In Charlottenburg

The "urban" view from my bedroom

One week living in town - I will throw together a mix of observations. I have never before lived for an extended period in a truly urban environment, where you can walk to all the various shops and facilities in the neighborhood. Being able to walk out my door first thing in the morning and have 3 or 4 places to buy a fresh croissant to bring back for my coffee within 3 minutes walk is outstanding! I had better be careful of how many croissants I may eat while I’m here. A good market is one minute away, the organic bakery, vegetables and cheese are 5 minutes. It’s 10 minutes to the Italian store, a small warehouse-style market where literally EVRYTHING is imported from Italy, all the canned and packaged goods, but also vegetables, cheese, salumi, etc. If I want to make eggplant parmesan with an actual Italian eggplant I can do that.

Of course, in order to have that Italian eggplant, or anything else, I have to be able to ask for it, in German. The 50 or so lessons of “German in your car” that I did while driving around in Los Angeles in June, July and August have certainly helped, but it’s still quite a linguistic adventure on a daily basis. I can make statements and requests, if I plan a little in advance, and I guess being a musician my pronunciation is good enough, usually to provoke a response that immediately goes beyond my ability to comprehend on the fly. I think of it as “shopping German.” I shamelessly eavesdrop on everyone in the bus or subway and sometimes can catch a little.

Klausenerplatz - more photos later

My “kiez,” my neighborhood, is apparently one of the nicer districts. When I mention my street, Klausenerplatz, or that I’m in Charlottenburg, I tend to get a bit of the raised eyebrow reaction that I associate from Los Angeles with being told that someone lives in Bel Air or Beverly Hills. Berlin covers a very large area, more an assemblage of towns strung together by an (excellent) transit system than a city, people here say. There are lakes and forests. I haven’t explored much of the old Eastern zone, but a trip to Karl-Marx Allee to look at the monumental socialist architecture has been recommended. In the former Western zone what I see mostly, where original buildings are gone and areas have been rebuilt, is typical 1960s architecture, but better than most you see in the US. It has held up over time better, at any rate.

Klausenerplatz park

And there is certainly some strangeness. While taking the U-Bahn (the subway) to the museum the other day, my eye was caught by the name of one of the stops along the line: Onkel Toms Hütte. Yes, there appears to be a district in southwest Berlin called Uncle Toms Cabin. And that’s not all. A google search revealed that there is a 5-star hotel in the university town of Göttingen called Onkel Toms Hütte. I read an article in the New Yorker recently that discussed the influence the book had had in its time and after in America, and that it was even more of a phenomenon in Britain and Europe. It must have made quite an impact in 19th-century Germany!