Monday, August 8, 2006
I arrived in Berlin to blissful rain. Blissful because my body is wearing down and my internet todo list piling up. A little rain and a broadband connection is a great combination for a traveling writer! The hotel was a lucky find – a beautifully appointed room, a good price, a great connection, and around the corner from the premier shopping district in west Berlin – not that I can afford to shop at Hermes but being a stone’s throw away means you are in the midst of one of the nicer areas of town with convenient takeout coffee shops for burning the midnight oil. I spent a few hours writing until hunger drove me out to the little take out Asian restaurant across the street. I haven’t seen a particularly predominant Asian culture in this notable ethnically diverse city, but Asian restaurants undoubtedly predominate the restaurant scene – from walk up Sushi stands to five star restaurants, you can eat raw fish to your heart’s content.
I haven’t seen a TV in months and decided to flip on the suave flat screen for a little tour of German TV while I ate my noodles. What an interesting array of programs! From a surprisingly entertaining (given I couldn’t understand a word) German version of Candid Camera (a childhood favorite), to a smart-little-shits children’s jeopardy show, to dubbed over John Wayne and Sylvestor Stallone movies, an old dynasty re-run (did what’s-his-name really wear that much black eyeliner?), war documentaries, and a surprisingly large selection of unattractive older men singing for huge ballroom and TV spectacular programs. The show that had me mesmerized though was the new-millennium-German-Lawrence-Welk type production (Welk? Was he German come to think of it?) It was a HUGE production - tens of thousands in the audience, a light spectacular to rival the best rock shows, and what must have been a 200 piece orchestra. The show went on for hours with various guest singers and performers brought to stage by a host who honestly looked like an older German Lawrence Welk, assuming I even remember what Lawrence Welk looked like other than he was OLD. I was about eight when he was popular. He was probably my age now!
I had passed the show a couple times on my channel surfing expedition. Once there was a definite primadonna singer all done up in a Gone with The Wind ball gown. Now there was this Teddy Bear Telly Savalas type singing a real tap-your-feeter while these beautiful women did a dance urban-cowboy-style in white and red cowboy chaps. Now you have to picture this. The fancy, shmanciest of cowboy get ups – a long red-sleeved cowboy shirt with appliqué and tassels under a white vest and chaps replete with fringe and rhinestones doing a yee-haw with the whole gitty-up dance going – you know the one I’m talking about – the one you’ll do to make your friends laugh when you hear country music come on in the mall and no one is really looking. You got the picture? So here are these beautiful women whooping it up in full cowboy regalia next to this overweight short bald man just having a grand time singing a how-dee-doo and then the girls, in their line dance, turn around. They are wearing ass-less chaps! Every other square inch of their bodies is covered with fabric and rhinestone, tassels and appliqué except two side by side watermelons hanging out for the world to see – some of the firmest watermelons you have ever seen I might add. I had to take a picture. Now I KNOW some of you will go look at the pictures on the site!
I was still laughing when I finished my noodles and turned the TV off. Despite a long train ride, I worked until well past three in the morning. Maybe it has just been my bad luck – but every single train I have caught in Germany has been late. Most are old and dirty though the ICE from Bamberg to Berlin was new with a wonderful first class section. Some of them have business class sections as well with black leather chairs and sleek wooden tables, electrical connections, and small conference-like rooms - great way to do business. Regardless the quality, I can’t say enough positive things about train travel. Even in the countries where the trains are slow and dirty or the systems poorly run, trains are an incredibly more effective way to travel than cars. I can’t imagine arriving in each one of these cities and trying to learn street systems, finding (and paying) for parking spaces, and generally being tied to a car. Not a single host of mine has had a car. Not one. Can you imagine? No car payment. No car insurance payment. No monthly parking payment. No traffic jams. No car accidents. AND a more effective, efficient, timely system for getting around! AND you have half an hour to an hour everyday to read or work on a project instead of driving a car. Don’t get me wrong. My car is the only real material possession I kept. There are few things I enjoy more than putting the top down and driving (twice the speed limit). But it sure would be nice for it to be a fun pastime on the weekend rather than a headache every day of the week. We, as a country, were complete #+@#& morons for letting our railroad tracks rot over and never developing a train system when we had a fair amount of the substructure in place. Of course, I’m sure the failure had more to do with the self-interest of our government in oil and industry and our tendency to believe what we’re told than a conscious decision on our part at the crucial turning point moment not to effectively pursue mass transit. If Europe could put in effective systems in these thousand year old cities with infrastructures that date back before our lunch with the indians, there’s not a reason in the world we can’t.
Speaking of Indians and pilgrims– did you ever stop to wonder how the pilgrims learned to hunt and fish and work the land from their buddy Squanto; what with them being English speaking white men and Squanto being a native Indian and all. Did you know it was because he spoke perfect English (and Spanish). Know why? Because the white men who fished the coast of America long before the Mayflower thought of sailing kidnapped him and several other Indians to take back to show off and/or sell into slavery. He was kidnapped first and taken to England and again and taken to Spain. The first Indian to speak to the pilgrims, Samoset, also spoke English though he had never left “American” shores. He had learned from all the English fishermen running up and down our coast. Funny how we are taught the pilgrims were the “first”. Did you know also that neither Columbus nor Vespucci, the two men Italy and Spain fight over for claim to have discovered America, ever stepped foot on American soil. In fact both were unimpressive men – Columbus an undeservingly conceited ass and Vespucci a repeated failure who actually fictionalized his adventures so effectively that a historical textbook writer believed them and incorporated them into his history textbook and maps - thus giving “America” Vespucci’s name….
What was I talking about? Oh yes, train systems. We should have them. I love them. Switzerland’s are still the best. Germany’s are a distant second. So I took my first nice German train and fifth late German train into Berlin. I could smell Starbucks in the air when I arrived. Not literally, I can just tell when I’m near a Starbucks. I walked the length of the station, impressed with the new, modern, clean, and bustling train station, (I learned later it was only opened six weeks ago) before taking the escalator up. There they were, my precious little green letters. For all the complaints about Starbucks contributing to globalization and reducing the world to a cookie cutter version of itself, I will always love that man for giving America a place to commune that it sorely lacked and a little piece of ‘home’ on distant shores. The girl at Starbucks rolled her eyes when I called my drink out slowly with careful intonations, afraid she wouldn’t recognize the English word Hazelnut (not realizing in German it is Hazelnus). She responded in perfect English with every bit as much condescension for my presumption that she wouldn’t speak English as the man in Nuremburg who was offended that I hoped he could.
The Austrians were undoubtedly the most fluidly bilingual, with the Swiss running a close second. Most Germans speak “a little” English and are happy to do so, though some clearly take issue with the whole “should speak English” issue. Personally, I’m behind the English movement. Not just because it is my mother tongue, though that certainly will be an advantage as time moves on, but because I believe deeply in the power of communication. There are generally three ways to resolve an issue – any issue be it between spouses, friends, or countries. You can fight, you can ignore each other, or you can communicate. Of the three, communication is the one most likely to lead to resolution. Without a common language, we seriously impede our ability to communicate. It is difficult enough to understand the intrinsic differences between cultures, without language it is virtually impossible. And speaking strictly linguistically, English is best-suited of the primary world languages to be the common language.
In fact, English was originally a lingua franca, a language developed as a method of communication between people who didn’t speak the same language. That is why we have all those inexplicable spelling deviations. Words were taken hodgepodge from French, Norman, Anglo-Saxon, Latin, and any languages lying around, making English naturally syncretistic. While the French actually had a legislative body responsible for enforcing fines against people for using foreign words, English welcomed all variations and thus, in time, became a language rich with synonyms and an increased ability to describe with precision. While maintaining its synonym richness, it is still an extremely facile language. Did you know it takes native speakers of Arabic and Chinese four years longer to become fully literate in their own languages than it does native speakers of English? Making literacy all the more difficult for non-native speakers. English by contrast can be learned far more readily by speakers of all languages than the majority of languages in the world. Unfortunately, the reverse is true as well. It is often more difficult for English speakers to learn other languages.
Spanish has many of the same advantages as English and may become a world language simply by the Toro stubbornness of Spanish people about speaking their language; that combined with their growing population numbers. Yet I would argue that Spanish still requires a pronunciation precision that English doesn’t require. We are lazy pronouncers and for this we are facile comprehenders. If you get close to the word, even the first few letters, we get you, we understand. Not so for the other romantic languages, a strong accent kills your communication abilities, even if you know perfectly the rules of the language.
I think people take issue with English as a common world language more because they see it as one more way America is trying to dominate the world and put our fingers in everyone’s business. While it would certainly be to our advantage to be have the world language of communication, I think it is a disservice to the world to rule out English simply because the Americans and Brits are a bit holier-than-thou. Besides if you think about it, it takes only two generations, forty little years to create an entire world of mother-tongue English speakers. Any child who is born into a bilingual home takes on both languages as a mother tongue. Even if one of the languages is not spoken with perfect fluency, the child will develop perfect fluency as long as he is exposed regularly to that language.
All the European countries function like this already – with a “standard” language taught in schools and used to communicate generally and a dialect spoken with the family and at home. They move easily, almost without conscious intention, from speaking standard Italian or high German with someone like me to their dialect with friends. Imagine, if everyone in the world learned English now as a second language and spoke it alongside their language, the children of their children would all speak the same language. If a common world language is possible, a common world spirit is possible. We have seen it already in the fortification of Italy and others into a common political country bounded by a common language. What happens at a micro level, can happen at a macro level as well.
Speaking of national identity (can you tell I have decidedly taken the day off and have time to mentally meander?), I was surprised at Neuschwanstein that I couldn’t find a German Flag pin for my little pin collection on my backpack. There were flag combinations with every country – a German flag with a Japanese flag, with an American flag, even with a French flag (?!) but not a single solitary German flag pin by itself. Even the magnets tended to be the symbol for Deutschland instead of the flag. I didn’t think too much of it at the time though I’ve been able to buy a flag for every other country I’ve been to in almost every tourist junk store that I passed. When we arrived in Ausborg, it was the same; Nuremburg, the same. Plenty of Deutschmark pins – the black, yellow, and red striped patch with the eagle at the top, plenty of locality banners, plenty of ‘I love Germany’ things, but only a couple souvenirs with the actual flag, and absolutely none of my damn stickpins.
Fastforward to the breakfast table with Johannes in Bamberg. He was telling me what a powerful event the World Cup had been for their country; how it had swept up everyone into the celebration. It became the answer to every “what should we do tonight” question. After five weeks, everyone was a bit lost when it was all over. He explained how the new coach for their soccer team has brought in all these alternative modes of coaching, from psychotherapy, to natural healing approaches and, to the surprise of the Germans, has created not only a stronger team but one not so boring to watch, as he put it. Then he said it was great to see so many people actually waving German flags, something before that very few would do. Wait a minute. What did you just say about flags? He explained that the country is still a bit reserved about displaying its flag – that it doesn’t use the flag to express solidarity within a country for sports (or presumably anything else) the way countries like Italy do. Hmmm, could this be a possible explanation for the flagless pins? Oh, he replied, surely not. You’ll find them in Berlin. I stopped in eleven shops in Berlin. No single German flag pins. Funny how insiders don’t notice what outsiders do. I asked the clerks at every store – not one had ever noticed the missing flag. Some were curious as to why. Some could have cared less. I finally settled and bought a German/Berlin pin
The souvenir shops were about all I saw the first day here. I left the hotel at 3pm eager for a walk and a short break from the computer. After two hours, I cried uncle and went running back to my broadband. Berlin is HUGE. This is NOT a walking city. I planned this nice walk through the Tiergarten and around to the east side figuring it would take about three hours – apparently I was looking at the map with Switzerland scale eyes when Berlin was designed on US scale! It is actually geographically nine times the size of Paris. I walked almost two hours and didn’t even make it from the hotel to the other side of the Tiergarten. The Tiergarten alone spans over two miles, a gigantic green mass practically in the center of the city map though it is not actually all green space like they make it seem. I was more impressed with its size than beauty though I did not very much. In fact, I was more concentrated on the hyenas – a homeless man who had lifted a wallet and was perusing its contents while he scoped every trashcan and phone changer he passed, and the actual hyenas running around – no not in the park itself, in the zoo exhibit backs up to one of the park paths.
It was clear Sunday I couldn’t even begin to touch this city walking. Because of the wall there are in a sense two distinct city areas worth viewing – the west side being known for its shopping and nicer areas and the east for its position of political prominence. As the New Berlin has grown up, and there is a fierce identity around here with the NEW Berlin, the areas between East and West have been filled in as new areas like Kreuzberg to the south and legendary for its nightlife, and Prenzlauer, known for its bars, to the north. Sunday night I spent the same as Saturday (except I had rice instead of noodles :-); another 3am night on the computer and a little rest for my weary bones.
Monday was a light day as well, though quite enjoyable. Asia, the cute little blonde who I loved so dearly in Ascoli, was in Berlin for the day with her friend Igor. We met at the world clock and took a nice easy walking tour past the Cathedral, Brandenburg Gate, and Kurfurstendamm, stopping for bratwurst along the way (did you know they serve a 15 inch bratwurst on a 5” roll in Germany and Poland?) Igor knew an incredible amount about the history and monuments of Berlin. I felt badly for him as Asia and I were more into our girl talk than the architecture. I hate when I love something and want someone to appreciate it with me and they won’t even look up! But Asia and I had catching up to do and Berlin would be here tomorrow (course Asia will be too since I’m going to her home in Poland!). In reality I was so exhausted I could barely focus on the conversation much less the sights around me. By 6pm I had to excuse myself and head back to the hotel. I understood later why I had been so tired as I sweated out a fever from 7pm until I got up the next morning at 9am. I’ll do a bus tour Tuesday until my train leaves for Poland and that will be it for my Berlin experience. I hate to have essentially missed such an interesting city but it will have to go on the “another day” tour list. At least I took advantage of the broadband!
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