Berlin to the Banks of the Elbe and Back

Happy Easter to everyone who is celebrating Easter in any way. I have just come back to Speyer today to be with my grandparents for the weekend. Last week started with a one-way ticket to Berlin, more-or-less on a whim and a need to get out and see some things on my own.

Now, only a week-and-a-half later and I still have to spend time refelcting on the things I've seen and done, (as is the case with any trip), and the more you see and do, the more you realize all the things you've missed. But I'll focus on the things I didn't miss.


Well I've got to say that being a country-boy of sorts, I still always approach cities with a some-what "duck-and-cover" mentality, but also a guitar in hand. It takes a while for this little ground hog to venture far from it's hole. But when one has no "home hole" per se, you're left with no choice but to venture. This is when a place reveals its many faces. Needless to say Berlin has many. Take the one's with piercings and sad eyes half-covered by dirty pink mohawks for instance. These are the punks begging in subways and outside grocery stores. They have well-trained german-sheperds at their side and their expressions are more forlorn than the first time they drew the white "A" of anarchy on a cold brick wall I can imagine. The pan-handling has only come about in the past 5 years or so I'm told. A stroke of desperation. I guess it makes sense that there would be a greater concentration of absolute die-hard anarchists in this country's capitol considering the recent history. This city has seen first-hand the effects of an iron hand and it’s no surprise that a culture was born that will forfeit everything to live-up to ideals that give the finger to all forms of capitalism, power, and control. These may be assumptions however. But one can’t help but speculate when you see the thousands of square feet of graffiti scattered about this city. There were a few times when I just rode the S-bahn train like a tour-bus watching the city unravel itself before me in a scarf of graffiti. More evidence of an underground culture bursting at the seems with the need for expression. On abandoned buildings, concrete barriers, juxtaposed against buildings that are hundreds of years older.

That’s a whole other realm altogether; the juxtaposition of old and new. Another view of what history is, and just how fast it can change. It was just one year before I came into this world that champagne bottles and sledge hammers where brought out to mark the end of an era and the fall of a barrier so symbolic in everyone’s minds. Now you can go to Potsdammer Platz amongst the futuristic glass and steel and take a picture beside a man in Russian military uniform in front of one of the last remaining pieces of the great wall. Already a museum piece, It remains an obvious divide between good and bad in our minds. But how do you tell a child the difference between right and wrong? This question is evident when I talk with a woman who was just a child wearing the school uniform and appropriately coloured tunic, swearing allegiance to the state. Then one morning she learned she didn’t have to wear the tunic on Wednesdays. In fact they where all wrong and everything from before was bad, so just try to forget it. Except maybe free education, we’ll bring that back, and possibly music lessons, and child-care, etc. There are many difficult questions to ask when we find ourselves living history, and being part of change.

Speaking of change, I must let you know of my first positive experience with modern architecture. It was in the Berlin Jewish Museum. Designed by Daniel Libeskin, every inch of the new part was well-imagined. The building consists of intersecting wings and lines. Each main segment has a theme; Exhile, Holocaust, Continuation. They also rise and fall and intersect on different planes. The Continuation wing rises up stone steps to (ironically) some of the oldest Jewish history exhibits. At the end of the Holocaust wing is a large steel door opening into the Holocaust Tower. This tower is an unheated concrete tower with two of the walls meeting at a triangular point on one end. High up in the tower is a slim opening to the outside through which shines a dim and far-off light and one can hear the traffic and city sounds from outside. In the corner directly below the sliver of light is complete darkness. Sometimes it’s hard to look at a museum piece encased in glass and feel any form of context. But standing in the cold Holocaust tower, feelings are made concrete. This was so all throughout the museum. There were windows and mirrors brilliantly places which gave so many vantage points. One room was a war memorial. Another large concrete room with 10, 000 thick, steel faces scattered on the floor. People were free to walk upon the faces, and they did. But with every step came the clang of steel-on-steel. A disturbing symphony that made some people cringe as they heard the sound of each face reverberate. The message was clear, and every person could live and experience that message. Later in the Continuation wing, one could look through a small window way up in the war memorial room. The sounds were inaudible and the faces indiscernible, but the whole picture was right there, crystal-clear. This is what history should be. Stories that gives us windows and mirrors into what was, what is, and what could be.
One window into what was (and in my opinion “what is”) was the silent film “Metropolis” which I saw in the Babylon theatre. A great film from 1927 newly released with footage previously lost. The film is quite famous and was made with one of the largest budgets of its time. But like many silent movies, the most brilliant part was the music, performed live by an apparently famous silent film pianist. My first live silent film experience an absolute joy.

Well this is turning out to be quite long and I haven’t even got to Dresden yet. I’ll try to give a quick peek at some random sites:
Sigeuans, Gypsies… they play in the streets and subways. Dark eyes, bright smiles, and lightning fingers that rip impossible strips off violins and accordions. I feel like Monica looking at Menonites.
There is the canal-like river Spree that makes its way under old bridges and past the grandeur of Museum Island. Upon it floats old wooden barges designed like boats-in-bottles. The masts and rigging must be able to fold down to fit under the low-laying bridges. Over these bridges ride bicycles carrying hipsters and lovers, and a musician towing a double bass in a wagon, and a man in a suit and some supplies from the hard-ware store strapped to the frame. And I can’t forget some of the most hard-core bike couriers I’ve ever seen. With dirty capris and scull caps and the unmistakable courier-bags, they make pylons out of street-cars and loud Spanish school groups.
I tried busking for the first time. First under the false information that you don’t need a license I got kicked out of the subway. I tried some Jack Johnson in the schloss park, got myself in a Japanese photo album and made enough money for lunch. Had so much fun playing guitar that I did it again on the train all the way to Dresden. It was an empty car, a sunny day, and open eastern countryside. I went to Dresden more-or-less on a whim as well knowing basically nothing about the city. I imagined the new houses and buildings popping out of the ground like the image of the war in reverse in Kurt Vonnegut’s “Slaughterhouse Five.” There’s nothing quite like going to a place you have no clue about, turning a corner, and being hit with an absolutely stunning and surprising view. Despite the fire-bombing of ’45 that turned much of the city to molten, some has been saved and much rebuilt. Beautiful old buildings like the Frauenkirche and Katolischekirche are brilliantly reconstructed with bits and pieces of what was left behind. Concrete and stone band-aids fill the gaps between the original dark stones that overlook the flooded and grand Elbe river.
Amongst the beautiful buildings and cobblestone is something I haven't yet seen in any of the very few places I've seen in Germany; Abandonment. Houses gutted and burnt-out left as the backboard for bleached concert posters and broken glass. There are old factories behind broken brick walls left as a memory. Amongst them is a huge dome tower, standing like the ghost of an industrial cathedral.
Oh my, this is long, apologies. I should probably let you go. But I wish you all a happy Easter. Next-time will be shorter, I promise.
Bis dann,Tcheuss

First Landing

Well I thought I'd begin again with this whole "blog thing." I was reading Liam's blog of his adventures in Chile and decided it's nice to hear what people are up to. It'll be a tad harder to see what I'm up to seeing as I left my camera behind. I'll try my best with words and whatever else I can scrounge together. Seeing as some of the places around are pretty well-known, it's easy to let other tourists do the camera work for you. So here I cheated...

What you see: The Altpörtel, (old portal) one of the last bits of the old medieval wall that surrounded the city of Speyer. Eventually the constant game of ping-pong between French and German occupation of the city took its toll and much was destroyed.

What you don't see: Just how many people ride bikes here. It's wonderful. Not just intense hordcores with spandex and slick helmets, but regular business suits and stylish teenagers and old grandmothers and grandfathers.


I guess I might as well go from the beginning. It all started with a $400 one-way ticket to Brussels on Jet Airways, an Indian airline which I had previousely never heard of. The entire airport/airplane experience was rather a typical and mind numbing one. I've always been under the impression that sitting in a small and badly ventilated desk droor for 8 hours, hitting yourself over the head with a brick, and eating some stale bread does about as much for the mental and physical health as a plane-ride. This time was an especially bizzare experience though. Whilst strapped into the coffin-like seat surounded by eiry blue lights and having my senses accosted by terrible Bollywood films, (and some very strange curry I might add) I really got an uncomfortable feeling of being in some science fiction movie. No person should ever make a transatlantic voyage in one night, thousands of feet in the air, and feel colostrophobic and distracted from reality. Too wierd. I have to try to avoid that in the future.

Anyhow, that fealing ended when I got off the train in my mother's and grandparents' home town of Speyer. On the Rhine, a tad south of Mannheim. I have been here a couple times in the past with my family. So it was refreshing to see the familiar church towers popping into view.

Speyer is now celebrating its 900 year Jubileum. The history of this place goes back a good 1500 years. Most of it can be found in the heads of my grandparents, and they'll gladly let you know any piece of it you wish to hear. It's hard to get anywhere fast with my grandparents because they can't help but give a tour of where you are. Everything from when buildings were burned and rebuilt to the poets and bishops that inhabited them.

It truelly does feel different to be in a place were acounted history spans back further than 200 years. When standing by the shore of north Georgian Bay, there's a much different sense of where you are, and the thought of empires and wars are not under your feet.

Amongst the history lessons my grandparents tell are the stories of their own lives, and these are the stories that are so close and give persective on life and change and how history is really made. It's one thing looking at pictures in history books. But the date, November 9th, 1938 meens alot more when you're sitting drinking a little schnapps and listening to your grandfather describe the feeling when he and his brothers and parents looked out over the town and saw the smoke coming from the synogogue. Yesterday I bought groceries in the new complex that was built in the synogogue's place. Or how my great-grandmother threw the anti-semetic school textbook in the fire in rage the first time her son brought one home. The teacher said nothing however, for Frau Ruppert was well-known and respected in town.

Just today Oma and I were having a discussion about the presence of German nationalism in German society today. The question being, do we continue rubbing out nationalistic slogans on statues and removing pre-war German literature from the cericulum and trying to drown all recolection of a stained past, or do we put it out in the open for all to see and discuss and understand how, and why history took its course?



As for the present, it's been spent alot on biking on the farmers roads between little villages and in the paths in the woods by the Altrhein. The Rhein river was dredged and straightened to ease the passage of large numbers of barges up and down the large river. Left over from this grand operation are the horseshoe curves that used to be the banks of the more meandering Old Rhine, or Altrhein.

What you see: A small bit of lawn and moat from the Schwetzingen Schloss Garten on left, a wing of the rectangular and recently restored MoscheeGarten on right.
What you don't see: The woman in the Arberetum behind the Orangery, she's hugging a pine, and she probably thinks no one sees her.

The other day I plodded around the biking paths and small farmers roads until I came to the Schwetzingen Schloss. It is an 18th century palace with quite an astounding and posh grounds. Here I've attached a couple pics, (once again, internet found). It is one of those show-off places that really does have something to show-off. I supose that was a favorite past-time of royalty in years past. Every turn there's something new. The prim French garden, the maze-like and half forested English garden behind. The Orangery, basically a green-house were they grow all sorts of exotic trees and plants including different citrus trees. There is the Arboretum. The Mosque, and the old ruins behind the small lake. Many kinds of different birds. Herons, geese and ducks of all sorts, peacocks, etc. A not-so-secret secret garden I supose. I sat on a bench and ate some bread and meat, and got rather lost on my why home. It's not a bad way to go about things really. Head out with all the time and intention of getting lost, succesfully accomplishing your goal, and finding something new in the process.

Anyhow, I best be going. I am organizing getting lost for another week or so, in Leipzig or Berlin. There's an alternative community I've heard is interesting to visit near Berlin, and a friend I can't get ahold of in Leipzig. I am heading to a WWOOFing place in Weikersheim-Nassau. It used to be an old Monestary, and now is an organic farm. It should be interesting, but I won't be going until after Easter. So I've got some days to kill... or to live really... odd expression. Anyhow, until next time,

Tscheuss