World-building in Berlin
Back from an unintentionally long hiatus!
It was either the jet lag, or the 90% humidity, or my cat, plopping onto my chest with paw placed preciously over my mouth, that woke me up at 4am. But awake I am, writing for the first time at my computer in a month.
I can still see the last month of weekends in front of me like a fan of cards; a Passover seder here, a concert at Radio City with my sister there, a graduation over there. Each monumental in its own way, each requiring full presence and attention. Each trip and event, maybe for the first time in my adult life, left undocumented on Instagram and held in a few iPhone photos and in memory between myself and my beloveds only. And because of all that, I did not write. And after a month of not writing, words crawl into the back of my brain—Are you even a writer? I swallow the words back with my coffee and keep writing.
Because what I want to tell you about feels urgent, hopeful. It’s about a city that was the seat of Hitler and the Holocaust, a city that was bombed into splinters, a city that was carved in two, a city that has somehow come out of a century of intense inherited and lived trauma to be the kind of place I write about as a near-future, post-energy-transition, semi-utopian alternate reality.
That may seem like an overpromise, and if you live in Europe or even Berlin, perhaps you’re reading this and scoffing. Those Americans! Fine. But if you’re American like me and are swimming in the same heaviness of pervasive car culture, the shadow of this year’s election, the rift between the super-rich and everyone else, the brittleness of our fractured health care system, and the precarity of surviving; if you feel your nervous system frayed thin with slow hope of repair; if you read authors like Ursula to try to visualize alternatives because surely, there must be a better way of doing this; let me tell you, there are better ways of doing this. Many, many societies, in Europe and elsewhere, are problem-solving better ways of living and America does not have all the answers. Far from it. With a week to settle into the rhythm of Berlin, I felt shards of promise, little puzzle pieces of possibility, scattered throughout our days that said, yes, here’s what hope could look like.
I’m not talking about Berlin’s sustainability initiatives, of which I know next to nothing. I’m talking about its social fabric that is visible and tactile, even to a visitor. Wide streets, designed, perhaps originally, for military parades, re-imagined with bike infrastructure on every sidewalk and a deeply networked public transportation system. No gates at the U-Bahn to check commuters getting on and off the train, either; the buses, trams and trains function on an honor system, more or less. A green city, with old trees and overgrown, unkempt gardens sharing space with apartments, public parks, businesses. Policies that compensate citizens for recycling, so everyone leaves glass bottles beside public trash cans for others to collect and return for cash. The week we were there, the city announced the installation of lockers for the unhoused population of Kreuzberg so they could safely store their valuables.
What could look like if we designed urban spaces that centered people (not cars) and common space (especially green space)?
And then there’s the issue of class. The cost of living is pretty affordable, with a nice meal rarely costing us more than €45 (and research into rent confirms a more affordable cost of living, too). Unlike my experience in New York, LA, London, or Paris, we rarely saw a “visible rich,” especially a kind of rich who are paying a lot to look like they’re not. On an afternoon spent in some of the wealthier neighborhoods of Mitte and Prenzlauer Berg, we didn’t run into streets lined with shops, inviting us in to spend money as a form of entertainment. A friend asked me to describe “the fashions” of Berlin, but even those evade a neat summary. Comfortable, thrifted, diverse, expressive. Very few people looking like they have too much and very few looking like they have too little.
What could look like if we put a cap on wealth accumulation and ensured that everyone had their foundational needs met?
There’s the issue of Berlin’s history, both unavoidable and invisible, all at once. I say “unavoidable” because the monuments, the scraps of wall, the museums are all there. Stolpersteine embedded into sidewalks across the city ensure that while anyone can avoid a visit to the Holocaust Memorial, they can’t avoid small reminders that a Jew lived here, and this is their name, and here is where and when they were murdered. I loved seeing Stolpersteine and stopped at each one we passed to read the names and acknowledge their presence before we moved on. I once read a New Yorker article about Stolpersteine as a model for Americans to consider as we acknowledge our dark histories of slavery and lynchings, instead of arguing over every statue and plaque. (Can’t find the link, sorry.)
But Berlin’s history can be “invisible,” too. It’s not in your face in the way the history of Paris or Rome is. The city isn’t precious about itself. Perhaps this is because so much of the city was bombed to the ground in 1945. Perhaps this is because the city has had to radically reimagine itself with each passing generation.
What could it look like to acknowledge a traumatic history without being ensnared by it?
As we moved throughout the city, we observed common space, green space, bridges and bars where friends were enjoying each other’s company at all hours, drinking a beer outside, reading a book, taking a nap. I’m talking about parks filled up with people, like crowds of beachgoers on the shore in the middle of July. There was so much visible leisure, at all hours.
And you know what there wasn’t? Practically anyone on their phones. I remember this from my first visit to Berlin in 2018, and I saw it again now. You see folks on their phones while riding the U-Bahn, sure. But individuals and groups strolling through streets or chilling at the park? Wholly absent of people staring down at a tiny computer in their hands. No influencers trying to capture a video, no one taking selfies, and no one doom-scrolling. It’s freeing to be reminded in so obvious a way that our relationship with our phones, our addiction to our phones and social media, is a learned, cultural behavior. It is not an inevitable result of technological advancement.
What could it look like to spend more leisure time with friends, outdoors, in common spaces, away from our devices?
Anyway, now we’re back home from our belated honeymoon and have a long weekend to reset before re-emerging into our normal routine. Have you spent time in Berlin, or in a place that sparked creative thinking for you? I would love to hear about it.
What I’m reading
Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck, O Caledonia by Elspeth Barker, White Heat by M. J. McGrath, The Familiar by Leigh Bardugo, and a manuscript from a friend.
In Berlin, at Saint George’s in Prenzlauer Berg, I picked up Siblings by Brigitte Reimann and Oval by Elvia Wilk. A book for Berlin’s past and a book for Berlin’s future.
What I read
Slow Down by Kohei Saito (a good thought-starter on de-growth, but ideas feel woefully thin in their theoretical-ness), The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak (lovely, painful, feels all-too-relevant to Gaza, but plot and character development were a little unbelievable for me), Funny Story by Emily Henry (a welcome diversion, but not as good as Beach Read), and Berlin by Bea Setton (one of the only contemporary novels set in Berlin I could find, with a darkly hilarious and unnervingly unwell protagonist, and not much happens but I couldn’t put it down).
A helpful thing
We drank so many delicious, bubbly beverages in Berlin. One of my favorites was this rhubarb soda. I’m going to try to recreate it with a rhubarb shrub this weekend, following this recipe.
On our last day, we also had this perfect grapefruit cake, not too sweet, at &YOU in Kreuzberg. Trying to recapture some of the Berlin magic by baking a grapefruit cake (maybe this one from Smitten Kitchen with a quark frosting) or a sour cherry streuselkuchen from Luisa Weiss (sorry, behind a paywall, but it’s also in her book, Classic German Baking).
