which I actually think is better since moving from extreme hot to extreme cold as you do in New York is not only taxing on the environment, but also bad for your health) but it's put me in a cranky mood.

On Sunday, I went out bathing at the at the Liepnitzsee:

The lake is really breathtaking, and the water is so clear and pure you can actually drink from it. Getting there, however, requires a somewhat long trek through the woods. The past weeks of rain, combined with this spectacular heat wave, has resulted in the unfortunate situation that the region is infested with mosquitoes. For some reason, however, those evil little creatures decided to keep stinging me right on the back of my leg, in the joint behind your knee. My legs have swollen so badly that it is painful to walk, and I can barely bend my legs. I am writing this entry right now with my legs extended straight out in front of me.

The office is sweltering and I spent 12 hours working on the underground parking lot of a building for the Goethe Univeristy in Frankfurt. Thrilling, I'm sure. You have no idea how hard it is to design and underground parking lot. There are a number of criteria that must be simultaneously met: the columns must be spaced at regular intervals, but must also line up with the exterior walls and main interior load bearing walls. They must be spaced far enough apart, however, so that cars can pass, and also park. There are also two trees on the site which are protected by law (they're very old) and so you have to build around them and they just f*ck everything up. In addition to fitting 630 cars into two levels (so, that means you've got to integrate a ramp--which I forgot today) I've somehow got to figure out a way to also put in an archive and depot and techincal/maintenance areas. It's my 6th attempt, turning the cars every possible way, and it's hell. I left work today feeling like a total loser and an idiot..

Even in Berlin, every day can't always be "in lights."

Prada-Meinhof

Berlin is currently holding it's first "Fashion Week."

The main event is being held in a temporary structure on the Tiergarten side of the Brandenburg Gate, in addition to a number of other typical Berlin venues: bombed out department stores, derelict factories and former Communist-Party hangouts like the Cafe Moskau.

Walking over to Klaus' apartment last night in the hip and stylish Mitte district, I went past several clubs that were hosting after parties. It was the usual crowd of beautiful but totally vapid fashion industry people. When I mentioned the event to my friend AN, he promptly pissed on it. "It's not even a B-list event like Miami or LA," he declared. But if fashion follows art (or rather, decimates it, as was the case in SoHo, or where the slaughter continues in the Chelsea District in New York) then could Berlin take back it's pre-war status as fashion metropolis?  It is alternately a exhilarating and terrifying thought.

Last morning at 5 AM, taking the S-Bahn home, I watched the people come and go out of the trains. I thought: Berlin belongs to the young. Even at that early morning our, people filled the streets, coming out of the countless clubs, cafes and bars that continue to spring up everywhere in the city. Unlike New York, Paris, Milan or London, Berlin still has a profoundly lower cost of living. It allows the creative spirit to flourish in a way that you can't have in cities that have had less tumultuous and disruptive histories. Could you have an Andy Warhol or a Diane von Fuerstenberg in New York anymore?

In the German consciousness, the German capital exists as a strange paradox: since the 1920s, Berlin has been percieved as die Stadt der Versager; the city of losers and bums. This image persisted and aggrandized by the large role the city played in the Cold War and student demonstrations of the late 1960s;  It was the birthplace of Germany's most infamous left-wing radical terrorist group, the Baader-Meinhof Gang, which would have blown Patti Hearst and the SLA out of the water. And if you didn't want to do you mandatory military duty, all what you needed to do was to run to demilitarized West-Berlin, bastion of pinko-fag-commies. Even today, the image persists: Berlin still has high (but falling) unemployment; it is a city of bureaucrats and artists who have breakfast first at 1 PM, because they'd been partying the whole night before.

At the same time, this so-called "bohemian" lifestyle is what lends this city it's seductive, sinister allure (and when I write that I can't help but thinking of Louise Brooks.) West Germans might not want to send their children to school there, but more and more the noble families of the wealthy West find themselves buying a Berlin pied-a-terre. Mann muss doch ein Sitz in der Hauptstadt haben. One must have a place in the captial, after all. Nor is this unique to German nationals. Russians, especially, and Britons, Poles, and Swedes are buying luxury apartments in sin-city.

Perhaps this expresses the paradox best: Berlin is Germany's poorest city, but has the highest concentration of luxury 5-star hotels and Michelin-star restaurants anywhere in the nation.

In the end, however, I must quote the famous song in Cabaret: "Money makes the world go 'round."  There is a certain relief when you read the news that companies like Pfizer or AOK Insurance are moving their European headquarters back to Berlin. The city might be the glittering center of artistic life in Europe now, but such bohemian mayhem cannot seriously be maintained without a healthy dose of burgher. Hopefully, however, an up-and-coming fashion week will make the capital an even more stylish place to live,  and not a  Sarah-Jessica Parker playland, saturated with spas and doggy-day-care facilities.

Die Fahrt ins Blaue

I know you are all probably laughing right now since Fahrt makes everyone think of the English fart. No, T$, this is not an entry about blue farts.

This evening, my company took the team that worked on the competition submission for the expansion of Munich's international airport out on an excursion as thanks for our hard work. I worked on this project the first two weeks of my internship, when I basically lived at the office.

When we were told of the excursion, the only thing our bosses told us was that it was a Fahrt (ha, ha) ins blaue. In German, this means more or less a "journey into the unknown." I figured that it had something to do with air travel since we worked on the airport project. The whole week I'd been telling my colleagues: "are you ready to go skydiving?!"

We drove out of Berlin, past Tegel (where I thought we would originally be headed) to Neuruppin, in the province of Brandenburg. This is the heart of old Prussia (which I triple-heart.) There we finally figured out it was a balloon trip.

We had two balloons, one with seven of us, and the other with four. I must say, I nearly crapped my pants when the balloon first lifted off the ground. Suddenly, your'e rising at an incredible speed, essentially floating on the air, 600 meters off the ground. Since I am deathly afraid of heights, I totally thought I would flip out. But, as the journey progressed, my fear of heights dissipated. The trip was sublime. Up above the world, I thought. A view of the world from god's eyes.



At first everyone was laughing and screaming, demanding photos of each other. As the journey went on, we all became quiet. The stillness was lovely, and one became hypnotized by the slow movement of landscape below. Occasionally, someone pointed out a deer, or a wild boar, or a rabbit running across the field. A Sternstunde (star hour) of life.

In addition to the Munich Airport team, we also had one hang glider. A colleague Andrea filmed him jumping out of the basket. When I get the file from here on Monday, I will post it.

Du darfst (nicht mehr)

Ich will so bleiben wie Ich bin,

Let's play tourist

When my mother was living in Paris as an au pair, she had a girlfriend come visit. The two of them decided to "play tourist." In her photo album, the chapter is similarly titled. In the same fashion, but with a new technology, so is mine.

An old friend of mine from college decided to come visit me in Berlin for the weekend. I must say, I really enjoyed his stay, as I only get to see the sites when I'm with guests. The natives, so used to the beauty and treasures around them, have no interest.

The past two days have been exhausting. In addition to the sightseeing, we attended a high-school performance of Dido and Aeneas. Purcell originally wrote the opera for a girl's school, and it was a wonderful experience to see it performed by young people rather than professionals. Although they got off to a rough start, the performance was wonderful. Dido and Aeneas looked like the homecoming queen and the starquarterback, respectively. The costumes were a mix between ancient garb and 80s fashion a la Duran Duran. Of course, I was in tears during Dido's Liebestod (dying from love) where she says:

When I am laid in earth may my wrongs create,
No trouble in thy breast.
Remember me, remember me, but ah!
Forget my fate.

Alex couldn't believe I was so in tears. Over the course of the weekend, I alternately cried at sad monuments (the Neue Wache, which commemorates ALL the vicitims of National Socialism) and documentation of happier events (the fall of the Berlin Wall).

Other highlights included a papyrus in the Egyptian Museum which was written in the royal offices under Cleoptara VII. I read the blurb next to the document and it stated that the signature at the bottom of the document ("let it be so," in Greek) was most probably hers. So cool! At the flea market on the Museumsufer (the Museum-quai) we each purchased old Reichsbank currency. For 3 Euros, we went home with 5 BILLION marks.  Hats off to the fiscal incompetency of the Weimar Republic!

And, to prevent boredom, here are some pictures:

The second lesson in neudeutsch vocabulary: besexen

Besexen: To make something sexier, or more appealing.

Dieses Rendering sieht total langweilig aus. Koennen wir nicht irgendwas machen, um es zu besexen?

Translation: This rendering is totally boring. Can't we do something to make it sexier?

Try using it in a sentence today!