Part Zwei: Berlin

Night Vier - Snacking on dark chocolate we stop in Hanover. Mck dares me to step off the train to say we've been. Like little girls we do. Head to the café cart where the graffiti glows up the glass, for double espressos, pastures pass. Arrive in Berlin at 7:30 pm. Our place is in east Berlin, near Friedrichsfelde. Once settled in our hyper-swedish styled, all white, expansive apartment we got groceries for dinner at home; made a platter of falafal, vegetable ballz, gouda, cherry tomatoes, cucumber, mediterranean olive baguette, grapes, tahini and chocolate wafer cookies. For the morning: coffee, milk, yogurt & muesli. We spend the night making plans, set our alarms early for the Berlin Marathon.

Day Fünf - Woke to Mck making coffee, which we shared over yogurt & orange slices before a train ride to the start of the Berlin Marathon. At the 5k point we got a good spot between a baby on drums and the guttural utterances of german volunteers. Witness to the wheelchair racers, the leading men and the first few women: all african, thin gams. The packs of racers to follow so thick they were on the sidewalks veering through pedestrians. This is how we found ourselves running against and alongside them, a form of accidental banditing. Ran through Tiergarten, where hedges and wrought iron fences enclosed little squares of garden in maze-form with sculptures of greats, of animals & beasts, through immense trees where people would stop beneath, look up. To the Pariser Platz and Brandenburg Gate where the marathon finishes, to see the top finishers, the crowd roaring, beating drums, flapping folded hardstock paper.

This guy.

For breakfast: Einstein's at unter den linden. Exuberant, outside on the path of the finisher's walk. We ordered cappuccinos with their good foam heads, a basket of french & brown seeded breads with little jars of jam & pats of butter made safe with sticker. The bees lazily dipped their feet into our sweet & salties. Soft boiled eggs with chives served in a tall glass goblet.

After breakfast we edged along the course, walked to the Memorial of Murdered Jews, an expansive sculpture garden set next to tourist shops, café's with coffee cocktails & hot dog vendors. It, itself, with large, cold blocking feels stifling, confusing; the paradox of its location could almost be directly associated to the sensationalism in --------. 

Beneath the Memorial, a museum; documentation regarding the history of the persecution & genocide of the Jews, timeline of events, family's & their history's, their deaths, murders or survivals. Short films played in dark rooms. In one, the floor was lit up with diary entries, letters, postcards, clips of script coming through the floor.

We walked out of the dark into the blue; tourists standing on the concrete slabs, staff in uniform calling them down. To Checkpoint Charlie, walls of information leading to, filled with information regarding C.C. and the Berlin Wall (timeline, history, photographs). A portion of the Wall stood enclosed, speckled in pink, blue, black graffiti, the rods as infrastructure exposed. In between all these pieces of history were party pockets of sand bar, food trucks, beach lounge chairs. Checkpoint Charlie juxtaposed to a McDonald's, officers in uniform & street corner gamblers.

Back through city centre, we grabbed a few small bottles of rosé and took them to Tiergarten, where we held our own tasting on a sunny patch by a thick tree trunk with a big yellow spray painted dick. Couples lay about, heads to stomach, a man cycled past with a wicker basket full of yorkies, their hair blowing in the wind. Sipping from the small bottled lips, ants crawling on shoulders. We do yoga, air splits.

We leave for Charlottenburg, for the old church once bombed (Kaiser Wilhelm - c. 1890's, bombed in '43) - large in the sky, perched between newer churches. We circle it, look deep into the holes, what's missing, entranced. Circling on to croissants, the s-bahn, our apartment. Adding layers for warmth, we're back on the train to Burgeramt, a celebrated burger joint, greenly lit on the outside, a takeout window with a thick line. The restaurant itself with tiled blue & green walls, movie posters on the ceiling & a documentary on graffiti artists playing on the back wall. Ravenous. Ordered the Special Burger, served on chipped mismatched china: beef seasoned with thyme, fresh cucumbers, spreewald gherkins, tomato, lettuce, roasted onions and homemade cocktail sauce. Paired with a berliner pilsner (tangy, traditional, made in Berlin).

Day Sechs - Vanilla yogurt, muesli, green grapes, coffee creamed, sitting on the yellow couch. Running clothes. Tram to Gunewald Forest, 30-40 minutes away at the westernmost tip of Berlin. Welcomed by an endless curtain of trees, green in height, their fallen leaves golden around their feet. Grunewald hosts 7,400 acres of conifers & betulaceae, two islets, a small peninsula, lakes, sand dunes; it swallows you. We run a line straight through to find the water, at our feet, sanded, a sailboat slowly goes, docks, bathers, fishermen. Traverse the length of the northwesternmost path towards the Olympic Stadium (1936), happening upon the equestrian village with stalled horses, these incredible moss-saturated stadium seats still numbered, covered in rot, before the entrance to the stadium. 4.5 euro gained entry, access to a room documenting its history, an elevator ride to the observation deck to see the stadium from above.

Height-fear in the slats between each stair, the minimal gate, protecting. A man mows the long lawn in perfect straight lines. Grass growing yellow between the stadium's concrete seats. Deep, back, you could see the rings strung between two columns.

Back on the tram to our place we were reprimanded by the gangster bahnmen in black adidas for not validating our tickets & somehow talked our way out of fines despite a clear scolding on american entitlement. 30-40 minutes back, where we got ready over pretzel buns & hummus before heading to Hackescher Markt in central Mitte.

In and around Hackescher we thrifted, looked in boutiques, walked along the water - Spandauer Vorstadt/Monbijoupark - where people enjoyed bottled beer over books beneath a hovering Berliner Dom. Sculptures of naked women in casual poses, their body language directed towards the church, watchful, in charge of.

Made our way back to HM station, drawn in by rich smells, a promenade of busy. We settled in at Grand Rocka for a cute, comical, naive dinner prior to meeting Bard Antoine. Sitting outside, side by side with others, ordering a carafe a piece, the waiter incredulous. He delivers. We laugh, he laughs, the table of elder couples laugh, saying something about our gusto or our ability to put it down. Ordered: doppelte barliner currywurst of double curry sausage "Berlin style," with curry, fries & that delightful carafe of cab sauv faucon de montagne. Wiped the plate clean. We take a photograph of our empty carafes & the waiter rushes over with a red tablecloth, places it as backdrop for a more beautiful photograph.

We meet Bard Antoine, Red's friend from Berlin, for the night; he educates us on etiquette, also, "Wait, like the cuckoo birds live in the black forest?" Ushers us to Alexanderplatz, on the u-bahn towards neukolln where he meets a friend, a syrian with a red folding bike & one earring who works at candy crush, and who enthusiastically carries us along with him to a jam sesh. A series of magical moments. We enter this dark bar, downstairs for open mic night. Meet a dude named Roland who is acclaimed and self-proclaiming. Order local biers from a south african accent. Sitting at the feet of the musicians, an act, a gesture of purity, intrigue, support, yet one we hardly act upon. The first band's singer was a clooney-matthews mash, laugh lines etched, singing in Italian, German, French, on guitar. To his right, a violinist with small features & a thin stature, leading each song with his "a-1-2-3-and's," smiling. To the lead's left, a standing bass, most serious, birdlike, quiet, soft, and to the left of him, bass guitar. The violinist played so rapturously his strings were snapping. They sang "Bang Bang" in French. A couple waltzed in the back corner.

After their set, more beer. Roland the Self-Proclaimed sang a few ironic seductive songs in a sleeveless shirt before a circle of jammers set up: violins, guitars, flute, tambourine, eccentric characters making musik, transporting us to another era. The flautist, shoeless, in a patterned blouse and pink pants would set aside his flute, pick up a canvas and paint the scene, back and forth between fluting. Mesmerizing. The flautist is also renowned. We hurried to make the last tram but missed it, walking with Bard Antoine and Roland to a markt for peanut chips. Found a bus around 2:00 am, getting caught in faux-convo to a creeper in futbol fan attire who tried to take not-so-discreet pictures of us, then stumbled off the bus, yelled at it (the bus) & pissed on a building. "Not me, not me, too old." Home near 3:00 am.

Day Sieben - Up at noon, LB & I ran a 5-miler close to home. Trammed to Friedrichshain/East Berlin Wall.

Walked across the Oberbaumbrucke & through quiet, tree-lined neighborhoods, through Gorlitzer Park with its dead grass & open space, couplings, fragments of deconstruction, along Landwehrkanal where kayakers took tour, through Neukolln neighborhood, the buildings covered in wild ivy -  a long walk towards the Turkish Markt in Kreuzberg. We made it, welcomed by the smell of spice and olives.

The Turkish Markt held fresh coconut water, a herring-grilling sandwich stand, black licorice candies in glass jars, espresso stands, rings, gems, silver, handmade, fresh press-yourself orange juice machines, fruits & vegetables the best of which offered sliced samples, grape leaves in buckets, olives of all kinds, turkish food stalls (shared a pressed flatbread with spinach & cheese and hot feta turkish wraps), cloth & button stands and on. Musicians played shirtless, drumming for a large group who sat crosslegged in the sun along the Landwehrkanal.

In the long walk back to the bahn we took a different route, a different neighborhood, an abandoned building, all windows broken, covered in graffiti proclaiming, "Refugees Welcome," and "Fuck Off Media Spree."

Trammed to Alexanderplatz to see it in daylight. To Friedrichshain, stopping at a wine bar we had hoped to come back to called, Und Milja Schafa. Front patio, tinto bodegas lopez mercier tierra de castilla cuvee von tempranillo, merlot, syrah, dunk le beerenfrucht, wurzig, so good we ordered a few. Beetroot dip served on a slab of rock with a small jar of long cut vegetables & bread.

To Perro Loco with a bear head mounted, leather sofas, skinned rugs. LB had a carafe of pinot grigio, Mck a carafe of merlot, and I lemerchier absinth (frankreich), served with a grate of sugar aflame. We closed down the bar and traipsed back to what we knew...Burgeramt.

For post drank dinner: haloumi burgers, a basket of sweet potato fries, a light beer and an on-the-house beer cocktail with a raspberry foam head and 3 neon straws. Buzz'n.

Day Acht - Woke near 6:00 am to fireworks. An 8-miler to an equestrian village with men in buggies riding low behind the horses (driving lessons?). An older man on a bike growls 3 times at us. Packed & left our place for the Berlin haupbahnhof station. Grabbed sandwiches & coffees, hunched and sharing leftovers on platform 2 as some old man says something which we assume is probably rude. We board the train for München, window seats, a 7-hour trip.

To come...Part Drei: München