Part
1 of a probably regular series of just lovely things I've seen and
taken a picture of in Berlin, from skylines to street art to
interesting things found in bar toilets. And everything in between.
Enjoy.
A day or two after Bowie returned to whatever fabulous planet he came from, the road where Bowie lived during his 3 year stay here was renamed. During his time here, he made 3 remarkable albums: Low (1977), Heroes (1977), and Lodger (1979).
My favourite story about Bowie's time in Berlin is about the inspiration behind those Heroes lyrics. The couple who 'kissed by the wall' was Tony Visconti, his producer at the time, and backup singer Antonia Maass, who would kiss by the Berlin wall, not far from one of the the gun turrets ('the guns shot over our head'), in front of Bowie as he looked out of the Hansa Studio window during a smoke break.
Dear Rosa was executed by order of the ruling German social democrats in January 1919. Tools.
Her last known words are: '“Order prevails in Berlin!” You foolish lackeys! Your “order” is built on sand. Tomorrow the revolution will “rise up again, clashing its weapons,” and to your horror it will proclaim with trumpets blazing: I was, I am, I shall be!'
Yep. My English language college was on this very road.
You do get a better class of graffiti on the toilet walls in Berlin.
Spotted at a music festival last September when Merkel was starting to open up the German builders to Syrian refugees.
Wonderful murals on the wall of my local cafe. l-r John Lennon, Edward Snowden, Bob Marley (I think), not sure who that is, Amy Winehouse, and Malcolm X.
A flyer from Die Linke, the 'Left' party. Basically says 'Refugees welcome! Nazis out!'
Interestingly, the Left party have their roots in the ruling party in the old Soviet East Germany. When the Wall came down, they regrouped, brought more lefty groups into a coalition, and relaunched.
Spotted this very random but extraordinary scene in the Berlin suburbs on a train ride into the city. A big peace sign there, and to the left is a store mannequin wearing a Team Edward t-shirt. As in, Edward Snowden. Not bloody Twilight.
It ain't so far away, now. The EU referendum
approaches, and from here it looks very much like nobody in Britain
is pulling their fingers out to make the case for the UK staying in
the EU.
They (the Out campaign) have Boris, Gove and Duncan-Smith, Farage, George Galloway - like or loathe them, high-profile and influential politicians one and all - most of
the Tory front and back bench, and most of the rabid rightwing press.
Bear this in mind, people voting for Brexit: these lunatics and
sycophants are the unbearable people you are standing with!
And
those main players campaigning for Britain to remain? Cameron and
Osbourne. The two politicians front centre of the campaign to remain
are right now about as popular as an offshore tax advisor.
Who
else? Corbyn and Labour – the party and the leader that could make
such a difference here? Warm but generally disinterested support at
best, so much so that a pretty huge 40% of people polled have no idea where Corbyn stands on the issue. In fact, Corbyn has previously been a pretty ardent Eurosceptic,
having voted against EC membership in the 1975 referendum, the
Maastricht Treaty in 1993 and the Lisbon Treaty in 2008. Labour are officially in favour of staying, but can we expect the party to grow a backbone and put their collective shoulder to the Remain campaign. I certainly hope so, but, sadly, I suspect not.
Nobody
will rightly trust the Lib Dems for a long, long time, and by bringing their toxic brand to the Remain campaign will likely damage it in much the way their support poisoned the Yes campaign in the 2011 AV referendum. And while the
Greens are the only UK Parliamentary party unashamedly making the
case to remain, their influence is limited.
Leaving
the EU would be a disaster for the UK. But because an utter lack of
support for the Remain campaign by non-odious politicians, my fear is
that we are about to sleepwalk through the EXIT door in a cloud of
'meh'.
The
people that want us out are ferocious in their decision and belief,
and will march determinedly in unison to the voting booth in June.
But those who want us to remain, or who are generally happy with the
status quo, are those least likely to vote. With the country seized
by a collective apathy, turnout is unlikely to be particularly high
at the referendum. Which would mean that the UK could be about to
catastrophically leave the EU on the say of a tiny minority of misinformed, lied to, or swivel-eyed Tory and UKIP voters.
Daily
Mail readers, basically.
So,
Britain, is this who you want deciding our future? Ridiculous, isn't
it? For goodness sake, sort it out, yeah?
Four months after throwing my toys out of the pram and emigrating to Berlin, I am finding the German language confounding and frustrating, but as often wonderful and hilarious.
Confounding and frustrating because...well, where to start?:
the rearranging of sentences when a modal (auxiliary) verb is used in conjunction with a normal verb;
some verbs just straight up splitting in two, with one half bogging off to the end of a sentence without warning;
making nouns male, female or neutral (so, Germany, when you can tell me why a table has a gender – tisch: male – but a young girl doesn't – mädchen: neutral, then I will tell you why we don't pronounce the b in thumb),
using half a dozen different words for go, depending on to where one is going (a person's house, a bakery, some mountains...)...
And as for dative, genitive, accusative and nominative cases and when to use them, they can just get right in the sea!
'Just follow the rules' they say. But, of course, there are as many exceptions to any one rule as there are adherents.
The problem is that, by even the natives' admission, German grammar is so vast and unwieldy. My old German language teacher (old as in, a few months ago) compared English and German as two triangles, one normal, and one inverted. The English language is constructed like the latter: a small amount of grammar to learn, but hung on that is a ponderous and voluminous level of vocabulary.
German, on the other hand, is the base-heavy triangle: a buttload of basic grammar to learn, and then a more limited amount of vocab on top.
In Mark Twain's brilliant and witty lament The Awful German Language, he decries the density of German, and lambasts the labyrinthine complexity of its grammar:
My philological studies have satisfied me that a gifted person ought to learn English (barring spelling and pronouncing) in thirty hours, French in thirty days, and German in thirty years. It seems manifest, then, that the latter tongue ought to be trimmed down and repaired. If it is to remain as it is, it ought to be gently and reverently set aside among the dead languages, for only the dead have time to learn it.
And what is most fascinating is that there is such a dialectic gulf across Germany that someone speaking Bavarian German would struggle to make him or herself understood in Berlin, so vast is the country. Germany is made up of lots of previously independent regions; the unified German state, more or less that we know today, has only been in existence for some 200 years or so, which accounts for the wildly varying dialects.
But
I digress.
It's clear that me and German grammar aren't getting along terribly well. But
German vocabulary, on the other hand, is outstanding.
English
& German – 1500 years of separation
English is a Germanic language at its root. In about the 5th Century, after the Romans sodded off, the British Isles were colonised by settlers and invaders from what is now north west Germany and Holland, bringing with them what would become the Old English language and dialect (of Beowulf fame). In the 6th Century, Christianity arrived on our shores, infusing the fledgling Anglo-Saxon with latin flourishes, and not long after that, the Vikings arrived from Scandinavia all raping and a-pillaging. They, too, added to the burgeoning new language.
However, the second most profound effect on the English language came, 500
years after the arrival of the Angles, Saxons and Jutes, from our old friends from France: 1066 and all that. William the Conqueror brought with
him French and England became a dual-language
country; the common-or-garden proles continued to speak in the
same Germanic (and viking) dialect, while royalty, the aristocracy and the inbred now spoke
the new fashionable French and Latin language.
Even
after the French were finally seen off from Albion after the 100 years war in the 14th (and 15th) Century, the Latin and French influences in English remained and happily jumped into bed with the
Germanic dialect to eventually become the one glorious language, and it's been growing and evolving ever since. I think it is this mongrel DNA that allows
the English to absorb so many other cultures and languages along the
way, and also its flexibility lends itself to being co-opted by other
distant lands and people for their own uses (76 different global varieties of English, at the last count!).
Consequently,
one of the many curiosities of having these odd bedfellows in the
language is that we have ended up with two words or phrases – one
Germanic: straightforward, logical and to the point, and one Latin:
usually just one word summing up the Germanic phrase – for much the
same thing.
My
favourite examples:
A
book that you hold in your hand that gives instructions
Germanic:
handbook
Latin:
manual
To
leave home for a holiday
Germanic:
go abroad/take a trip
Latin:
travel
To
help
Germanic:
give a hand
Latin:
assist
To
eat
Germanic:
break bread
Latin:
dine
And
now, here in Berlin, with an unbridled etymologic joy that is only
bettered by the next discovery, in learning German I am discovering
the same searing, unshakeable Germanic logic that built the sturdy
foundations of English.
Here's
what I mean:
The
fridge: der Kühlschrank.
Literally means 'the
cold cupboard'.
The
wardrobe: der Kleiderschrank.
Literally, 'the clothes
cupboard'.
The
vacuum: der Staubsauger.
Literally, 'the
dust sucker'.
The
kettle: der Wasserkocher.
Literally, 'the water
cooker'.
The
aeroplane: das Flugzeug.
Literally, 'the flying
thing'.
The
car: das
Fahrzeug. Literally,
'the driving thing'.
The
watch:
die
Armbanduhr.
Literally, ''the
armband clock'.
The
ambulance: der
Krankenwagen. Literally,
'the sick van'.
Gloves:
– Handschuhe. Literally, 'hand shoes'.
Then
there's the wonderfully lyrical:
The
lightbulb:die Glühbirne.
Literally, 'theglow pear'.
The
turtle:die
Schildkröte. Literally,
'the shield toad'.The
headlamps/lights: der
Scheinwerfer. Literally,
'the shine thrower'.
And then there's:
Arsehole (as in, 'You arsehole!'). Literally, the 'the arse violin'.
But
the awesomeness doesn't stop there. I've discussed compound nouns in
a previous blog post – the practice of slamming a bunch of words
together to create one word which, more often than not, provides
concise and direct language to a familiar abstract or concept for
which an English speaker would need a paragraph to describe.
For
instance, the most common German compound noun that we use in English describes the concept of laughing at the
glorious misfortune of others: Schadenfreude.
My
other favourites (so far):
Treppenwitz
How
many times does this happen? When you have a chance encounter with an
attractive person of the opposite sex, or get into an argument with
someone, then the best jokes, lines, and comebacks always occur to
you sometime afterwards? That’s the Treppenwitz.
It’s the joke that comes to your mind on the way down the stairs
after talking to your neighbour in the hallway two floors up.
Literal
meaning: Staircase joke
Fernweh
That
feeling of wanting to be somewhere else. It’s kind of like a
reverse homesickness; a longing for a place that isn’t where you
are right now.
Literal
meaning: Distance
pain
Kummerspeck
When
a relationship ends or during other times of sadness, anger, or
worry, it’s common to put on a few pounds of Kummerspeck.
What it means is the excess weight put on by emotional overeating. So
when you find yourself on the couch watching “Bridget Jones’
Diary” with a tub of ice cream, you are in fact feeding your grief
bacon.
Literal
meaning: Grief bacon
Lebensmüde
This
word literally means being tired of life and was used to describe the
dramatic and soul-crushing emotional agony of young Romantic poets.
Nowadays lebensmüde is
what you call your friends when they are attempting something
especially stupid and possibly life threatening. Most people in fail
videos on YouTube suffer from latent Lebensmüdigkeit.
Literal
meaning: Life tired
Erklärungsnot
Erklärungsnotis
a state shared by cheating spouses, lying politicians, and school
children without their homework alike. It’s what you find yourself
in when put on the spot without a sufficient explanation or excuse
for something you have done or failed to do.
And,
in a language of rough edges and jagged light, here are a few of my
favourite beautiful-sounding words to soothe:
Schmetterling
- butterfly
Gummistiefeln
– rubber boots
Blumen
- flowers
Pfefferminze
– peppermint
As
a keen lover of language, every day new discoveries of German brings
so much joy and hilarity, often to the total bemusement of my German
friends. My German language learning is coming along, then. Slowly, mind, but coming along. I've more or less
given up learning straight grammar now, preferring instead to learn
the language, as it were, on the shop floor, or just out and about in Berlin. Which, honestly, is so much more
enjoyable.
He's
my puppet alter ego – basically made up of all the pop cultural
references that wove together my childhood. He talks much like Terry
Jones' Mandy, Brian's mother from Life of Brian, only with a
scouse accent, loves curries, and isn't even the best drummer in the
Beatles.
Ringo
is also my English teaching buddy.
Now,
as many who have met me for even a few minutes knows, I really have
no time for children. Odd little things with nothing interesting to
say. I will very often walk in the polar opposite direction if I
suspect that I'm likely to share some kind of public space with one
of them. Horrible things. Like Agatha Trunchbull, I'm glad I never
was one.
So,
it may come as something of a surprise to learn that as of last week I'm teaching English now to small groups of Kindergarten
children around Berlin. Well, me and Ringo are.
I
had my first class in a Kindertagesstätte
(literally, 'children's day place'. Berliners call Kitas
what the rest of Germany calls Kindergartens) in deepest east Berlin.
My pupils that night: four of these little autonomous people called
Jerry, Frija, Davinia and little Lenn, the loon.
I'm
working for OskarLearnt Englisch,
a really wonderful little company that teaches German children
English through play and games. Their teaching methods are so much
fun, for both learner and teacher, and the company itself provides
brilliant support for its teachers – something I'm learning isn't
always the case with language centres. Their teachers meet once a
month for a general chat, drink free beer, and provide mutual
support, not just in teaching but, as we're mostly recent new
arrivals from the old country, about the realities of making a life
in Berlin.
I'm
also teaching English to an amazing Italian-speaking Swiss chap via
Skype twice a week, which never fails to be a learning experience for
both of us. Pietro is an innovator and inventor, writes classical
music on his piano, and is just an all-round good egg. His current project is creating super-efficient batteries that stores
renewably-produced energy. So, obviously, me and him get on just
fine.
Just
this week I've also been hired by a company called Inlingua, a
massive language training organisation with, by all account, 309
centres in 35 countries spread across 5 continents. Which is quite
exciting. I met the head of teaching last week – a hippy from
America who left the US in 2003 because of George Bush. Given my
reasons for leaving the UK, we immediately had something in common
:-)
Here's
the update, in the proverbial:
As
I wrote in an earlier blog, I'm working 30 minimum wage hours a week,
from 8.00-14.00 every day, in the Kirondo warehouse. Even though it's
minimum wage, this still pays my monthly rent, travel card and phone
bill and more, and because I have a job that pays over 500Euros a
month, it also pays for my health insurance.
I
then have the rest of the afternoon and evening to dedicate to
building my teaching career, which in just a few short weeks is
showing green shoots of life.
The
ambition, of course, is to teach enough through the week that allows
me to jettison Kirondo.
To
that end, English teaching isn't that lucrative a job in Berlin
(seems that every British wonk here, with or without qualifications,
is have a crack at it). Also, on top of the aforementioned monthly
essentials, without steady employment I would suddenly have to pay my
own health insurance, at an eye-watering 180 EUROS a month.
Freelancing
To
build an ESL (English as a Second Language) career, one must be a
self-employed Freelance teacher. Here's my website, if you're interested. You are then
hired by various language organisations for a set teaching contract,
signed between the customer and the language centre, either in the
college itself with students or, more likely, onsite with the company
or Kita that provides the students.
The
average pay for an ESL teacher in Berlin is about 16 E/h, although
Oskar Learnt Englisch pays 20 E/h. An ESL teacher can command
more in other German cities; elsewhere in Germany, demand outstrips
supply – every bugger wants comes to Berlin.
And,
of course, as a freelance you need to pay your own tax, so remember
to put away about 23% of everything you earn through teaching to pay
the annual tax bill.
Taking
all of that into account, I will need to work about 6 hours a day,
Mon-Fri, teaching (that's not including traveling, prep and marking
time, before you think about breaking out the invisible tiny
violins). That's 120 hours of teaching a month, or 30 hours a week.
So far, I'm teaching 5 hours a week.
So,
you know, getting there.
On
top of that I'm also living up to my usual life motto of 'In for a
penny...', and have applied to be on the board of the English
Language Teachers Association of Berlin and Brandenburg (ELTABB).
Starting
over
It's
a strange and surreal feeling, after 15 years in one career, to be
entirely starting over: new career, new country, new language, new
friends, new priorities, new direction – everything unknown and
everything terrifying/exciting (funny how those two make such
comfortable bedfellows).
In
weaker moments, slaving away in the warehouse, I wonder what on earth
I'm doing; away from my home and family, away from my friends and
everything comfortable and familiar, away from a life and a mildly
successful, modestly well-paid career that I'd spent the best part of
two decades building, away from my beautiful, brilliant girlfriend...
But
then, when I'm sitting on the U-Bahn and a German rock kid is telling
me about the best indie clubs in the city, or drinking a beer in the Stadion An der Alter Försterei stands with the 1. FC Union Berlin Englisch crowd, or
having adorable German kinders using me as a climbing frame while
we're playing games, and I think, actually, 'Ich bin ein Berliner.
F*ck yeah! I'm just starting over.'
A
few weeks ago, as part of my occasional series 'Shit to look at in
Berlin'*, I recently visited the abandoned Besucherbergwerk
F60 mine in Lausitz, and spent a productive few hours on a lengthy tour in, on
and up the 3000 tonne, 780-wheeled, 27MW powered, 700m long and 70m
high overburdened conveyor bridge, the "Liegender
Eiffelturm der Lausitz",
or, literally, the 'Fallen Eiffel Tower of Lausitz.
The
huge craney thing in that there picture there underneath.
We
travelled there from the mainline station on a specially-commissioned
Schienenbus, a grand old
light-diesel railcar from the 1950's and 60's, with an admirable lack
of any discernible suspension and a jolly driver straight out of a
Thomas the Tank Engine episode. Although it would be impossible not
to be happy if your job was driving a little toytown railcar up and
down a rusting track through a beautiful forest all day.
The
Leigender, a just enormous behemoth, looms up over the
surrounding countryside like a crashed intergalactic space-cruiser,
an alien metal monster resting in rural Germany, about 130km south of
Berlin, in the kind of spectacular woodlands that would have
Wordsworth jumping out of his grave to scribble a few verses about
trees and hills and that.
'18..19...20...coming ready or - you're behind the bush.'
The
name Liegender Eiffelturm der Lausitz comes from the
'celebrated' fact that if this Soviet beastie was sat up on its end,
it would be considerably taller than the Eiffel Tour.
Here's
the process, I think: one end of Birtha here scoops up millions of
tons of top soil/rock using enormous diggers, exposing the brown coal
seams underneath ready to be mined.
The
topsoil is lifted up into the machine, then transported on a huge
industrial conveyor belt to the other end, where it is spat out to
form long ridges of dirt on the opposite bank from where the coal is (on the righthand side, on the picture below).
It
doesn't actually do any of the mining itself – that is for other
men and other machines. This monstrous workhorse merely exposes the
brown coal.
The Soviet energy structure, certainly in
East Germany at least, was based around the burning of brown coal, a
horrid inefficient pollutant that, never-the-less, made cheap fuel. So, the Soviets
ploughed substantial money into this project. It took 2 solid years, thousands of
men, and goodness knows how much to build.
And here's the wonderful part:
Liegender
Eiffelturm der Lausitz finally began working in 1991. Then the Wall came down, and the Soviet Union crumbled. Capitalist West took over East Germany, and the arse fell out of the brown coal market. Liegender
Eiffelturm der Lausitz ceased operations in 1992. It was used for a little over a year. It's never been switched on since.
The
mine and the conveyor bridge is now used just as we used it last
month: as a tourist destination for nerdy people with a unabashed
love for human ingenuity and insurmountable folly.
* It wasn't in Berlin. It is 130km outside of Berlin. That's not in Berlin.
'Er ist Wieder Da' (Look Who's Back) - film review As
I wrote in an earlier post, a new comedy film in Germany has caused
tremendous controversy and not a little soul-searching among the
German people.
Er
ist Wieder Da is the half film, half mocumentary-style adaptation
of the 2012 bestselling German satirical novel about Adolf Hitler by
Timur Vermes. The book was published in the UK as Look Who's Back.
Marketed very much as a comedy, the
film uses the monster from Germany's past as a comedy
tool with which to explore the German (and European) people's
darkening attitudes to multiculturalism and immigration, pitching
parallels with pre-fascist 1930s Germany with razor sharp clarity.
In
2011, Adolf Hitler wakes up in a small patch of scrubland in Berlin,
with no memory of anything that happened after 1945. Initially
unaware of the intervening years he determines to continue his plans for Europe to fruition, interpreting everything he sees in 2011
from a Nazi perspective (for instance, he assumes that Turks in
Germany are an indicator of Karl Dönitz having persuaded Turkey to
join the Axis) — and although everyone recognises him, nobody
believes that he is Hitler; instead, they think he is either a
comedian, or a method actor. He meets a documentary film-maker who
sees comedy potential and seeks to cash in.
So
far, so fish-out-of-water slapstick funny: Hitler discovers the
internet and, when invited, searches Wikipedia for 'world
domination'. He laments with a dog-breeder about how the German
Shepherd eventually loses its identity when it reproduces with other
breeds. He pours utter disdain on modern-day German politics, but
sees hope in 'a bunch of oddballs called the Green Party',
misintepreting their ecological policies for a desire to preserve the
pure Germanic hinterland – although, 'of course, their rejection of
atomic energy is absurd!'
A
TV channel, realising the ratings potential of their new star, puts
Hitler on as many of their shows and internet platforms as possible.
Of course, this gives him access to millions of German viewers,
allowing him to transmit his propaganda of German nationhood, Aryan
purity and National Socialism in ways that, as he notes while
sneering at the banality of daytime TV, Nazi propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels could barely dream
of.
In
a remarkable performance, actor Oliver Masucci plays Hitler dead
straight from the opening scene, not as a comedy send-up, but as a
shrewd and charismatic political operator and orator.
21st
Century Germany celebrates what it sees as a post-modern satirical
performance on their TV, a ridiculous character designed to mock and
traduce the national collective memory of Hitler. The videos of his angry rants become hugely
successful on YouTube, and he achieves modern celebrity status as a
performer. You can almost feel the German people laughing with relief
at being given the chance to finally puncture the pomposity of the
figurehead from their darkest history. “Look at how ridiculous
he was! How did people ever fall for it all?”
But
as the film goes on, the story begins to turn, pivoting darkly around
Hitler, the politician.
On a tour of Germany, filmed as a documentary, ordinary real-life
Germans open their hearts to Hitler, often expressing prejudiced
views about foreigners and immigrants and 'bearded men' (Muslims) in
their country, complaining that if they ever say anything about it
then they are labelled a racist. One man even suggests bringing back
work camps for homeless immigrants.
What
is remarkable here is that these views aren't coming from radicals or
fringe lunatics, but from normal, middle class people simply
confronted by a chap dressed as Hitler.
Our
Hitler's determination to continue where he left off in 1945 sees him
meet the genuine leaders of the far-right National Democratic Party of Germany
and the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany, has selfies taken
with sieg heil-ing football fans, encouraging a physical attack on a
young antifascist, and talks with one particular man who asks for the
camera to be turned off before replying, 'If you were real, I would
do anything for you.'
In one
memorable (thankfully fictional) scene, Hitler is confronted by a terrified elderly Jewish
woman, her fear and hatred and memories cutting through her dementia.
'It's just satire. It's comedy,' says her granddaughter, trying to
calm her agitated grandmother. 'That's what everyone thought then,
too,' replies the grandmother, 'until it was too late.'
Very
slowly, a nicely-polished looking-glass turns to reflect a simmering
and resentful Germany back at its modern, confident self.
Berliner
Morgenpost,
one of Berlin's major newspapers, says of the film, "A
fake Hitler, a small moustache ... allowed insights into Germany's
dark side." Hitler,
it said, "in a figurative sense,never
really left...The far-right ideology smoulders to this day.”
After a failed assassination attempt, Hitler looks his assailant, and the camera, in the eye and says, 'You can't kill me. I am a
part of you. I am a part of all of you,' reminding the watching audience that
Hitler, far from overthrowing the Government of the time and
installing himself as Chancellor, was in fact democratically elected by the German
people in 1933 on an explicit and well-publicised anti-Simitic Nazi
manifesto.
The film was
made in 2013/14, before the Syrian and Middle East refugee tragedy
brought hundreds of thousands fleeing war and violence to Europe's borders. Following the public and political backlash to the crisis and the arrival of the refugees, the film seems prescient. Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
The final, terrifying scene sent a cold chill straight down my spine, and should act as a
call-to-arms for antifascists and right-thinking people everywhere:
real-life, recent news footage of violent racist attacks, mass
demonstrations across Europe against immigrants and asylum-seekers,
huge far-right rallies, rightwing and Conservative political parties
pushing anti-immigrant policies and using dangerous rhetoric to whip
up xenophobia and fear - all shown against Hitler being driven
through the streets, smiling at waving Berliners and, with some
satisfaction, declares:
