“Messages tonight, borne on the lights of Berlin . . . neon, incandescent, stellar . . . messages weave into a net of information that no one can escape. . . .”
Thomas Pynchon
Monday
We try to avoid cities. The car allows us to explore places that are difficult to find. The car is a nuisance with parking in cities. It would be more convenient to jump on a train to explore Europes capitals.
Paris is famous for exiled writers and artists, but it is Berlin where the darker forsaken seek refuge. Writers such as Kafka, Nabokov and Sontag. Musicians Bowie, Iggy Pop and Nick Cave.
Punk and grunge found a foothold here. I always felt it was a place that marched to its own beat when it was not marching to war. Misfits and the unpretty.
Which is why I have always wanted to go there.
“Berlin is such a better city than Vienna, this stalling huge village… Even I am feeling the bracing effect of Berlin, or more so, I know I would get to feel it, if I relocated to Berlin.”
Franz Kafka
Breakfast and I am eager to leave. The car is causing some heartache. We can’t check in until 3.00 pm so we will need alternative parking.
It is only a few hours to Berlin.
We crossed the border and soon received word from our accommodation that we could park the car before check-in.
“Our world is in crisis because of the absence of consciousness.”
Terrence McKenna
Our place is called Wilde Apartments. Named after the author, Oscar.
I start telling Shell about The Picture of Dorian Gray.
She lets me drone on for a while before telling me I am ruining any future chance she has of reading the book.
“Humanity takes itself too seriously. It is the world’s original sin. If the cave-man had known how to laugh, History would have been different.”
Oscar Wilde
Wilde Apartments is a few hundred meters from Check Point Charlie, one of the most volatile crossing points of East and West Germany during the Cold War. At one point, tensions escalated to the point where American and Soviet Union tanks faced off just meters apart.
“Jetzt sind wir in einer Situation, in der wieder zusammenwächst, was zusammengehört.“
“Now we are in a situation where what belongs together, will grow back together.”
Berlin radio interview, November 10, 1989 [the day after the de facto abolition of intra-German border controls by the East German government]
Willy Brandt
We head to Moonchild for coffee and a cool drink.
We stroll around the city. We planned to visit the Alte Nationalgalerie, but the gallery and everything else is shut on Monday.
The architecture of Berlin seems other worldly. The old and modern collide and somehow manages to be appropriate. Glass and iron at impossible angles merge with sandstone and formality.
“The greatest products of architecture are less the works of individuals than of society; rather the offspring of a nation’s effort, than the inspired flash of a man of genius…”
Victor Hugo
We make our way to Großer Tiergarten to find some shade and kill time.
It is time to head back to the apartment. We detour past Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden Europas, Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe.
The estimated number of European Jews killed in World War II is six million.
Six million.
“We had to learn ourselves and, furthermore, we had to teach the despairing men, that it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us.”
Viktor Frankl
We lay around our apartment and drink wine for a few hours.
It turns out the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin is open. An evening trip to the library sounds like an excellent plan.
We get home late.
Part II of Monday tomorrow.