Two Weeks in Berlin
Forgive me for doing that obnoxious thing where you take a magnificent, amazing place and present it solely in comparison to something you know better. I’m going to compare Berlin, where I’ve been for the last two weeks, to New York.
One of my immediate measures for a city is how its pedestrians act. New York is a city of aggressive jaywalkers, who will stare down an encroaching vehicle—that has the right of way—with an attitude we all learned from Al Pacino. In Washington D.C. you can see the divides among the transplants. Here in Berlin, most everybody waits for the little green Ampelmann.
Several German people who I’ve met have talked about how Germans are natural rule followers. If the light is red, they stop. It’s also why the fare-collection system for public transportation works here: riders of buses, trams, the U-Bahn and S-Bahn are all expected to buy tickets and validate them. Checks are rare, but the only people I met who didn’t buy a ticket were Americans. (New York’s MTA estimates it lost almost $700 million in 2022 from lost fares.) Because you’re not waiting for someone to pay their bus fare in nickels, the whole system moves that much quicker.
It’s hard for me to imagine that this would ever work in the U.S. — particularly in New York. The general ethos of the Big Apple is, “no no no, we’ve got a workaround for that.” If you know a guy who knows a guy, you can use Tommy’s brother’s company’s box seat at the ball game. The regular price would be prohibitive. Since your great aunt put you on the lease when you were a toddler, you’ve got the rent-controlled apartment overlooking Central Park where she moved in 1953. Et cetera. Berlin has the opposite proposition: everything will operate with maximum efficiency if everyone just follows the rules.
I found Germany’s capital to be incredibly interesting. The history is layered on like coats of paint, and even the old, historic places were recreated and updated after the destruction of the last century. While prices have gone up, residential rents are still affordable when compared to the largest U.S. cities and mom-and-pop shops proliferate. It’s still cheap enough for interesting people to make interesting food, art and music.
After two weeks of Sprachschule in Berlin, I’m now off to Munich to start reporting. Bis bald!
IN BRIEF:
+ Currywurst is disappointing. It was a reasonable sausage in a bland sauce that was just two shades more flavorful than ketchup. But why doesn’t the U.S. have more Döner Kebap?
+ I spent a night hanging out in a biergarten that was built on the top floor of a shopping mall parking garage. I hope someone reading this can copy that business model in the U.S., because it was great.
+ I went to a bunch of museums, but my two favorites were the Deutsches Technikmuseum and the Hamburger Bahnhof. The former is an enginerd’s dream, complete with exhibits that trace the development of German aviation engines and pesticides. Hamburger Bahnhof was a converted train station that now houses contemporary art exhibitions. It reminded me of MASSMoCA in North Adams, Massachusetts.
+ There are a few sections of the Berlin Wall that remain in place, including one along Bernauer Strasse that is the site of a park and memorial. It’s a very powerful memorial.
THE QUESTION: On average, do Germans drink more coffee or beer each year?
Have an answer? Drop me a line at jimmy.vielkind@gmail.com. Or just write with thoughts, feedback or to say hi.
THE LAST ANSWER: Willy Brandt (born Herbert Ernst Karl From) was the West German chancellor from 1969 to 1974 who was known for Ostpolitik. I visited the steps of Rathaus Schöneberg, where “the JFK of Germany” joined U.S. President John F. Kennedy for the speech in which he declared, “ich bin ein Berliner.”