On my last Saturday night I met two American girls who were staying with a friend. When I asked them how they came to Berlin, one of them told me the following story:
I was dating this drug dealer and after we broke up I took too much PCP and wandered around the city (New York) in a daze for a week and a half. After that I went to visit a friend in New York and we decided to go to Berlin.
They then proceeded to spill their marijuana and spend 45 minutes picking it out of the grass.
I thought of them yesterday while reading a Guardian article a friend had sent me. The article, titled “Make Yourself at Home in Berlin” and has some advice for tourists visitng the city;
Renting rooms, for short periods, is largely unheard of in the UK, outside the college campus circuit, and probably in most of Europe, too. In Germany, it is possible. In Berlin it’s encouraged. Berlin’s army of hard-up freelancers, artists and students rent rooms to strangers on a daily or weekly basis to claw cash back while they’re away from home, via sites and agencies such as exberliner, easywg.de, wg-gesucht.de, or studenten-wg.de.
I was in Berlin for a few weeks, and I wanted to live with real Berliners, see the real Berlin and experience the kiez (manor) – I didn’t want a hotel room (too expensive, too impersonal), nor a hostel (too young, too backpacker), or an apartment (too expensive for a week, and quite lonely).
While gentrification and tourism are inevitable in any major city, articles like this contribute to a growing phenomenon in Berlin.
Berlin has already been called the Mallorca of the East by Spiegel Online, a major German publication. Mallorca is the German equivalent of Tijuana Mexico or Panama City Florida in the United States, spring break capitals of drunken hedonism. The video in the article (which is in German) is in English and captures this mentality which is now sweeping parts of Berlin.
People ask me what I will miss in Europe. I have had too much to do recently to really reflect on the question. Berlin is still a wonderful city and I will especially miss my friends there, as well as living and working in a foreign language.
But yesterday I found something really exemplary of what I will miss.
I am in Klosterneuburg with my grandmother, outside of Vienna. A tradition here is to visit my grandfather’s grave in the 19th district. While we were at the cemetery my grandmother and I were talking. She mentioned Alma Mahler and also that her grave was in the same cematery. I asked her if Gustav Mahler was also buried there and she assented. A few hundred meters from my grandfather’s grave lay the great composer. I stood and paid my tribute, thankful for the happy European accident.
