History is a Big Circle Where Modern Artists Pop Up and then People Agree to Let Authoritarians Kill Them for Being Annoying
Klaus Zynski Invades Europe, Part 4
Woke up and was on the bus early today. There’s an underground museum in the exurbs that we thought looked interesting. We failed to consider that it would be a limited ticket type deal. Wasn’t a big problem, we just began our walk to the Berlin Wall Memorial early. It was a pleasant trip despite some misty rain. I feel that you can’t really know a city if you just shuttle from monument to monument. You have to pound pavement and see the everyday sights. Barber shops and corner stores and Asian takeout. Turks and Indians and Vietnamese. Daycares and sports bars and gas stations. I suppose beyond its obvious cinematic quality, the drama of the machine gun turrets and the barbed wire and the searchlights, that’s really what makes the Berlin Wall so interesting. History bisected the everyday community of this city in a way that can still be seen today. Even with the wall itself pounded into dust, kitsch, and civic branding, the face of the city can never be the same.
The Wall Memorial really is must-see stuff, extremely well organized exhibit, free too! Again there is that cinematic quality, pregnant women leaping off rooftops to escape Communism. Row houses and churches sealed off with bricks. In a weird way I found myself growing sympathetic to the DDR bureaucrats whose careers hinged on enforcing this increasingly grandiose security theater. I mean just the scope creep is insane. You start with a few lengths of barbed wire and end up with machine gun towers and armed patrols, sniffer dogs, searching nearby apartments for tunnels to the west, then just bulldozing them outright. Still they come, each more sympathetic and photogenic than the last. The live escapees get you screamed at by your superiors and the dead ones become martyrs for the other side. One wonders, had the Cold War gone on, grown more absurd, if they wouldn’t have just nuked East Berlin. Kill the patient to cure the illness.
Felt slight pangs of comedy at the presumably pretty expensive apartments next to the memorial site. Hope ya like people watching, Fritz. Floor to ceiling windows too, so ya better have that apartment presentable 24/7/365.
I appreciated that they had part of the wall complex maintained in working order. Good call. Solemn. However, upon examination of the pictures I took, it does look a bit like they put a watchtower in the zoo. The sublime inevitably decays into the ridiculous.
Downtown for lunch, to the mall. You can get a draft beer from a crappy mall pizza place here. What a way to live. Malls are sort of the same everywhere as it turns out. Laughed at a menswear brand called JOOP! Bristled at price tags on some Lacoste and Emporio Armani. Wandered over to the Lids store hoping I could maybe buy a soccer shirt and saw it was entirely American sports apparel. American Cultural Victory Bay-Bay! Call it hand-egg all you like, Euro-Redditor you VILL wear ze TJ Watt jersey und ze Yankee hat.
Maybe we should have just waited for the bus to the “Berlin Story Bunker.” (Fun? Cool? Has a story? I love stories!) Instead we got fed up waiting and walked around the corner to “Topography of Terror” at the former Gestapo HQ and nearly ruined my day. I have to applaud the Germans for their frankness and contrition confronting past atrocities. I know they’re legally compelled to do so but they do a good job! I’m sorry that this is Reddit or whatever but you really can’t look at the architecture of the Nazi security state and not see echoes of the current American Presidential Administration. America will never apologize for state terror unless legally compelled. They’ll just organize some poetry readings about it and let those involved wash their hands of the whole affair and point fingers until comfortable death.
The modern art gallery we attended afterwards rescued my mood. I brought a DDR flag pin en route (should have shelled out for a peaked cap or an ushanka). The Berlinische Gallery is perhaps a bit oblique for me on the front end, sort of like modern art as conceived of by people who hate modern art., but the collection of modernist paintings was really worth the price of admission. Saw a very moving exhibit of paintings whose lineage of ownership had become unclear due to Nazi suppression of “degenerate” art. Edvard Munch is one of my guys I think. It’s very encouraging to see these great artists and their work endure despite the intolerance and tumult of their times. May we all be so lucky.
Returned to the hostel on a crowded bus. I like crowded trains. Don’t like crowded buses. Crowded trains are highly communal, lead to moments of rapport and community between strangers. Crowded buses make you keenly aware that you are going to die if one undercompensated public employee makes one mistake or just gets unlucky. A very kind woman signaled the driver to open the doors for us right as we were fearing that we’d be trapped. So thank you, stranger. You earn a lot of karma in this city helping dumbass tourists.
Had a conversation with our mysterious hostel roommate at last, you’ll meet him later. I’ve been working in a nice bar across the river. Much more relaxed than the last one. I’m the only MF in here for most of the night. The bartender is trying to fuck his coworker. Place is named Banja Luka. Go if you wanna.
You write good