Mining towns and lost glories

The train ride from Prague to Dresden takes only around 2 hours and on the way winds along the River Elbe, passing fantastical rock formations rising straight out of the river in an area known as the Saxon Switzerland. We arrived in Dresden early in the afternoon, and checked into the Ibis Hotel, only steps from the train station. The rooms are tiny, the bathrooms tinier, and the price does not include breakfast, but after several failed attempts at booking Pensions, I was simply relieved to find something reasonably priced. Instead of exploring the city right away, Steve and I take the region train out to Freiberg, about 45 minutes away.

On the nearly empty train we rode into the countryside. We were definitely getting off the tourist path now. In the 12th century silver was discovered in the area, and Freiberg came into being. The city museum has on display remnants of old mining equipment ( and sells lumps of fool's gold at the counter). In 1756 the world's first mining academy was founded in the city. A prestigious institution, even the poet/writer Novalis attended for a brief stint, although it's unclear if dark shafts ever inspired his poetry. Pictures of Freiberg in the 19th century show a thriving industrial city. Sadly the thriving part is no longer true. Walking from the train station to the town center, the "city" has a distinct feel of the depopulated former East German city. The magnificent mineral collection of the mining academy sat in old-fashioned glass cases in the Georg Aggricola building. I could have heard a penny drop in the silent rooms which house the collection.

Near the town square, we wandered into a mining gift shop. The owner was clearly overjoyed to see potential customers, and proceeded to tout his wares with great enthusiasm. At one point I asked he sold coal samples. Freiberg's speciality was silver, he informed me, and the immediate area did not produce coal. Oh, but wait, he disappears behind a door. A few minutes later, he appears from the basement with a large chunk of black rock. This, he said, is coal, but not from the area. He broke off a piece and put it in a plastic bag. We rewarded the attentive service with a number of purchases, althought the chunk of "not-Freiberg" coal was free.

Gooaaaal!

It's almost impossible to not become infected with football fever in Berlin. From a small cafe this afternoon I watched the Germany v. Sweden game (every bar and cafe in town seems to have set up tvs or large projector screens of some variety in backrooms, barn-like structures, anywhere that could accomodate viewing). On Unter der Linden, the main thoroughfare of imperial Germany, a huge sign proclaims that statistically, Germany has always been the World Champion in World Cups held in Germany.

After dinner, we go to an outdoor bar called 'trailer park,' which looks exactly like...a trailer park, with little trailers scattered across a concrete clearing, outhouses in the back, and a bar area that also serves potato salad, burgers and other "trailer food." A large screen was set up in what looked like a high ceilinged barn, and in there we watched the Argentina v. Mexico game. Going into the game, it was pretty much assumed that Argentina would beat Mexico hands down, but within minutes of the start, the game turned into one of the most exciting and tense ones thus far in this World Cup. By overtime, I was standing up and screaming at the screen in frustration. Poor Mexico. It was such a valiant attempt to stage a huge upset.

Thus far in my stay in Berlin, I have been spending a lot of time with my friend Erin and through her have met a group of Americans, students and expats in the city. Making friends in foreign countries, I find, is a bit like quickie marriages before going off to war - time is limited, and bonds form fast. The people I've met so far are a fun group, perhaps a given - it is a self selecting group of Americans who choose to live in another country. Berlin, too, has a magnetic affect. People come for short term scholarships and work stints, and wind up settling for good. I met a woman at a party on Friday who works for IBM and through the company has lived and worked in Tokyo, London, and now has resided in Berlin for a number of years. Poor Princeton is not faring well in comparison.

The Blues in Berlin

In Alexanderplatz there is a gigantic concrete structure left over from the communist days, which is now a Galleria Kaufhof, one of the largest department stores in the city. Last sunday I checked it out, and as I rode up the escalator in the cavernous, gleaming white interior (apparently the store just renovated in time for the World Cup), I had a sudden insight into all those communist emigre accounts of the 70s and 80s. Inevitably, the narrator, a former ardent supporter of communism would arrive in the West and find himself in a department store. Surrounded by a wealth of material goods, he would have a sudden epiphany on the doomed future of communism - for how could an idealogy compete against such an abundance of consumer goods?

I love the richness of Berlin and its contraditions, the little ironies which one could easily overlook without paying attention. The uninspired Soviet blocks of concrete which now contain consumer paradises; the cemetary where Hegel is buried, within walking distance of a memorial to the Wall; the symbol of East Germany, an ugly TV tower which makes a shadow of the cross; how wandering about Potsdamer Platz and its tall rises, the Sony Media Center, and Prices Waters Coopers headquarters, one might never suspect that fifteen years before the area was an expanse of weeds and overgrown grass because it stood in the no-man's land between East and West, and how seventy years before that, the square was a thriving urban center of Weimar. I fell in love with Berlin the first time I saw a documentary in a museum about Potsdamer Platz. The flickering black and white images of Potsdamer Platz, and then, a clip from Wim Wender's Wings of Desire, combined with the americanized mall outside was too much for the mind to grasp at once. I had only the vague sense of the immensity of history, and this city, which has so much of it.

So much for waxing poetic. I was sitting at home yesterday evening when my friend Erin called and told me that a group of Americans were going to hang out at a wine bar nearby. Erin has been in Berlin since October, lives in a dreamy apartment not far from my place, and has been my guide around town and the archives. The group which eventually gathers has a couple of Fullbright people and their German friends. The language of choice was English with sprinkles of German. We sipped wine on a chilly night at a bar in an unrenovated East German building which looks like it might crumble to pieces with a good kick. Apparently when the wall first came down, parts of the city looked as if the war had just ended. In the backroom, a large screen was set up to show soccer and we wound up watching an unexpectedly exciting game between U.S. and Italy. I've never been much of a sports fan, but perhaps it's the atmosphere here, it's almost impossible not to get sucked into the maelstrom.

Around 11:30, we walked over to another bar, again a non-descript brown building with a large "Ich liebe dich" (I love you) sign outside. The interior is one room, decorated in the style of "ossie" (east German) bars, with a random collection of chairs and tables and black and white Soviet films projected on the wall (the film shown inexplicably contained snow storms, men in heavy winter clothing, Africans going into battle, and of course, the end scene of three tractors plowing up a storm into the horizon.) It turns out that the bar is named "CCCP." Around midnight a musician began to play on an electric guitar, supported in a few songs by harmonicas. He was also joined for a few songs by a guest of honor, a black performer in a blue denim shirt, black jeans, and black cow boy hat, who was called Mr. "Guitar Crusher." Yes, in a non-descript "ossie" bar in Berlin, we heard a genuine, and genuinely good performance of Memphis blues.

It's a material world

Friday! On Fridays the archive reading room closes early, at 4 o'clock, well before the closing hour of most stores. And so today, after wrapping up work, my friend (and archive buddy) E. and I went shopping. We walked up Veteranstraße, past the Zionskirche, a now rather dilapidated church, where Dietrich Bonhoeffer had once preached ( a true Christian, he died in prison for opposition to Nazism, one of the few pastors in Germany who openly resisted the Third Reich), down Konstanienallee, into the Prenzlauerberg district. In this now hip area of the former East, cute cafes, bars, and boutiques flourish. Had one deep wallets, fashion heaven lies thither, the land of ingeniusly designed dresses, skirts, and shoes. As for poor grad students, browsing is free, and gnawing pangs of temptation a cheap price to pay for a glimpse into the materialist world.

Having looked our fill, E. and I turn to Kathie Kollwitz Platz and had dinner at a Italian restaurant manned by actual Italians. This might account for the delightful taglioni I chose- thick noodles with a texture to them. As we ate, the long promised thunder storms arrived, and the rain fell in sheets of water.

Row, row, row your boat; along the river Vlatva we go

Even the name Prague conjures up fantastical images of castles perched on misty hills, crotchety nobility, and let's not forget the infamous defenestration of 1618.

I was last in Prague seven years ago for 48 nightmarish hours. New Wu's theorem: Probability of Misadventure= 1/available cash. I didn't have much cash, and so the misadventures multiplied, from the night train, which stopped in a small town outside of Prague at three in the morning with no intentions of going further, to a near mugging in the subways, and an uncomfortable night in a hostel with two traveling companions whose animosity toward each other grew exponentially over the two days. Nevertheless, it had seemed like a magical city, and I looked forward to returning.

No night trains this time. Steve and I found a small hotel, centrally located hotel through hotels.com weeks before our arrival. We leave Berlin on Monday morning, and by early afternoon, we checked into the Hotel Raphaello, pleasantly appointed, although our room faced the street. That night, we took the tram to the castle, even though things were closing down. We had dinner on the way home, in one of the restaurants rated by Lonely Planet as top five most romantic. Led down a flight of stairs into a basement room that might have once been a wine cellar, we dined on wild boar and pheasant, washed down by excellent Czech beer. The apple streusel, with a side of vanilla ice cream, and drizzled by sweet liquor, was the best I've ever had. Things were looking good.

...Except, the Prague I remember has turned into Euro-Disney: Prague. The castle is still loftily perched on a hill. The Charles Bridge still picturesque, but everywhere we go, there are exchange cambios and sighs advertising the best rates, shops hawking "Bohemian Crystal," "Czech toys" which look suspiciously like Russian toys, and all manners of price gouging, in the best capitalist fashion. It was not until the evening of the second day of our stay, on a walk along the River Vlatva, downstream from the castle and high on an embankment along the river, with not an exchange cambio in sight, that I again felt the magic and charm of the city. The setting sun lit up trees and grass in the park; church bells rang, lovers occupied benches in niches along the path, and it could not have been a more perfect summer evening.

Heatwave in Berlin

Tonight is the first World Cup game in Berlin, Germany vs. Poland, and all across the city, fans have draped themselves in German flags, triple decked hats and all sorts of ridiculous getup (the best visilibility awards should go to Brazillian fans for their spiky yellow and green wigs, visible from a mile away). Even as the competition have heated up on the fields, Berlin has heat up in temperature. 85 degrees! In Berlin! The city is not equiped for such heat, and the buses and the S-Bahn turn into stewing ovens.

On Tuesday night I went for drinks with a couple friends near the Hackescher Markt. We sat in a small brick courtyard in the middle of Berlin which somehow felt cozily protected from the outside world. People sat quietly drinking tall beers and smoking (unfortunately unavoidable in Europe) surrounded by candles lighting up a country decor. It's what I love about Berlin - for all the cosmopolitanism and the hip, avant garde urbanity, there are these pockets of quiet, and for a fraction of the cost of New York, one could live the good life.

I am writing this blog from a cute cafe down the street from my apartment. For the price of a drink, one could sit indefinitly, with free wireless, and watch the football game on a wide screen. Unfortunately, I've had to seek refuge here because the wireless connection in my apartment is patchy at best, and more often than not, I'm greeted by "not connected to internet" messages when I get home. I am growing somewhat disenchanted with my apartment, so cute at first sight. It has been renovated and decorated in light, natural wood furniture, ala Ikea, but alas the comparison is too apt, and like cheap Ikea furniture, beneath the glossy surface, the shower leaks, the hot water comes in spurts, and the internet connection is as fickle as teenagers under the influence of raging hormones.

Go East Young Man

Why do people travel? Then write about their travels?

For me the best moments of a trip is when the plane glides onto the runway, or when the train pulls into the station, and for that shining moment the realization hits that I am in a foreign land, in a different time zone and every adventure is possible, every romance (yes, the cliched tall, dark stranger).

On a rainy Thursday morning, the first of June, I arrived in Berlin. Steve and I take an express bus to the Zoologischer Garten station, and everything seems familiar, in a dejavu kind of way (it's been five years since my last trip to Berlin, the two weeks of five hostels and traipsing around with my suitcase through the U/S Bahn system, and yet somehow, I still liked Berlin). We spent half an hour trying to find the rental agency, all the while desperately tired (I'm getting into a blind panic at this point), and then when we finally find it, the secretary informs me that we should have headed straight to the apartment.

A twenty minute taxi ride later, we arrive at my apartment of summer 2006. Centrally located in Mitte, with the trendy Prenz Lauer district minutes walk away and Alexanderplatz only a few stations way on the U-bahn. The manager/ owner Herr S.is a nice old man, and was setting up my new closet when we arrived. The decor of the fully furnished place screams Ikea. I look out onto a small courtyard, and the wall of the next building. Home. Beer, bratwurst, here I come.