Magic of Mauerpark

There's a park in Berlin called Mauerpark (wall park) that used to be a patch of no man's land when the Berlin wall still stood (the death strip actually).

Every Sunday it takes on a real Glastonbury type of festival atmosphere with flea markets, drummers, dancers... and of course the infamous open air karaoke - now a Berlin institution. Even in winter when it's freezing cold outside, you can warm yourself with a gluhwein and a hot pancake and enjoy the market and buskers.

When I was last in Berlin, there was news that some apartment blocks were going to be built there - and people were organising big demonstrations to save their favourite park.

Anyway, here are a couple of clips I found on youtube that help give an idea of the atmosphere here - and gave me a giggle at the same time!

This guy really made me laugh:


Check out the guy on the right:


Michael Jackson lives on:


Karaoke documentary:


Music making:


Drummers:


Mauerpark stands as another example of my whole 'kids are out to play' theory I wrote about in my last post. It's so nice to see how something as sinister as the Berlin wall death strip can be transformed into such a celebration of life! :)

Berlin here and now

I discovered a really interesting blog a couple of days ago called the Berlin Memory Blog that captures places around the city and gives a snapshot of that place in time.

I always say that Berlin has a real vibe like the parents are away and the kids are out to play - the street festivals, graffiti art, and the general easygoing happy atmosphere. A lot of people also say that Berlin today is a lot like New York of the 80s.

Anyway, this blogger talks about how years down the line today's Berlin will be remembered for the mass influx of creativity, "like Vienna in 1905, New York in the fifties, and Paris in the sixties".

As a journalist in Berlin, I've been gathering interviews with interesting and very normal people who have lived through incredible things and live to tell the tale. It seems pretty unbelievable that there are still people wandering around who have lived through both fascism and communism and experienced extraordinary hardships but still remain to tell their stories...

I interviewed a guy who gives tours of the former stasi prison Hoenschonhausen. As a former prisoner he described being snatched off the street and bundled into a fresh fish van. Inside the van - which turned out to be a disguised stasi police van - he was driven around for hours until he was fully disorientated and taken to the notorious secret prison. His crime? An application for a travel permit.

"We've lived through two dictatorships in the past few years," he told me. "Communism and fascism... and I think that's quite enough now," he said.

Going further back in time, I am reminded of an old guy in his 90s who I met on a trip out to the former east Germany with my parents. He lived near to my granddad's old house and invited us in for coffee. Shaking his head he told us about the terrible aches and pains he had when he came back from the war - as if the war ended only last month.

I kind of wanted to run up to him and say, 'but darling, the war ended a long, long time ago. You are safe now and everything is going to be okay'. It just felt like such a bizarre experience to meet someone who was talking about the second world war like it happened just a few days ago - and for people who lived through such an ordeal, I guess it could well feel that way.

Well with all these people walking around who have experienced such hardships, you can well and truly realise why Berlin has such a jubilant 'we're free at last!' kind of atmosphere. It's taken a century of struggle but democracy finally rules the roost.

Anyway, here's a link to The Berlin Memory Blog.

This is how he describes his blog:

The beginning of the 21st Century in Berlin may well be remembered for its outpouring of creativity –like Vienna in 1905, New York in the fifties, and Paris in the sixties. The years following the destruction of the Berlin Wall were times of jubilation, the beginning of great urban projects to bring the divided city together.

Creative youth from around the world are arriving en masse to a city that seems to be constantly changing. The feeling that nothing is fixed, that everything could be different tomorrow, brings with it a sense of freedom. The claustrophobia of the European museum city, with its social codes and bourgeois expectations, is largely absent here for those who have already defeated that narrowing of perspective in their own heads.

It may be that the stability of those expectations was thoroughly dislodged, during the years of National Socialism, WW2 destruction, and Cold War division. Like with Benjamin's Angel of History, it is the accumulation of detritus from the past, a world destroyed by a 'wind from paradise', that propels us ever more into the future. We cannot help but stare with embarassment, disgust and amazement at all that was lost. And from that loss, there is also the possibility, and necessity, of creative renewal.

This blog is about places in Berlin that record what has been lost, and gained.

Nightswimming

Okay, nothing to do with Berlin, other than by essence (they love outdoor swimming in Germany... and there's lots of moonlight - every night in fact! lol) but I just heard this song again (LOVE it!) and felt like I had to post it! :)

September's coming soon
I'm pining for the moon
And what if there were two
Side by side in orbit
Around the fairest sun?

Nightswimming deserves a quiet night
I'm not sure all these people understand
It's not like years ago,
The fear of getting caught,
Of recklessness and water
They cannot see me naked
These things, they go away,
Replaced by everyday

You, I thought I knew you
You, I cannot judge
You, I thought you knew me,
This one laughing quietly underneath my breath
Nightswimming

Fooball fever!!

Well the world cup is upon us and Germany are whoop, whoop, whooping their way to football glory! I'm a little bit gutted that I'm not in Berlin right now as I imagine the atmosphere on the street is amaaazing!

A couple of years before I moved to Berlin, I visited during Euro season and the whole football fever atmosphere was one of the things that really made me fall in love with the place.

I'll set the scene: It's a sunny, happy day and inner city Berliners have moved outside to soak up the sunshine and revel in the 'Berlin in the summertime carnival atmosphere'. People are sitting on the pavements outside their apartment blocks in deckchairs, sipping on beer and licking an ice cream. The big game will start later in the evening and someone has the bright idea to move their TV set out onto the pavement so that everyone can enjoy the game together.

They bring out a fogey old 1970s TV set and link it up with an extension cable hanging from a window above. When the game begins, things really start to get good. Initially it's a group of friends gathered with a box of beer, but it's not long before a crowd gathers. People cycling pass suddenly stop in their tracks transfixed at the little TV set. An old man wanders past and is heartily welcomed into the group. Soon random strangers are the best of buddies, all united out in the street over a football match and a fogey old TV set.

Who needs high tech sports bars when you can have a happy street festival in Berlin?

Well that was my memory of Euro2008 anyway (Hmmm, probably got the year wrong there but hey ho...)... Seeing as I'm not in Berlin right now I thought I'd borrow a couple of Facebook comments from a few of my friends on the street! :)

"Berlin is exploding with joy over World Cup win, flags & fireworks & costumes & honking everywhere. Then antifa march and riot police by my apartment..."

"Berlin is going crazy. Fireworks, cars honking, people riding on mopeds with giant 3 meter flags. It's been going on for over an hour now. (Oh, of course in my neighborhood, an anti-fascist/anti-football march with riot police.)"

"As soon as there's a football game featuring Germany, the whole country goes silent. except for during/after the goals/near-goals, but it's still quite nice."

"In case anyone is counting, Germany has scored 4 goals and their opponents zero ever since they became the object of my undivided fan attention. You're welcome...:)"

"Großartig, Deutschland!"

Sooo, semifinals here we come!! I'll be keeping my fingers crossed! :)

Berliners and their dogs

Let me introduce you to Bambi, the resident dog on my street and my favourite in all of Berlin. She belongs to the Vietnamese restaurant on Bergmanstrasse and we'd pass each other on the street every time I left the house.

I'd say, "hi Bambi", and give her a little pat on the head and she'd shoot me a really bored Vicky Pollard stylie "whatever" in return. But despite her Little Britain act, she's actually a genius in disguise with a seemingly good understanding of German, English and Vietnamese.

She's quite well known around Berlin's Kreuzberg neighbourhood and some friends of mine were even discussing once if maybe she would help us with our German prepositions and pronouns - I'm sure she'd have been a great help! ;)

Every day she goes to work with her owner in the restaurant and pretty much just sits there looking cute all day (Berliners are more that happy to have dogs in restaurants - and it always make the meal more interesting!) or heads outside by herself to look at the passers by and dig little holes next to the tree outside the restaurant.

Well all this leads me on to say about how much Berliners love their dogs! And they have to be cute and little - anything about knee height. You see them everywhere - in the shops, cafes, restaurants, taking a stroll in the park...

I went to see a Richard Gere film called Hachiko, about a dog whose owner dies and the dog waits for him at the train station every day for the rest of its life. I saw the film in German, and let me tell you, I have never experienced anything quite like it in my entire movie going history!

People around me were wailing, and I mean WAILING right out loud about this dog. They didn't seem to mind at all if anyone thought this was kind of weird. I've never experienced such an outpouring of grief before at the cinema and I really didn't know whether to laugh at the weird situation or cry about this poor little dog.

Anyway, I'd be interested to know what the reaction to that film was around the world - if it was a quintessentially Berliner reaction or a general one that anyone would have watching Hachiko.

In any case, one thing's for sure - Berliners sure do love their dogs!

Sounds like Berlin

I've been away from Berlin for a few weeks now, so I'm beginning to see things in a nostalgic ahhh Berlin kind of way. I was in LA a couple of weeks ago and heard a jazz singer singing Sam Cooke's Bring it on home to me, a song we sang at the community choir in Berlin. Well it gave me a little Berlin heart flutter, so I though I'd post a couple of songs that remind me of my time to date in Berlin...

The cool kids are crazy about Peter Fox in Germany and foreign expats very quickly learn to love him too. A Berliner born and bred, his trademark is his half paralyzed face that makes him look grumpy-cool. His sound is described as quintessential Berlin summertime music.





These are a couple of songs we sang at the community choir. If Germans are known for one thing, it's probably their raw enthusiasm for anything they do, so just imagine a group of singers standing round in a circle and getting really, really, really into their vocal harmonizing of these songs, and there you have my memory! ;)

Jumping Germany's educational hurdles

My German teacher came to Germany from Eritrea, Africa, when she was 13 and her story is a real tale about triumph over adversity.

Children of immigration in Germany often face the same problem. The German education system divides children from the fifth grade into three different school tiers. These tiers basically determine the rest of that child's life. The bottom school, Hauptschule, primes children for a life of practical, manual work. The middle level school, the Realschule, trains children for slightly better prospects, and the top level school, the Gymnasium, preps kids for university and professional careers.

Children who move to Germany without being able to speak the language often get put into one of the lower two schools without any consideration of the fact that the language is the problem - not the academic skills.

A Polish girl in one of my German classes said a friend of hers from Poland - a straight A-grade student back home - was placed in Hauptschule simply because her German wasn't up to scratch. I guess her future was pretty much screwed because of this.

Anyway, a similar thing happened to my German teacher but she fought tooth and nail for her right to an education.

After escaping Eritrea's war with Ethiopia, she came to Germany at 13 and was promptly placed into hauptschule. Because of the war back home, she hadn't been to school for four years, so her chances to a fair education were pretty narrow at that point.

When she came to Germany, it's fair to say she had a whole lot of catching up to do - not only in terms of education, but also culture. When kids at school talked about how much they loved The Beatles, all she could think was "really? What's so great about this little black insect?"

But one thing she had going for her was a real hunger to learn. After four years of hiding from soldiers and missing out on education, her new life in Germany was a chance to make up for everything - and she wasn't about to give up on her second chance.

So at the age of 13, she studied every hour of the day to learn German and catch up on her school work. Eventually her teachers took note and said, "hey, this kid doesn't speak much German but she has a real knack for maths and she's really keen to learn".

Sooo, eventually they said, "let's give this kid a six month trial period at the Gymnasium". But they also warned her that if she didn't catch up in time, she would be right back to where she started.

So with her six months at Gymnasium, she studied like crazy on her German and school subjects and really started to make progress. However, when the six month trial was up, the teachers held a meeting and told her, "look, you've done really great, and you've tried really hard, but you just didn't improve quickly enough, so we're going to have to send you down to the Realschule".

Well of course she was gutted, and so were the teachers who had worked closely with her in that six months. So after the meeting, one of those teachers called the others back again and said, "look, I really, really think this kid deserves a chance. Give her six more months and let's see how she goes".

So another six months passed and she managed to catch up with her German, catch up on her school subjects and catch up on everything western culture related - a lot of catching up to put it mildly! And, hey presto, she aced everything and was allowed to remain in Gymnasium and eventually get a university education.

So that's the story of how, unusually for children of immigration, she used her own strength of character to climb up through these educational hurdles.

It seems crazy to judge a child at such a young age. Kids change so much between fifth grade and uni age, it seems a shame to dash someone's future based how they achieved at 10 (or there abouts).

Things are starting to change, and the last I heard they were thinking about changing the school system so give more kids a chance to go to university. Kids who go to Realschule can also apply to go to Gymnasium once they graduate, so there is some hope there.

I went to school in Germany at the age of eight myself and couldn't speak a word of German at the time. I was pretty much plonked into school and learned the language firstly just by miming things to other kids to get my point across. Kids learn pretty quickly though, and by the time I returned to the UK six months later I was pretty much fluent (unfortunately I've gone backwards since then! ;). My German cousin also started school in Germany at the age of eight. Coming from Tanzania, she couldn't speak a word of German either and when we were kids she told me that she was asked, "can you swim?" She didn't have a clue what was being said so she just nodded and followed the other kids to the pool. When she got to the pool, with arms flailing, she very quickly learned what the words "can you swim" meant.

I guess kids that age have brains like sponges which makes it very easy to pick things up. However I would hate to imagine how my life would have turned out if my future had been determined based on my academic ability in these six months in Germany, aged eight.

I think the more immigration there is, the more awareness there is about the challenges that kids of immigration face. I'm not saying I'm an expert by any means on the German education system, but I'd hazard a guess that the more chances a child gets from a young age, the better they do in life. I don't think a school system shake-up would necessarily be a bad thing.