Tuesday, November 17, 2015

Berlin, part I

I arrived back in Bonn on Saturday evening, after a lengthy, but enjoyable bus ride from Berlin.  I know I haven't updated this blog in a while, and it's mostly because whenever I started to work on writing something, I never felt motivated enough to finish it. Therefore, I have a lot to cover in this post, and it'll probably get broken up into 2 parts at the very least. I guess the part about Berlin will be more like a story. Later I'll start talking about my work at the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE). And lastly I'll get into my graduation experience, job searching, and some odds and ends. So stay tuned!

Well, I can start out by saying that overall, my experience in Berlin was quite a bit more disappointing than I had anticipated. This is probably due to my own personal choices and situation during the three months I was there rather than the city itself failing me. 

It started on the night I arrived in the city. I was at the S-bahn station near the main bus station trying to buy a ticket, when this little middle-aged woman some baggy, colorful, and dusty clothing comes up and starts pestering me to buy one of these "leftover" train tickets from tourists that have left already and are still valid (according to her). I told her I would rather buy a new ticket from the machine. Definitely don't want to get ripped off on my first trip. She asks me what I do in Berlin and I told her I would start working and she immediately tells me: "Ah so that is why you are not cool".  That response kind of set the tone for my experience in Berlin: You're a square if you work and don't chill with the hip crowd.

 For anyone who doesn't know, finding apartments in Germany can be very difficult, especially if you only need it for very specific time period (like I did), so actually being happy with your first apartment (especially in Berlin) is almost never going to happen, but that's a different story. Since I could barely afford a cheap apartment, and I was scared about not finding one at all and having to live in a hostel for a couple weeks, so I took the first apartment that fit my budget and was available.
It was a bit like a hostel, I shared a room with 3 other people and paid too much money for it. Overall it wasn't too bad. Like college dorm room style. The guy in the bunk bed below me snored very loudly but I adapted (and by adapt I meant I stopped giving a shit). There was hot water, heating, and a bed. If the guy who I was paying rent to could live like that 10 years, then I sure as hell could stay for 3 months.

Outside of the apartment, Berlin was fine. With around 3.5 million people, it was the biggest city I've really spent a lot of time in. I lived in Wedding, pretty much central north of the main "downtown" area. My neighborhood was mostly immigrants, heavy on the Turkish side. There were tons of shady looking cafes, late night shops, and casinos lined up back to back down the main streets. During the daytime the sidewalks were crowded with people. There were usually groups of moms in headscarves  taking up most of the sidewalk with their gigantic 2-child strollers and some older children hanging around nearby. Some places got really crowded around fruit and vegetable stands, which provided a huge selection of ridiculously cheap produce. Kilos of oranges, a dozen varieties of apples, bananas and melons were always for sale, and towards November the clementines started coming out too. It was at one of these crowded intersections between fruit stand and the family brigade of strollers that I saw a guy who was working a fruit stand ash his cigarette at his side, right onto a kids face while his mom was pushing him by. When so many people smoke, there are so many children in strollers, and so little space on the sidewalks, I'm actually surprised I hadn't seen it happen before. It gave me a good chuckle, because I think I was the only one who noticed any of it.

Though I was in a "bad" part of town, I never felt unsafe. Everyone tended to their own business, and I never saw anything bad happen. We had security guards in a lot of stores just watching out for troublemakers and breaking down cardboard boxes, but I only saw a few messed up addicts try to pull any shit.  That said, I didn't go out much at night. I didn't have any money, or friends, so there wasn't much for me to do. This was also fine. I worked during the week, and even though weekends got a little boring, I spent 5 weekends visiting friends in Erfurt, or Erika in Bonn.

I also saw, but mostly heard, the planes. Tegel airport is quite close to my apartment, and walking to and from work I often heard airplanes flying overhead and every time I always got that wanderlust to be on one. I didn't even know where I wanted to go, maybe back to the US, maybe just being out of Berlin for awhile would be sufficient, but I just wanted to be on a plane going somewhere.

In early September my friend from the Willy Brandt School, Krishna, came to visit. He had a close friend from his high school in Nepal who was in Berlin for a language course before starting his PhD in Leipzig. So I went out on a Friday night to visit him at the student dorms nearly an hour away. It was great weather, and we had a lot of whiskey and beer to drink. He bought a bottle of Jim Beam specifically because he knew I liked it. I stayed the night and the next day we all went to the lake nearby. Again, the weather was sublime and we sat all day at this lake, hanging out with our feet in the water and drinking beer. They cooked a bunch of Nepalese curry throughout the weekend, and I slept really well in the evening. It was probably the best weekend while I was in Berlin.

A few weeks later I met up with the same Nepalese guy and another friend of his and actually did a bit of sightseeing. I checked out all the major sights, the Spree River, the cathedral, the Brandenburger Tor, the German Bundestag, the Tiergarten, and the Siegesäule. All of them were quite pretty and I really enjoyed visiting them.  Of course, I liked this part of the city, and I think my favorite part was hanging out in front of the Bundestag (German Parliament building). It was a huge building that was built with a glass roof, to represent transparency within its walls. Directly in front of the building was a large open grassy area that people just hang out on. It seemed like there was quite a few people there, but it could have just been because it was a Sunday. I'll let some of these pictures at the bottom do the talking.

After that day of sightseeing, I didn't go out much. The honeymooning phase of seeing a new city never really kicked in, and I had a lot of other necessities to take care of, like writing my final report for school, job searching, and applications to fill out. After finishing at the FSFE, I wanted to start work right away, but I knew that was unlikely to be the case. But I still had to make the most of it what I could, so I prepared a few applications for jobs in Bonn, and spent the rest of my spare time studying German, taking (read: trying) some free online courses, and dulling my senses to my less than ideal living situation.

Overall I found Berlin to be an interesting place, but I think I was there at the wrong time. It's probably way more exciting, with tons of great things to do if you have money and friends. I wasn't unhappy, but definitely a bit unfulfilled. I only met one person who was from Berlin (actually from Potsdam, but its in the train network), most of the people I saw or met were from a different country, probably looking for a better place to live. I don't think Berlin actually has a ton of great opportunities to start a career, except for a few specialized jobs or in something related to politics. But if you come from very little, or just want to chill out and work at a restaurant or coffee shop, you will probably find something viable there. But I don't entirely blame the city for that, the whole WWII and especially the Cold War really ruined a lot of potential that capital cities are often expected to have. There were definitely some beautiful things in Berlin, but not the same kind of grandeur you might find in Paris or London. It definitely will make up for that with multitudes of cool people, y'know the kind of people who recommend wearing sunglasses at night, or where being a male with skinny jeans, roughed up leather boots, and a plain black t-shirt actually makes you a square (aka me).  I'm happy to be back in Bonn, where people don't try so hard to fit a city-stereotype, and where the Rhein provides all the natural beauty a small town Iowa boy needs.













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