I chose to move
into the flat in Marzahn and was largely pleased about the way things had
panned out. It wasn’t the celebratory acquisition of an address that I had
imagined. The phrase ‘I have a flat’, that I had thought would fall so euphoric
when uttered truthfully from my lips the first time, felt a little muted and
plagued by limitations. Marzahn really was very far out. But, it meant no more
hostels, and it was a significant foot forward in the right direction. I came
to find in Berlin that the progression towards dreams comes in such small steps
that often you barely notice yourself nearing them. But you are nearing them
nonetheless and power comes in recognising your progress, and in loving it, and
giving it the appreciation it deserves. We owe that to our past selves and our
past dreams, if nothing else.
I took half of
my small collection of possessions over to Marzahn a few days before I was to
move in properly. Having dumped them in my room, I chatted a little to my German
flatmate with the Boudicea-red hair. She was hovering up rabbit droppings in
the sitting room, some of which were as freshly laid as it was possible to be,
the nozzle of the vacuum cleaner sweeping dangerously close to the little Milla
who, being deaf, was utterly unaware of its nearing approach. The buzzer for
the main door downstairs sounded and a few minutes later emerged a French girl,
sweating and grinning and wearing a hiking backpack. This girl was to be my
other flatmate. She was moving in that day and had only arrived in Berlin that
week. In her desperation to find a place to live she hadn’t even visited the
flat or yet met the fiery haired Hauptmieter
(main tenant). She was student and spoke better German than English, though her
English was better than both my German or French. Je suis Bertie, I said proudly and shook her hand at the door. How wonderful this was to be! I thought,
being able to practise both languages in
this flat! I descended the stairs with her as she went to pick up her
second suitcase and left her at the bottom to rush over to Charlottenburg
without offering to help her take her load up the five flights of stairs, which
I later felt bad about.
A few days later
I had said my goodbyes to Mario and was back in Marzahn with the remainder of
my kit. When I arrived the flat was even messier than it had been before. In
the sitting room Red with the fiery hair sat alongside the French girl and a
tall German boy. They were sitting about the low coffee table laden with a
breakfast of rolls, cold meats, cheese, Nuttella and three steaming mugs of
coffee. They invited me to join them. I told them I would soon speak only
German but couldn’t possibly do it right this moment, tired and excited as I
was. I squeezed my few paltry groceries into the fridge overladen with moulding
food and sat down with them. Red only ate half a roll with some jam spread over
it and then sat back on the sofa and commenced rolling a joint. The German boy
put down his salami and cheese muttering some words to her and took over the
rolling. The French girl rolled herself a cigarette to and soon I was in a
cloud of smoke enjoying the breakfast alone. I became entranced watching Smokie
the Frenchie who would lazily drag her cigarette, the trail of smoke slipping
out of her mouth and rising up to and curling around her tangled brown hair.
She had big brown eyes and full lips, and smiled at us all placidly when she
wasn’t laughing hoarsely or speaking German in her thick French drawl.
After the
breakfast I walked over to the little shopping centre towards Mehrower Allee
S-Bahn station. It wasn’t really a mall but a large building with a collection
of shops which had a wide thoroughfare cutting through it which was kept open
all hours. Apart from the regular banks, supermarkets and pharmacy there was
also a plastic looking Italian restaurant at the far end and on the side
nearest my flat there was an Asian takeaway and kebab shop, and occasionally a
van parked up selling hot sugary treats.
I bought some
bread, cheese, salad and yoghurt from the supermarket Rewe and noticing the
grocers opposite was overcome with a strong desire to eat fruit. I bought a box
of raspberries and a box of blueberries and a large apple. It was a warm day
and so I sat out on a bench on the side of the walkway that stretched from the
tram stop just outside my house, through the shopping centre and on to Mehrower
Allee S-Bahn station. The yoghurt actually turned out to be some kind of creamy
vanilla syrup, which I cracked open nonetheless and dipped the berries into. Halfway
through the berries I attacked the apple. I couldn’t remember the last time I
had enjoyed an apple so much. In fact I couldn’t remember the last time I had
enjoyed an apple at all. I had always felt it to be the most boring of fruit. This
one was the size of a softball and as shinny as the fake ones found in bowls at
Christmas. With relish I crunched great white mouthfuls out of it. There was an
old man sitting on the bench next to me looking vapidly out at the people passing
by. I thought it wouldn’t be long before I was back sitting on a bench much
like this one with my old companions of cheap beer, cigarettes and a falafel
kebab. At that point though there was nothing I would have swapped my apple
for.
The joy bubbling
away inside of me did not appear to be reflected out on the streets. It was a quietly
depressing little scene, full of the ugly normalness
of Philip Larkin. The normalness that makes a mockery of living. It was just people walking by,
bits of families mainly, doing their shopping, making noise, going about their
business, filling the hours. Still new, I was very aware of the Plattenbauten that rose about me, as in
the preceding three weeks I had always felt the presence of the Fernsehturm over
my shoulder even when it was out of sight. It didn’t feel repressive sitting
there, surrounded by people and their houses, but it did feel packed. Later I
was to find the peace in Marzahn and realise how quiet it is and how quickly
one could locate a spot of solitude. But at that point, gorging on my fruit, I
felt like I had been thrown in to a community, a mass of people, that weren’t
my people, and it would only be a matter of time before they realised that I
wasn’t supposed to be there at all.
They were ugly
as well, I thought. Fat and decrepit, struggling in the simple human functions
of walking and breathing. A lot of them seemed be losing their hair, what was
left of which hung limply down their neck and over their ears. Apart from the
children, who were as energetic as children anywhere, everyone appeared to be
living under a shadow; every face looked tired and no one appeared particularly
happy. They were all just going on. Everyone was smoking. The smell of stale,
dried smoke would later become firmly associated in my mind with the people of
Marzahn.
Anything can be
forgotten and any worry or concern – legitimate or otherwise – can be easily
squashed when there is the next mouthful, the next swig or the next drag to
consider, and so I didn’t really think of them much, or how it would be to live
with them, but just kept on eating my fruit.
Walking back to
the flat I had to cross what I always described as a meadow. The path I walked
along was lined by trees and on one side there were bushes before a line of
shops – a bakery and odd little café and a funny bar that looked like the lobby of a care home
– and then beyond them, of course, were more tower blocks. To the other side of
me stretched grass, a path winding through it leading to a giant bright green
block looking like something out of The
Tweenies. It was in fact a school and in later weeks I would see children
each morning bundled up against the cold making their way towards it, dithering
and stalling. Just off the path that went perpendicular to this one, that which
I was now trundling along, stood a Vietnamese man who would be there most of
the times that I was to pass over the next few months. He stood looking cold
and bored and next to him, lined up like little toy soldiers, were a four or
five packets of different brands of cigarettes. These so called Handelsplätzen, I was to later learn, were
all that was left of the Marzahn Vietnamese mafia. In the 1990s there had a
string of murders had plagued the district and the next door (and much grimmer
and greyer) district of Hellersdorf (‘Light Village’). Somehow the war
eventually came to a close. The demand for illegal cigarettes began to drop
heavily and the vacuum left by the dissolution of the two gangs was filled by a
multitude of much smaller ones. Today you are more likely to come across
Vietnamese selling flowers or hairdressing services than cigarettes. Despite
this, whispers of the Marzahn Vietnamese mafia are still rife within the Ring
and towards the West. And even I would often wonder when I passed the little
man along that path each day: What was actually going on? What had he seen?
What had his parents seen? What am I not seeing?
Back at the flat
I attempted to squeeze my small pile of groceries into the packed fridge shelf
that had been designated by Red as mine. There was something dripping down to
the shelf at the bottom of the fridge and when I closed the door a sour-cheese
smell was wafted into my face. I then set about tidying up the flat but soon
realised that this was to be a losing battle. It really was the filthiest place
I had ever lived in. Red had lived there for almost four years so had collected
piles of defunct and half broken objects that rose up in piles in the kitchen
or spilled out of cupboards in the hallway. The multitude of flatmates that had
come before Smokie and I had also contributed to the mass of stuff that the flat was filled with. One
of the prior tenants, Red told us, had simply disappeared one morning, leaving
the entirety of his possessions where they were. Red heard from the man’s aunt
that he was still alive, but that was it. Running from debts and a baby, he
never heard of him again. I was to later replenish my wardrobe from what
remained of him in the flat.
As I tidied up, Smokie
was in the sitting-room and perhaps felt a little guilty and so put out her
cigarette and her sheets of German and came to help me. Mill was charging
against the cage doors so we let her out but soon regretted it as she hopped
around the room shitting everywhere, and leaving puddle of piss at Smokie’s
feet. I wiped a few of the counters in the kitchen and started to wash up but
no cold water came out of the tap and so the sink was full of water too hot to
put your hands in. I could feel squashed rabbit droppings squishing under my
feet and eventually gave up and fell onto the couch. Smokie was quick to follow
my lead.
At this point I
was working about three days a week at the Irish Pub and then twice a week I
would join Garth on the steps opposite Frankfurter Tor for the Pub Crawl. He
had a couple of newbie promoters that he had picked up somewhere but none of
them stayed long. The dearth of backpackers keen for free shots and Beer-Pong
in Friedrichshain meant that I was spending more than I was earning during
these nights. I began taking literature along to read at the hostels so the
evenings wouldn’t be wholly wasted. It was growing cold and despite the new
schemes cooked up by the mysterious Irish manager and the newly designed flyer
that Garth proudly showed me I had little hope that things would pick up.
Regarding the
Irish Pub, Erik had told me I needed to buy myself a pair of black trousers and
some shoes for my second shift. Not knowing where would be best to find these I
wandered over to Hackescher Markt in Mitte. I have been told that this place
has lost much of the charm that it once had. What was once a treasure chest of
little independent shops and homely little cafes is now dominated by global
chains such as H&M and Zara. The independent shops other shops have been
pushed down into side alley or out of the area completely, due to the low
footfall meaning they were quickly unable to pay the skyrocketing rent. The
area is equally as quiet now the big brands are there. This is no skin of their
nose of course, and many believe that they only set up in the quiet Hackescher
Martke to be able to say they were part of the Berlin scene. It all makes for a
rather odd place. It is still beautiful in a polished touristy sense, but only
comes alive on warm afternoons or evenings where battalions of waiters emerge
from overpriced cafés and restaurants to lay out lines and lines of tables and
chairs. The area doesn’t feel very Berlin to me at all and I think this is
common to those who live and work and play principally in the triumvirate of
Kreuzberg, Neukölln and Friedrichshain.
In
Charlotenberg, where the Irish Pub was, it felt similarly ‘un-Berlin.’ Whereas
Hackesher Markt appears to be ashamed of the gaudy tourist restaurants and shops
that now plague its streets and has the modesty to bow its head in shame at the
globalisation that has consumed it, Charlottenburg sparkles and seems to revel
in its distinctiveness from the rest of Berlin. Charlottenburg was the shining
heart of the little island of capitalism that West Berlin once was in the
sprawl of the Soviet Union. KaDeWe, the
Kaufhaus des Westens, is the biggest department store in Europe after Harrods
and has lit up Kurfürstendamm (‘the Ku'damm’) since it first opened in 1907,
standing as a spectacular beacon of consumerism throughout the Cold War.
There are icons
of the bygone glory to be found in Charlottenburg. The cinema Zoo Palast is one
of them, a similarly sparkling venue and has been restored to its former glory
this year. It was built in 1950, constructed out of the ashes of a silent
cinema which, like KaDeWe, was heavily bombed in during the Second World War.
Shimmering through the 50s and 60s, it gradually fell out of fashion and into
disrepair. Now, after €5.5 million spent has been towards its renovation, Zoo
Palast is once more to offer Berliners what it calls, 'premium cinema'.
Café Kranzler is
another architectural celebrity in the district, and like the other two, has
also gone under extensive redevelopment. While KaDeWe appears today very much
of the time, and Zoo Palast, a classy throwback, Café Kranzler is crass and
tacky and sticks out on the Ku'damm with its red and white, stripped tombola
hat. The original Café Kranzler was opened in 1834 on Unter Den Linden on the
corner of Friedrichstraße. With a sun terraced, ice-cream parlour and smokers’
room it came to be seen as one of the finest and most fashionable spots in the
city. A second branch was opened in 1932 where the current one can now be
found. This was where the equally famous Café des Westens had once sat, running
from 1898 to 1915. This café was known colloquially as Café Größenwahn, meaning
‘the delusions of grandeur café’ and became a meeting point for many of the
greatest artists living in the city at the time. Nothing is left of the original Café
Kranzler, and where the current one today sits not a speck of the finery and
jazz of its parent institutions can be found. Instead you have sour faced
waitresses dressed up in the café’s red and white stripped colours, serving over
priced coffee and damp, tasteless and greying food.
Just off the Ku’damm,
only a five minute walk from Café Kranzler is Zoo Station and the Europa Centre
where the Irish Pub was. Zoo Station (Zoologischer Garten Bahnhof), once the
hot spot for prostitution, drugs, the black-market and the scene of many a
thrilling Cold War spy novel, now resembles a sad drunk crouching in the corner
of a shopping mall. Building work is going on there and hopefully they will
bring the place up on its feet again. It smells of fast food, has too many
cheap neon lights and tawdry statues. It is one of the worse places within the
Ring in my opinion, and is perhaps a cautionary tale for living too hard and
too fast. The only bit around Zoo Station I do like is when you leave the
station from the back entrance along Jebensstraße where the Museum für
Fotografie is. It is mostly stone here, and only calm, pastel colours. There is
usually a down-and-out or two sitting in one of the inlets here. It is quiet,
and feels very European, more like Italy or France than Germany, or Berlin, or
certainly Zoo Station.
For
my second shift at the Irish Pub I was working with Johnny again, which he
seemed as disappointed about as I was. I
started the shift nervy and spent the ensuing six hours that way, the only
moments of relative calm found sucking
on a cigarette in the a back room and looking ahead desperately to the Feierabend (end of shift) pint. The
smirking Vernon was working as a waiter that evening. Smart, shining and
confident he swooped between the crowds of punters, cooing his beautiful German
and watching me flap about behind the bar preparing his drinks. I had found out
that Johnny and Ellie, the girl from Yorkshire who had lived her way around
Europe by working at Irish Pubs, had paid for my drinks when I had left
Schwarzes Café early by mistake. I apologized and told them I would pay them
back. ‘Ye, you cheeky bastard!’ Johnny had said grinning before the shift
began. Ellie wrinkled her nose and told me it didn’t matter and that I could
just buy her a drink next time they went out. Vernon however was not so easily
placated. He stared at me, grinning as I spoke to the girl and would for the
next couple of weeks call out things like, ‘Bought Ellie some drinks have you
yet Bertie?’ or ‘Watch out for Bertie, he might not come back when he goes to
the toilet!’
That
second shift went worse than the first, primarily because I no longer had the excuse
that it was my first day or that I hadn’t pulled a pint in years. The Kilkenny
would froth like the Cornish coast however gently I pulled the tap, or however
much I fiddled with the pressure nozzle. I would pour the froth into spare
glasses, waiting for it to settle so I could it use it later. I soon had a line
of these pints full of head standing under the taps.
One of the
things I was getting used to was the customers tipping as they paid. For
example, if a drink was 4.70€ they would say ‘five’ indicating that the 30
cense was my tip. This was opposed to their being a tip jar on the bar, or them
‘buying me a drink.’ Often when paying they wouldn’t say anything at all, but
when I returned their change they would shake their head and back away,
seemingly offended that I would assume them stingy enough not to tip 30 cense.
Despite the awkwardness of this, it felt very unnatural to me, to simply pocket
their change without them having explicitly indicated that I should do so. I was
extremely unlucky in that when I did for the first time do just that, assume the tip and casually drop the 30
cense change into our little jar, the indignant customer loudly demanded where
his change was. Of course at this point Johnny was nearby and swooped in to get
the man the right change. Both were scowling and when the man had turned away Johnny
rounded on me saying,
‘I don’t want to
break your balls Bertie, but you’re not gonna last long here if you keeping making
mistakes like this!’
Erik
wasn’t managing that day but the second manager, an old German called Olaf.
Olaf was much friendlier than Erik. He smiled for instance, and in general seemed
to take a much more relaxed approach to managing a bar. He was wizened and bald
and looked like a crookled warlock out of Game
of Thrones. Erik had told me that it
was essentially down to Olaf whether I would stay working at the Pub or not. He
didn’t seem to watch my work at all so I figured that unless Johnny spoke up I
wouldn’t be going anywhere. Whether that was something to be pleased about I
was yet unsure.
At 2am I was
pouring myself a pint of Guinness. I drank it in about five minutes while
having a cigarette in the narrow corridors when the band stored their bags and
cases and used as a thoroughfare to their van that waited for them in the
underground car park just outside. It was hot there and overflowing ashtrays
and a couple of pint glasses and mugs with solidified dregs. Camp Olaf was very
relaxed and at the end of the shift when we were all closing down the bar with
our Feierabend drink, spinning about clutching a Desperado and
saying in a high voice, ‘My gay beer! My gay beer!’
I was pretty
unenthused by the work. Panama told me that she had only wanted to work at the
Irish Pub for a month, and she had at that point been there for a year. There
was little chance of that happening to me, I thought smugly as I wiped down the
bar, then sobered hearing Johnny’s words again. What I was concerned about more
than anything when working at the Irish Pub, was that it wasn’t really Berlin. I was thinking this in Marzahn
really, and what it boiled down to that I wasn’t living in the Berlin I had
heard about, in the Berlin that I had read about. In this Irish Pub, I could
have been anywhere. That was what bothered me, and that was why I reeled when
Ellie told me that she was making her way slowly around Europe by working in
Irish pubs.
Schwarzes Café did seem like Berlin to me however so I
was happy to return there when my second shift ended early. I had missed the
last train and was had no confidence at being able to navigate the trams and
buses. I tried to remember the short distance that Vernon had taken us after
my first shift, but predictably got lost. I found it eventually and settled
down upstairs. Free from my colleagues, I appreciated the place even more this
second time. Here it seemed to me, at any hour, every queer fish of
Charlottenburg will come to find sanctuary from the city. The café, I later
found out, was originally created by West Berlin anarchists. It is open 24
hours a day (save for a few hours on a Tuesday afternoon), welcoming students,
workers, clubbers, vagrants and all other creatures of the dark. With the
candles at night the place becomes a little gothic, graveyard of lost decadence;
an atmosphere which the cheery service can’t quite break through. Upstairs has the look of a plush sitting room
after a generation of disrepair and crumble, imbuing the café with the ambience
of Dracula’s lost dining room, or an Edwardian set for the Rocky Horror Show.
With each creak of the stairs one expects the ragged Steppenwolf to emerge from
the shadows. There were candles on each table and I would collect on my table
so I had enough light to read. My eyes were tired and every half an hour or so
they drooped and I felt myself falling asleep. I decided I needed some food. I had more money in cash from tips than I had
since I had arrived in Berlin I decided to splash out. I bought another red
wine which came in a glass the size of a small bowling ball, and a club sandwich.
The later came in a tower to me on a plate and collapsed in a pile of crispy
bread, mayo soaked chicken and sauce on my plate when I tried to raise just a
quarter of it to my mouth.
The trains were
running again at 4am and it was passed 5 when I finally got back to Marzahn. I
passed a few old individuals with rat-sized dogs on leads as I made my way back
to Max Hermann Straße. Into the empty flat I walked and before going to bed I
slipped out on to the balcony. It was to be a beautiful day, and wasn’t
begrudged by how much of it I would now miss sleeping. I gazed into the
beautiful view that lay before me under the balcony. To my left was a grass
field, for want of better word, peppered with clusters of trees. Over the tops
of these trees I saw what looked like a small hill, invisible from the centre
of the city. Over this the sun broke, and cast screens of sun on the pastel
coloured Plattenbauten, the base of the U-shaped housing block I lived in. They
stood at broken angles so they resembled the construction of a child playing
with big lego bricks. Gazing upon the architecture I didn’t think ‘Communism!’
but thought that they would one day be seen in a better light by the rest of
Berlin, and embraced by that which lies within the Ring.
I was for a moment secretly happy that
Marzahn wasn’t caught up in the folds of Berlin;
happy that it was apart, and that I was there too. It is not what I had come
for, but it was what I had found. Below me the Spielplatz lay empty. Day
was rising over Marzahn, and I couldn’t be happy to be there to witness it.
There of all places.
Bertie Digby
Alexander
Berlin
2014
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