I am in much the same position as I was in yesterday: I tend to leave these posts off for as long as possible so as to relax before writing them. I am sitting in a pool of sweat as I write this; this may be the hottest time of the year in Berlin, and the heat here is merciless. I have not experienced anything quite like this heat, except, perhaps, in Vienna. It does not merely fry one's exterior, but, like a barbeque, roasts successive layers of one's tissue, singing one's skin, fat, and muscle before it turns one's bones to dust. It is not the kind of heat that leaves one wanting a shower and a cold drink, but the kind that makes one wonder if one will start crawling along the pavement on all fours and die of exposure.
Besides being uncomfortable, the heat here makes sightseeing much more difficult - in fact, I have discovered that walking for a long time through a city in this type of heat brings diminishing returns. One at first walks at an ordinary rate; it would seem that one only need bring enough water for a three-day hike in order to have an ordinary day of sightseeing. As time passes, the sun saps one's energy, though, making distances that should take a half-hour to traverse take instead for an hour, then two hours, and then three - one's movements grow slower at an almost geometric rate. One cannot sit down to rest, as sitting down simply results in one's sitting in the sun (in most cases; there is little shade despite the number of trees here, as benches are rarely located beneath them) and growing even more tired and thirsty. Despite their inimitable achievements in areas of culture not connected with health, the Germans have not yet discovered the public restroom or, more importantly in this case, the public water fountain, meaning that, unless one has the storage capacity for at least three liters of water (and preferably more like four or five), one has continually to buy drinks once one's initial store of water runs out; failure to consume enough liquid in this heat could lead to severe dehydration. The only results of all of this heat in my case were that I spent far more money than I would have liked to do today, took longer than I wanted to complete my itinerary, am now tired out and ready for two rather more relaxed days, and am currently bathing in my own sweat. I have to drink about a liter of water per hour (This is a very rough calculation.) just to stay alive in this hostel, as it has no air conditioning. It is so hot here that even the interiors of churches do not feel cool!
The heat has had another interesting effect on this trip, which is to disrupt one's sleep. The only reason for which I consider this interesting is that sitting in a hot train or car puts one comfortably to sleep, while lying in an overheated bed does just the opposite. Hostels, I realized last night, are an interesting experiment in human cooperation and altruism. When two of my roommates came in shortly after midnight last night, turned on all of the room's lights, and starting talking to one another, it occurred to me that the only ways for hostels to work are for people to work together: they are like those self-supporting bridges that rely on the opposite pressures of all of the blocks in them (say, ten blocks, for simplicity's sake, none of which could hold up on its own) to stay up. If people steal each other's food, keep each other awake at night, fail to wash dishes after using them, make a mess of the bathroom, or steal each other's belongings, the whole system breaks down; one or two people could ruin the atmosphere of an entire hostel. It has been my bad luck to share rooms with some terrible roommates on this trip, and it has been my good luck to share rooms with some excellent roommates; their distribution appears to me to be almost random, though cities with a renowned nightlife and larger hostels may tend to attract a worse crowd. My only conclusion from my experiences so far is that people cooperate some of the time and fail to cooperate some of the time; they are not distinctly good or bad, but good and bad by turns.
I suppose that it is time for me to start writing about Berlin. I told one of the hostel managers here, prior to leaving the hostel for the day, that I would rather hide under one of the tables than go outside. She understood me perfectly: the city is enormous, and one does not want to miss anything; as she pointed out, one has to accept that one will miss some things, as the city is too big for one to see everything. My first destination of the day was Alexanderplatz, which reeked of garbage and was essentially a construction yard surrounded by high-rises. One of the things besides restrooms and drinking fountains that the Germans have not yet discovered, as far as I can tell, is Air-Care: the exhaust coming out of a couple of trucks in Alexanderplatz was enough to choke one. I quickly escaped the air and found myself in one of the most magnificent parts of Europe that I had ever seen. Museums and cathedrals sprouted like Chanterelle (sp?) mushrooms in the city center and reminded one of the commitment of residents of Berlin to preserving history and learning more about it. I forget what I was going to say at this point, but I hope that I had an intelligent point of some sort to make. Right - something that surprised me about Berlin was that, unlike Vienna, which seems almost like a planned city, insofar as it almost has concentric circles of museums, art galleries, and churches leading into its city center, like the rings on a tree, Berlin's greatest monuments are spread all over the place. It has some fantastic towers and statues a kilometer or two away from the city center; it has some well-known sights (i.e., places marked on the city map) that turn out to suck; and it has some gems on which one stumbles unexpectedly, such as its Literature House and the various wings of its biggest (or, at least most visible) university. I feel that a lot of my time spent walking today was, to a degree, wasted, as I saw a lot of stuff on which I could have passed, but one does not know in advance what will be worthwhile, and it is not a waste to discover more about its city. Berlin is not the greatest city for walking despite its copious sidewalks and working traffic lights, as it has very wide boulevards and is chock full of cars. The city's greenness helps to allay the effects of walking alongside so many cars, but one still ends up feeling more tired than one would do walking along narrow side-streets devoid of cars. Sights in various parts of the city still stand out in my mind, but my overall memory of the day is of walking increasingly more slowly and unwillingly as the day progressed and sweating profusely; the day melted into a sweaty, amorphous haze in my mind. I have noticed that there are more bikers here than in any other city in Germany and that people have a habit of stacking garbage right next to garbage cans once they overflow (which is often, as they are too small and too few) rather than leaving it scattered everywhere as people in unmentionable countries do. I have no other cultural insights about the city except that the east side of the city, according to my map, turns out to be vastly more interesting than the west side, which must be the more modern side.
The heat has had another interesting effect on this trip, which is to disrupt one's sleep. The only reason for which I consider this interesting is that sitting in a hot train or car puts one comfortably to sleep, while lying in an overheated bed does just the opposite. Hostels, I realized last night, are an interesting experiment in human cooperation and altruism. When two of my roommates came in shortly after midnight last night, turned on all of the room's lights, and starting talking to one another, it occurred to me that the only ways for hostels to work are for people to work together: they are like those self-supporting bridges that rely on the opposite pressures of all of the blocks in them (say, ten blocks, for simplicity's sake, none of which could hold up on its own) to stay up. If people steal each other's food, keep each other awake at night, fail to wash dishes after using them, make a mess of the bathroom, or steal each other's belongings, the whole system breaks down; one or two people could ruin the atmosphere of an entire hostel. It has been my bad luck to share rooms with some terrible roommates on this trip, and it has been my good luck to share rooms with some excellent roommates; their distribution appears to me to be almost random, though cities with a renowned nightlife and larger hostels may tend to attract a worse crowd. My only conclusion from my experiences so far is that people cooperate some of the time and fail to cooperate some of the time; they are not distinctly good or bad, but good and bad by turns.
I suppose that it is time for me to start writing about Berlin. I told one of the hostel managers here, prior to leaving the hostel for the day, that I would rather hide under one of the tables than go outside. She understood me perfectly: the city is enormous, and one does not want to miss anything; as she pointed out, one has to accept that one will miss some things, as the city is too big for one to see everything. My first destination of the day was Alexanderplatz, which reeked of garbage and was essentially a construction yard surrounded by high-rises. One of the things besides restrooms and drinking fountains that the Germans have not yet discovered, as far as I can tell, is Air-Care: the exhaust coming out of a couple of trucks in Alexanderplatz was enough to choke one. I quickly escaped the air and found myself in one of the most magnificent parts of Europe that I had ever seen. Museums and cathedrals sprouted like Chanterelle (sp?) mushrooms in the city center and reminded one of the commitment of residents of Berlin to preserving history and learning more about it. I forget what I was going to say at this point, but I hope that I had an intelligent point of some sort to make. Right - something that surprised me about Berlin was that, unlike Vienna, which seems almost like a planned city, insofar as it almost has concentric circles of museums, art galleries, and churches leading into its city center, like the rings on a tree, Berlin's greatest monuments are spread all over the place. It has some fantastic towers and statues a kilometer or two away from the city center; it has some well-known sights (i.e., places marked on the city map) that turn out to suck; and it has some gems on which one stumbles unexpectedly, such as its Literature House and the various wings of its biggest (or, at least most visible) university. I feel that a lot of my time spent walking today was, to a degree, wasted, as I saw a lot of stuff on which I could have passed, but one does not know in advance what will be worthwhile, and it is not a waste to discover more about its city. Berlin is not the greatest city for walking despite its copious sidewalks and working traffic lights, as it has very wide boulevards and is chock full of cars. The city's greenness helps to allay the effects of walking alongside so many cars, but one still ends up feeling more tired than one would do walking along narrow side-streets devoid of cars. Sights in various parts of the city still stand out in my mind, but my overall memory of the day is of walking increasingly more slowly and unwillingly as the day progressed and sweating profusely; the day melted into a sweaty, amorphous haze in my mind. I have noticed that there are more bikers here than in any other city in Germany and that people have a habit of stacking garbage right next to garbage cans once they overflow (which is often, as they are too small and too few) rather than leaving it scattered everywhere as people in unmentionable countries do. I have no other cultural insights about the city except that the east side of the city, according to my map, turns out to be vastly more interesting than the west side, which must be the more modern side.
Perhaps my most striking experience today, despite having to buy multiple bottled drinks just to survive, was of walking along yet another Berlin Wall memorial, this one including a section of the real wall. It was strange to walk along freely and feel the breeze from the river Spree along my face when people struggled and were shot here, inexorably separated from a patch of ground just a yard away from them, twenty-five years ago. I wonder if we could do entirely without such walls given the grief that they cause people; I do not know whether they are primitive and inhumane or if they are actually necessary in some cases. While the wall in Berlin was used to oppress people, the wall along the East Bank has, as far as my knowledge extends, done more good than bad (i.e., lessened the amount of violence there), while the barrier between the U.S.A. and Mexico is stopping a gigantic number of people from emigrating or working by day in the U.S. and returning home by night. I do not know if it is fair to bar Mexicans from entering the United States in the interests of protecting American jobs and keeping law and order; I have not researched the situation enough to have an opinion. To remove all barriers to people's moving freely about the globe strikes me as naïve, based on my observations of other people in the hostels that I have visited: someone will inevitably abuse their freedom of movement if it increases, though that same person probably abuses it whether or not it remains limited; it is impossible to stop all criminal activity. I forgot to mention yesterday how idiotic I find it that Arab countries refuse entry into their country to people who show evidence of having visited Israel. First off, such people are not automatically more likely to cause damage to their countries than people who have not visited Israel; to deny them entry into one's country is tantamount to denying Christians (or blacks, or women, or people of any other grouping denomination) into one's university because one personally dislikes them. Secondly, there is no evidence (that I know of) that having people from other cultures in one's country is bad for it; on the contrary, it is often very useful, as I have pointed out in a prior blog post (consider Arabic numerals, Ancient Greek philosophy and anatomy, Roman law, &c.). Finally, people can easily have visited Israel (e.g., with a different passport) and enter an Arab country nonetheless! The refusal of people into one's country on the grounds of their having visited a country that one dislikes is a show of troglodytic prejudice.
I do not have too much left to discuss (at least, nothing jumps to mind) beside my diet. What is interesting about my diet is that, besides having cut baked goods out of it, I have also decided against eating ice cream for the next few days (and, possibly, the rest of this trip). I have had enough of it; I already know how it tastes. It is curious how one's appetites change. I have discovered a nearby bakery that sells good yogurt, sandwiches (on the cheap, too), and fizzy apple juice, which are all that I will need in addition to this hostel's complimentary breakfasts and the dinner that I made today, spaghetti (flavored with the hostel's spices) and mixed vegetables. I have run out of things to say about food.
On the subway ride back to the hostel today, I learned that Berlin's subway is not actually cooler than Moscow's, though it is monitored by videocamera and does not have any drunks on it, unlike the subway in Moscow. Like in Moscow, beggars often get on the subway, and, to my surprise, they get a fair (i.e., loose change) amount of money. I do not know if one should give money to beggars or not, and I rarely do so, mostly out of parsimony. I feel terrible seeing someone reduced to begging and free incredibly grateful to the people who give beggars money, as I suspect that they are lessening the amount of human suffering in the world by doing so. Perhaps this makes me a hypocrite; my having seen so many beggars in Moscow and knowing that beggars in Vancouver spend their money on drugs is probably what has made me loath to give them money. My only other note of interest is that one of my roommates in this hostel was very surprised by Berlin's culture. He said that he had come to Berlin expecting to see fat people drinking beer and eating sausages, and instead he heard all sorts of talk about a famous wall that divided the city in two; he wanted to know who put it up and if it still existed. I cannot rightly make fun of him here, as there are probably many elementary things that I do not know about the world, but this particular instance of ignorance was a real surprise to me - I did not realize that anyone could not know about the Berlin Wall (Perhaps children in schools in Australia are taught different things.).
My plan for tomorrow is to visit Potsdam, and my plan for the day after tomorrow is to see a small, and interesting, section of Berlin that I have not yet explored. I expect these two days to be relaxed and to leave me with time to see a couple of movies; I knew that today's excursion would be tiring and planned in advance to take it relatively easy for a couple of days so as to get my energy back. I also need to find out from which airport I will be flying out on Wednesday; it turns out that there are two of them in Berlin. Goodbye for now!
I should add one thing, as it just occurred to me that I would be writing three posts about one and the same city for the first time on this blog. If you are going to visit one city in all of Germany, Berlin is the city to see: it is somehow the most German of all German cities. Its being so German is defined in part by the amalgamation of cultures in the cities, its number of young people, its active subculture, its particolored cultural backdrop, and its acceptance of foreign cultures. I suppose that I have said the same thing over and over again in different terms: all sorts of cultures and people are welcome here; there is just as much room for the young skateboarder with purple hair as there is for the staid professor of law, young mother, Turkish immigrant, African immigrant, European immigrant, car dealer, or plumber here - anything goes. The commitment to incorporating elements of other cultures into its own without losing its own idiosyncratic cultural foundations seems to especially characterize Germany these days. Berlin is a very modern city with a richer history than any other city that I have visited in Europe; the confluence of old and new, like the commitment to cultural exchange, seems especially German. One can easily find the fat people eating sausages and drinking beer whom my roommate sought when he came here, and one can easily find the jovial burgher with thick side whiskers who has never spoken, and will never speak, any other language than German, in Berlin; Berlin does not fail to be German because of having so many young people and being so open to cultural innovation. I do not know how else to define the city than this. I am glad to have seen much of the rest of Germany (and to be planning to see the north in two years), as I would feel consternation at someone's having seen only Berlin and having claimed to have "seen Germany," yet I feel as though the whole country were summed up in Berlin in particular, and I am happy to be ending my tour of Germany here. Goodbye again!
I do not have too much left to discuss (at least, nothing jumps to mind) beside my diet. What is interesting about my diet is that, besides having cut baked goods out of it, I have also decided against eating ice cream for the next few days (and, possibly, the rest of this trip). I have had enough of it; I already know how it tastes. It is curious how one's appetites change. I have discovered a nearby bakery that sells good yogurt, sandwiches (on the cheap, too), and fizzy apple juice, which are all that I will need in addition to this hostel's complimentary breakfasts and the dinner that I made today, spaghetti (flavored with the hostel's spices) and mixed vegetables. I have run out of things to say about food.
On the subway ride back to the hostel today, I learned that Berlin's subway is not actually cooler than Moscow's, though it is monitored by videocamera and does not have any drunks on it, unlike the subway in Moscow. Like in Moscow, beggars often get on the subway, and, to my surprise, they get a fair (i.e., loose change) amount of money. I do not know if one should give money to beggars or not, and I rarely do so, mostly out of parsimony. I feel terrible seeing someone reduced to begging and free incredibly grateful to the people who give beggars money, as I suspect that they are lessening the amount of human suffering in the world by doing so. Perhaps this makes me a hypocrite; my having seen so many beggars in Moscow and knowing that beggars in Vancouver spend their money on drugs is probably what has made me loath to give them money. My only other note of interest is that one of my roommates in this hostel was very surprised by Berlin's culture. He said that he had come to Berlin expecting to see fat people drinking beer and eating sausages, and instead he heard all sorts of talk about a famous wall that divided the city in two; he wanted to know who put it up and if it still existed. I cannot rightly make fun of him here, as there are probably many elementary things that I do not know about the world, but this particular instance of ignorance was a real surprise to me - I did not realize that anyone could not know about the Berlin Wall (Perhaps children in schools in Australia are taught different things.).
My plan for tomorrow is to visit Potsdam, and my plan for the day after tomorrow is to see a small, and interesting, section of Berlin that I have not yet explored. I expect these two days to be relaxed and to leave me with time to see a couple of movies; I knew that today's excursion would be tiring and planned in advance to take it relatively easy for a couple of days so as to get my energy back. I also need to find out from which airport I will be flying out on Wednesday; it turns out that there are two of them in Berlin. Goodbye for now!
I should add one thing, as it just occurred to me that I would be writing three posts about one and the same city for the first time on this blog. If you are going to visit one city in all of Germany, Berlin is the city to see: it is somehow the most German of all German cities. Its being so German is defined in part by the amalgamation of cultures in the cities, its number of young people, its active subculture, its particolored cultural backdrop, and its acceptance of foreign cultures. I suppose that I have said the same thing over and over again in different terms: all sorts of cultures and people are welcome here; there is just as much room for the young skateboarder with purple hair as there is for the staid professor of law, young mother, Turkish immigrant, African immigrant, European immigrant, car dealer, or plumber here - anything goes. The commitment to incorporating elements of other cultures into its own without losing its own idiosyncratic cultural foundations seems to especially characterize Germany these days. Berlin is a very modern city with a richer history than any other city that I have visited in Europe; the confluence of old and new, like the commitment to cultural exchange, seems especially German. One can easily find the fat people eating sausages and drinking beer whom my roommate sought when he came here, and one can easily find the jovial burgher with thick side whiskers who has never spoken, and will never speak, any other language than German, in Berlin; Berlin does not fail to be German because of having so many young people and being so open to cultural innovation. I do not know how else to define the city than this. I am glad to have seen much of the rest of Germany (and to be planning to see the north in two years), as I would feel consternation at someone's having seen only Berlin and having claimed to have "seen Germany," yet I feel as though the whole country were summed up in Berlin in particular, and I am happy to be ending my tour of Germany here. Goodbye again!
You should see this wall. It is worth it.
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