I Am a Hot Dog Weiner/Graffiti Pt 2

Yes, as you may have gathered from the title of this post, I made it to Berlin. Unlike other cities from this trip, Berlin is a little more difficult to navigate. Although it is about the size of Vienna (3 million), the former division between East and West means that there are several, equally large commercial centers, rather than one downtown area. I guess it's somewhat like New York, minus Times Square. The U-Bahn/S-Bahn certainly gives NYC Metro a run for it's money - this is the only other city I can recall where subway stops are within a few blocks on one another and extend across miles in every direction.

But, before I forget, back to the graffiti issue. Berlin is also covered in graffiti, but it is far more political than artistic. After all, the Berlin wall was covered with it; a literal desecration of wall's symbolic, and real oppresssion. In general, the graffiti here has more of a political content; "Kurdssteineen auf Palasteinnianean?," "nacht war eine Iran," "Bush ist die parasite," etc. whereas the other cities' graffiti ran more along the lines of: "Greta is a slut" and "For a good time call Slavko at 3401-5-989-67-092-34-8750." I prefer the graffiti with political content for obvious reasons. Plus, if the graffiti is right, everyone probably already knows about Greta's proclivities and/or has Slavko's digits.

Anyway, I ended up having an apartment to myself in Berlin for the duration of my stay and it was delightful to have both privacy and a kitchen. The place with in Wilmersdorf, the old British Quarter of West Berlin. The owners were hippies, so there were lots of East Asian tschachkies and the place smelled like patchouli and hemp. I made dinner and crashed, since the bags under my eyes were only getting larger and darker since my trip began, eight days ago. Sunday morning, I woke up to a meowing outside my door. Sitting in a small basket I hadn't noticed earlier, was a tiny black kitten, likely confused as to why I had invaded its space. We had a staring contest for a moment or two before she darted off. Kinda made me miss my own furball.

Luckily, the political center of Berlin is quite unified, unlike the shopping districts, and I headed to Freidrichshain Platz to begin my walking tour. I started with a market off of the Spree river (although it was still early, so not all of the sellers had their wares out on display) and followed the river to the Reichstag, Potsdamer Platz (formerly the largest square in Europe, circa 1970s) and Checkpoint-Charlie (the crossing point from the East German to American Quarter of Berlin). At this point, in celebration of the victory of captialism over communism/facism and what have you, I stopped at Starbucks for the first real coffee and muffin I have had in months.

I can't stress enough how enjoyable it has been to be in the West for this last week; no pushing on the metro, no haggling over the price of everything from a winter coat to imported grapes, no time wasted pushing on pull doors and pulling on push doors (since standardization is either bourgeois or too much effort) and, best of all, non-smoking areas! Yes, here in the West, the world is not a giant ashtray. And yet, I miss the dank, wood-paneled basement bars and honey-pepper vodka and carrying a plastic bag "just in case" and doors opening on subway cars before the train has stopped and luke warm meals at Puzata Khata and holding the shower nozzle when you bathe because you can't anchor the shower head, since you can't drill into plaster walls.

I am going to have borscht and varenyky when I get home. Yum.