For tourists

Visiting Prague over the weekend, I noticed how differently English was used there than it is in Berlin. I noticed that I felt very different, walking through Prague and seeing English, than I feel in Berlin. In Prague, the English on signs and menus was very clearly targeted to tourists. This probably has to do with the fact that Prague is a more touristy city than Berlin is, and that far more people learn German as a second language than learn Czech. All of these photos are from Berlin, and they show English in the places you might not find it in Prague. In Prague English was visible on menus, on tourist t-shirts, on "open" signs and the innumerable money exchanges. "FitnessFirst for ladies", though, is the kind of thing that is clearly targeted to locals--most people don't go to the gym while they're on vacation--so why is it in English? If the English in Berlin isn't for tourists, who is it for? As always, Berlin is more complicated. All I know is that I felt very different navigating Prague and its English than I do interacting with the English in Berlin.

Imports and Exports

All four of these signs were from a short walk through Prenzlauer Berg, where English seems to be particularly popular. I don't know how most Germans feel about the prevalence of English in their daily lives, but I do wonder if it makes a difference that in the places it is primarily visible, it is commercial. I mentioned my project to my German language partner, and the example she immediately thought of was "sale". When German shops want to get rid of last season's stock, they have a sale--and they advertise it as such. I have to wonder what it says about English-speaking cultures and the English language that it has been absorbed into other languages for commercial uses. English steals vocabulary from other languages all the time, but the main example I can think of is Latin, and Latin appears in English mostly in religion, law, and academia. We import other languages mainly for specialized uses, but we export it in the true sense of the word--in business.

Sale on steaks and nails

Yet more English signage, all of these on Karl-Liebknecht-Strasse near Alexanderplatz. I went into a souvenir shop underneath the Fernsehturm, and eavesdropped on the interaction between the woman in the shop and a couple of tourists. The tourists weren't speaking German (Russian, maybe?), but they also clearly were not speaking English--yet the woman chose to address them in English. I don't think I ever realized until I got to Europe how much English has become a lingua franca. This makes me look back to interactions I've had, where I speak to someone in a shop in German, and they answer in English because they know my German isn't very good. I always assumed something about my accent told them I'm an English-speaker, but now I wonder if it's just that that's the language you switch to if you know someone doesn't speak German but don't know what language they do speak. Another instance of English as lingua franca was at the Humboldt's language party, where English was the only language we all spoke, even though no one but me was a native speaker.

I'm now wondering how much the prevalence of English signs is influenced by English's status as a lingua franca.

U9

Yesterday I rode the U9 from one end to the other and back again.

First I took the U8 to Osloer Strasse, which is sometimes its end point when it doesn't go all the way to Wittenau. I was on one of the older trains, where the cars are separate and you sit facing people in groups of four rather than in rows along the walls. On the way there a group of people got on the train, blasting music and singing along to it. One of them wished the train a "Happy Halloween!" although he was obviously German--apparently that phrase is too concrete to be translated into German. After they got off everybody else on the train sort of laughed together. That's probably the only time I've seen a train car full of strangers really interact.

 I'd never been to Osloer Strasse, so I left the train station and wandered around. The neighbourhood seemed slightly similar to our neighbourhood, with quite a few Turkish shops and apartments above them, but it had a somewhat different feeling to it--wider streets, and maybe less of a concrete identity. I circled the block and then got back on the U-Bahn, this time the U9 to Rathaus Steglitz. In the U-Bahn station at Rathaus Steglitz I saw signs pointing to Das Schloss. Naturally, I assumed that if I followed the signs they would lead me to a castle.

They led me to a shopping mall.

The area around Rathaus Steglitz was an odd mix of new stores, old buildings, and historical sites. Wikipedia tells me this is Berlin's second largest shopping area, which I didn't know beforehand. That big brick building (the Rathaus itself, I believe) in the last photo had cafes and a U-Bahn entrance at the bottom. The square, bordered by shops, had a Holocaust memorial. Across the street from the mall was another old building, the Schwarze Villa.

Maybe I've spent too much time on the east side of the city and haven't explored the west enough, but areas like Steglitz or the Ku'damm feel much less Berlin to me. Malls in general always feel oddly American, even if many of the stores in them wouldn't be found in the US. Architectural cohesiveness aside, places in Kreuzberg or Mitte I've spent time in feel much more cohesive in some indefinable way. The combination of crowded shopping area with beautiful old buildings here feels strange in a way that isn't present in other areas.

I didn't spend very long in Steglitz. Malls make me uncomfortable.

Who can read this?

 More English in Berlin, Weimar, and Oranienburg. This week I was thinking about who is able to read these English signs. It occurred to me that former East Germans wouldn't have learned English in school the way West Germans would have--they'd be more likely to learn Russian. Is this another source of Ossi-Wessi division? Language can be a very political thing, both in how it is used and in which language is spoken or allowed to be spoken or taught. The English in these three photos seems pretty likely to be directed at and/or created by younger people (and I know "sexy" is pretty much assimilated into German), but older East Germans might have a different relationship to English in their surroundings than other Germans do.

That last photo--no one would ever name a tattoo parlor in the US that, would they?

A funny thing happened on the way to the Bahnhof

I was just telling a friend about my day, and I said, "Today I went to a concentration camp and then I got lost and found a castle."

He said, "That sounds like an indie film."

Life is so much more entertaining if you pretend you're in an indie film. You wander the streets of a slightly creepy German town, fail to turn left towards the train station, and pass a building with the window moulding painted on. Then you go over a bridge and find an unexpected castle (Schloss Oranienburg).

In a proper indie film, when we got "kontrolle'd" on the train (checked for valid train tickets) I'd have had a ticket for the wrong zone and would have had to have a slightly surreal interaction in German with the Kontrolle lady (actually that happened to the English man sitting behind us and the lady spoke English perfectly well).

Berlin's the perfect city for an indie film. Actually, People on Sunday is the Berlin indie film for 1930.

Ausgang City, Back-Factory Closed

Since arriving in Berlin, I've noticed the language that is used in public places--signs, graffiti, and so on. Often, that language is not German. My second or third day here I went to a fast-food Asian restaurant where they were serving chicken. Not Hähnchen, but Chicken. English is often inserted into signs in strange ways, and I always notice it. I've begun to wonder about the reasons for it--is it something similar to the way Americans sell shirts with Chinese characters on them? Is it cool to put English in your sign or your menu? Or does it mostly happen in places targeted to English-speaking tourists? Or has German truly assimilated these English words?

In some cases it's obviously an instance of the first reason. The brand name on the garbage cans in the WCs at Buchenwald was "Triple Willy", which obviously would never be chosen by a native English speaker. Other times it's less obvious why things are in English, as with the "closed" sign in the last photo.

There are far more examples of this than I've managed to take photos of, but I plan to begin to document the random acts of English signage I see, and try to determine their reasons.

Flohmarkt am Mauerpark, 16 October

Gropiusstadt

Gropiusstadt is an area in Neukölln, designed by Walter Gropius. Gropiusstadt's planning began in the 1950s, but the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961 necessitated serious amendments to the plan. Because the neighbourhood stood on the border with East Germany, the buildings could not be as spread out as was originally planned. Gropius believed the buildings should be no more than five stories high, but because of the lack of space they had to be much higher--Berlin's highest residential building is in Gropiusstadt, with 30 floors. The final design also had much less green space than Gropius had intended, and the Berlin Senate made changes to the plan against Gropius's wishes.

After visiting Gropiusstadt, I was left with mixed feelings regarding the aura and layout of the space. With only a prior knowledge of Gropius from his article, “Who Is Right? Traditional Architecture or Building in New Forms” my group and I were left to discover Gropius’ manifestation of the ideas he presented in 1926. While walking through what was Gropiusstadt, I was quickly able to recognize what Gropius perhaps had in mind for his utopia. Although the Bauhaus architect actually wished to have his design spread out over a larger amount of land, the general positionality he was aiming for, I believe, was achieved. Much of the land being used exploited space in the way he wished to, with large connections of housing. However, many of these buildings were taller than the architect originally had intended; this perhaps plays into the eerie feeling a visitor might experience when walking among the maze of functionalist housing on Johannesthaler Chaussee. Gropius also argued that mass prefabrication would not diminish individuality amongst housing units, as only structural elements would be copied and not whole buildings. However, I was aroused by a diverging impression of Gropiusstadt. I felt many of the buildings to be similar to the point of conformism. Although decoratives and variety are aesthetic, I feel that their presence is essential to human life. Being expressive is – in my opinion – a healthy way to continue existing in an often oppressive world, wherein artistic creativity is a cathartic outlet. Therefore, I do not believe that, in the words of Gropius, “variety exhibits senseless waste”. -Michelle

While walking through Gropiusstadt I couldn’t help but feel very isolated. The area was a ghost town, with inner streets that wound through the interior of the apartment complexes. It seemed desolate and shops were rarely seen. Instead of creating uniqueness from within unity, monotonous structures bared down on the viewer. Gropius’ vision to exploit the surrounding area with standardized buildings can certainly be felt in Gropiusstadt. All the buildings seemed to be built from the same building materials, and although most of the buildings were not exactly the same, they seemed to have a sense of uniformity about them. His dream to make a living area “orderly and calming through unity” fell short for me. Instead, it seemed oppressing and lacked a sense of community. In fact, the buildings seemed to create a wide gap that isolated people from reality. I believe spaces that seem to be more compact and individualistic create a stronger sense of community. The citizen is constantly surrounded by people and can create distinctive areas through the distinctive change of scenery. -Max

Scrambled egg history

This week I've been noticing parts of the Berlin landscape that have been recycled or used in unexpected ways. That's the door to the Bauakademie, but it doesn't open onto the Bauakademie, because the Bauakademie no longer exists except as a canvas mock-up in its former location. It is now part of a different building. If you didn't know its history, it would seem simply a pretty door in a random building. Though inserting it in another building has preserved it, it has also obscured the door's history--and simultaneously made that history richer.

I happened upon the Give Box on a random tiny side street near Weinmeisterstrasse. The idea is that if you have something you don't need that you think someone else could use, you leave it in the Give Box, which is about the size of a wardrobe and has hangers for clothing and shelves full of stuff. It's tucked into an alcove on  the side of the street; you can't see it until you're standing next to it. It seems like an odd thing to run across, an odd use of public space in an oddly formal way--this is clearly a well-established thing, not just a "free stuff" box by the side of the road. Who knows how it started.

Nobody seems to know that statue's story. It stands in Viktoriapark, and it's a mystery who it represents and why it's painted as it is. The paint obscures the statue's identity, but if it were not painted it would be just another statue--and, frankly, I have seen more than enough statues.

The Bauakademie door and the statue are a good example of how history is visible here, but it's not always visible in legible, logically organized ways. The door isn't consistent with the building it's attached to, and the purple and silver paint isn't consistent with what looks like a statue of a nice 19th century gentleman. In Berlin, history is sometimes a bit of a jigsaw puzzle.

Green space, urban space, I have said the word "space" too many times

I keep noticing, as with the Luisenstädtischer Kanal Park, green spaces that used to be something different--something far less green. Like Luisenstädtischer Kanal Park, the green space on the north bank of the Spree where the East Side Gallery is used to be the death strip. Görlitzer Park used to be a train station. It is in these places that I see the ideal of urban-rural space come alive. Some city planners may have been somewhat grateful to the bombing of World War II for clearing the room necessary to recreate a verdant, natural city, but there is a certain amount of cognitive dissonance in that--violent destruction creating space for beautiful nature. The East Side Gallery and the Luisenstädtischer Kanal Park, on the other hand, involved the removal of a violent space to create a green one. What was once a death strip and a no-man's-land is now a public park--an every-man's-land.

Görlitzer Park began in 1865 as Görlitzer Bahnhof, running trains to Cottbuss and Görlitz and to Vienna and various Polish cities. It was bombed in World War II and closed in 1951 because it was a West German train station that sent trains East. Most of the train station buildings were demolished, and in 1989 the space was used by an anarchist art commune. It became Görlitzer Park in the 1990s. Though the park is a green space that brings some nature into the city, it is still a very urban sort of green space. A couple of old station buildings are still there, housing a cafe, and there is something very urban about people's use of the park, grilling food, drinking beer, and hanging out.

To me, spaces like this that have taken concrete, urban, destructive spaces and made them green, stand in contrast with "nature band-aids", where thoroughly landscaped bits of greenery are installed in the design and planning process of new buildings, or artificially inserted on the street. Something about the history and evolution of spaces like the Luisenstädtischer Kanal Park and Görlitzer Park make them a more real part of urban space, while still being a part of nature. They are a more true remedy to the concrete of urban life than new, planned green spaces are.

Dispatches from Melchiorstrasse #1

Arrived in Berlin last Tuesday morning. I have been to Alexanderplatz about five times, but until this morning had not explored the neighbourhood beyond the Kaiser's three blocks away. Alexanderplatz kind of reminds me of Westlake, and some bits of Mitte I've walked through kind of remind me of downtown Seattle, but I walked down Oranienstrasse and realized it doesn't remind me of anything.

St Michael Kirche, under construction.

The thing about living in a place with a lot of history is that it's full of funny contrasts. It's not strange to see graffiti (though nowhere in Seattle would you see so much of it), but it's strange to see a graffiti'd wall or a pink porta-potty next to a beautiful old church. It's a bit like being in multiple centuries at once--time lag mixed in with the jet lag.

Then there's also the places that you'd hardly believe used to be so different. I walked through the park that used to be in the Luisenstädtischer Kanal, which now includes a little lake (complete with turtles and a heron and some little birds that kind of look like sandpipers) and some nice paths. The canal became stagnant in the 1920s and was turned into a park, and when the Wall was built it followed the canal park on its southern side. In my walk I passed between crosswalks with the ordinary crosswalk lights to the ones with the little be-hatted Ampelmänner. Our apartments would have been inside East Berlin by one block.

Final dispatches from Seattle

At a ridiculous hour in the morning on Monday, September 26th I will get on a plane to Berlin, Germany. There I will spend ten weeks reading a lot and studying things and having adventures, all of which will be recorded for your perusal in this here blog.

The blog title comes from a Nazi newspaper, which is probably a creepy and not politically correct source, but I thought it was a funny phrase and wanted to bend it to my uses. The Völkischer Beobachter said in 1928 (quoted in Ladd, The Ghosts of Berlin) that Berlin is "A melting pot of everything that is evil--prostitution, drinking houses, cinemas, Marxism, Jews, strippers, negroes dancing, and all the vile offshoots of so-called 'modern art.'" I am all for drinking houses, cinemas, Jews, nudity, dancing, and art, and I don't think any of those things are evil. So really I am corrupting the Nazis' words and celebrating the free pursuit of modern art and all its vile offshoots, which, to be honest, are my favourite parts of Berlin history. Possibly also of life.

So, now that we are off to a vile beginning...