Berlin

“We’re poor, but sexy,” says Berlin’s mayor.

I wouldn’t say that Berlin is neither poor nor sexy. It’s fascinating and dynamic.
In fact, I think I am so drawn to the city because it embodies, as much as any place of concrete and human congregation can, the division of the capitalist and communist worlds that was the fundamental theme in my childhood.

I grew up in the US, having immigrated from the former USSR at the age of 3. Our family got phone calls in the middle of the night from our relatives in the Soviet Union. They either did not have a telephone or their phones were bugged by the KGB and they had to go to the post office to make calls. They could only call when it was the middle of the night in California because that was when the Soviet post office was open. Mail sent to them by my family was read by the KGB censors. My dad’s relatives were punished by losing their jobs or by being demoted at work because we left Communist wonderland for Capitalist hell. Being Russian in the Cold War US was no treat either. Kids made fun of me in school for being a “red”. All in all, I felt like there was a huge divide in my life made by the political demarcation of the communist and capitalist worlds.

Even though I visited Berlin last year when it was cold (around 9C or 48F) and raining, I took a walking tour of the remains of the Berlin Wall, Reichstag, Brandenburg Gates, Checkpoint Charlie, Holocaust Memorial and other major sites. This year, it wasn’t as cold but my injured left ankle and blistered right foot made walking difficult and painful at times, but I still walked as much as I could to soak in the history. I stood for as long as I could reading the placards by Checkpoint Charlie that explained the history of the divided city but my feet grew tired very quickly and I couldn’t finish reading them all. I will have to come back there again.

I didn’t expect to have such a strong emotional reaction to Berlin, especially since I had avoided Germany like the plague for many years and couldn’t stand the sounds of the German language. (Having both lived and traveled extensively in most of Europe, it was about time for me to visit Germany, but I had no desire to see the country until I was drawn to attend the Frankfurt Book fair in 2007 for the first time.)

Having traveled so much in both the Communist and post-communist world, I was magnetized to visit countries that were part of my past, part of the economic order that made my parents leave to seek a better life in the US. (Albania, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Slovenia, North Korea and some parts of the former USSR are still left to be visited.)

But, I felt like Berlin literally resembled my divided worlds between East and West. The ugly and dilapidated old GDR buildings still mark the grey skyline of the city and the West and gentrified Eastern buildings sparkle with new paint and money, albeit many without elevators (lifts).

Not only does the city show the divergent political systems that have dominated post war history, it’s also a symbol of the inability of neither economic order to properly provide for sustainable development.

It’s no surprise of course that as a result of all the construction in Berlin after the reunification of East and West Germany that the city is broke, as is most of the rest of the world. The merge of the two systems did give a boost to East Berlin and joy to separated families, but it drained the city’s economy. Berlin is one of the least expensive big cities in Europe and it has a high unemployment rate. Many unemployed people can be seen drinking beer on the public transportation system.

While I was there, the people I met were always talking about the financial crisis and were even thinking of taking their money out of the banks. I remembered my economic history lessons about hyperinflation in Germany between the two World Wars when people had to bring a cart ful of money to buy a loaf of bread. I hoped I wouldn’t see this again on my nightly news.

The capitalist system’s lack of controls for greed and irresponsibility have led us into the economic crisis that we are in. The world of Marx’s and Engels’ economic philosophies, as interpreted by Politburo cronies, gave people very little to live on and subjected everyone to fear. Neither worked. The city is without money.

But to me, Berlin is not poor. It’s rich in history and lessons for us all. Sexy, perhaps. Maybe I’ll explore the sexy angle next year!