Berlin Revisited

Well, I thought that I would spend the weekend working up a few trenchant posts on Berlin then and now, but most of what I did over the weekend was sleep, slurp down ginger ale and the Euro version of Gatorade (quite tasty), and munch on pretzels. Good thing I hadn't been looking all that forward to German cuisine...

Thursday and Friday we did get quite a bit of stomping around done, and here are the first impressions.

First off on the "compare and contrast" is the glorious weather (upper 60's and low 70's, not a cloud in the sky). When we were last in Berlin, over New Year's 1989-1990, just as The Wall was falling, the weather was dreary, gray and damp, and the city was covered with a brownish, odiferous miasma - the result of the sulphury Communist block coal that was used for heat.

The weather underscores the other differences, of course. Obviously, we're not far off the beaten tourist trap, but Berlin sure looks like capitalism (i.e., shop 'til you drop) writ large.  The streets of the old Eastie are full of pricey (Escada, Rolex) and not to pricey (Footlocker) shops; American fast food (I was expecting the McDonald's, of course, but there are Subways, Starbucks, and Dunkin Donuts all over the place, too); and charming and not-so-charming outdoor cafes. The place is teeming with tourists and seemingly happy natives out for a Sunday stroll and boating excursion. (I was able to get off of my death-bed long enough for a little Sunday stroll of my own.)

Last time we were here, both sides of Checkpoint Charlie were teeming with tourists, too. Westies able to get over to the other side for a casual visit, and Easties - for the first time in over two decades without risking getting mowed down by a sub-machine gun- able to get over to the West and check out what they'd been missing. You could spot the Easties right off - with their drab, ill-fitting clothing and the stunned look on their faces as they road the escalators at the KaDaWe, Berlin's Harrod's equivalent. Now - East, West - everyone looks pretty much the same. I.e., other than an occasional weird sandal thing going with the men, and the Turkish women wearing head scarves, everyone looks like an American.

Which, of course, gets me to the not so profound point that one of the primo effects of globalization is that every place (i.e., every large city) pretty much starts to look alike.

The good news is, you can get a Dunkin Donut. That's the bad news, too.

What's gloriously different, of course, is turning that corner and spotting a beautiful old cathedral, museum, or bridge... Or, in the case of Berlin, seeing the starkly dramatic and moving Holocaust Memorial not far, fittingly, from Potsdamer Platz where Hitler had his bunker.

What's also different in Berlin? For a big city, there's not all that much crazy traffic, People take public transportation. They ride bicycles. They walk. Even at "rush hour" on Friday, the streets weren't clogged with weekend escapees. Jawohl!

Cars are smaller, too. Not a ton of honkin' SUVs. Not a lot of Beetles, either. I've spotted more PT Cruisers than Beetles. I've only seen one Trabant, the tiny little East German belcher that was pretty much the only car on the road here 17 years ago. The one I saw was a collector's item, I'm guessing, with a new coat of paint -  a cheerful green and white.

Off to Dresden for the night.

I'm hoping that today will bring full recovery - or at least something that's the gastro-intestinal equivalent of the full recovery that Berlin seems to have made. No, I haven't seen the downside, the poor neighborhoods, the un- and underemployed, the shabby underside of every big city.

But what the hell, I'm a tourist, not an anthropologist.