Overcoming Dysfunctions

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DAY 276: Germany, like most countries, is not without its historical dysfunctions.  However, Germany’s dysfunctions of the past may be just a tad more obvious, you know with that whole Hitler/Nazi/Holocaust thing.  That’s not to say Germany doesn’t have its good things in history—the classical music of Bach and Beethoven, the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm, beer—but upon my approach via overnight train into Munich, the German Bavarian city in the south, there was a bit of a snag.

“Are we running late?” a passenger asked the conductor in his little room at the end of the hall of the sleeper car. 

“Someone killed themselves,” the man said with a tone of melancholy and a look of seriousness.  An attempted suicide had succeeded just half an hour before (when most of us where still sleeping) when someone jumped off the platform at a station in front of the train.

The passenger and conductor had a look of grief, but I had other concerns.  “So,” I said to the conductor in a manner like George Costanza on Seinfeld, “I’m not going to be able to make the 7:45 to Berlin, am I?”

“No.”

“Okay then.”

Perhaps it was me who was a bit socially dysfunctional.

MY PLAN WAS TO SKIP THE BIERGARTENS OF MUNICH, a city I had been before, and head straight on up to Berlin, Germany’s unified capital in the north since the reunification of Germany in 1990.  After a quick, traditional Bavarian breakfast of weisswurst (veal sausage) and a pretzel, I hopped on the InterCity train bound for Berlin.  It didn’t really matter that my train from Florence was late; a train to Berlin left every hour.  Better yet, the train had an awesome first class car—Thomas Cook Travel Services in Egypt had issued me an adult first class Eurail Pass—with electrical power outlets, individual TV monitors, tables, coffee and beer service.  The roughly seven hour ride flew by as I recharged by batteries at one seat’s outlet, and attended to Blog duties at another.

By mid-afternoon the high-speed train pulled into Berlin’s Zoo Bahnhof ("Zoo Station,” near the Berlin Zoo), namesake of music group U2’s “Zoo TV” tour—the U2 Metro line runs through it.  I grabbed a quick currywurst there (curry sausage, a popular Berliner snack) before taking the Metro to the Mitte’s Backpacker Hostel in the Mitte neighborhood, the former bleak East Berlin part of town-turned-hippest neighborhood in unified Berlin.

BERLIN IS DEFINITELY NOT A TOWN without its own dysfunctions.  It was a center point for the Prussian empire in the 18th and 19th centuries, the capital of Nazi Germany in the 1930s and 40s and the main playing field of the Cold War between the Russians and Americans until the 1980s.  Nowadays, the walls have come down (literally) and “new Berlin” is the country’s most progressive city—one of the most progressive in Europe—with a general attitude so liberal that other Germans don’t quite see how Berliners fit the traditional German mold.  (In fact, I’m told it is the third largest gay city in the world.) With its blend of sleek, post-modern architecture juxtaposed to remnants of history, it is a city of the future with a turbulent past.

Mitte’s Backpackers Hostel was in tune with Berlin’s new hipness, a chilled out place with a lounge bar with bean bag chairs that played electronic lounge and drum and bass music, another component in modern Berliner culture.  It was in the lounge that I met two American girls (not traveling together):  Sara, an industrial design major from Vermont, and Cindy, a German studies major from Seattle.  Sara, who had been in Berlin a couple of days already, gave Cindy and I tips on what to see amongst the overwhelming amount of sites to see in the German metropolis, over liter glasses of German weissbier (wheat beer, literally “white beer").

“Do you feel guys feel like going out tonight?” Sara asked.

“Sure,” I answered, loving the fact that in hip backpacker hostels it’s fairly easy to meet people.

The three of us went out for dinner at Dada’s Falafel, home of what I’ve got to say has the best falafel outside the Middle East—it’s no surprise; Berlin has a huge Turkish immigrant population.  From there we took the Metro to Delicious Doughnuts, a popular lounge bar of Berlin’s renowned DJ scene, where breakbeat DJs spun for a late-night crowd. 

“I’m pretty much fluent in German,” Cindy told us in conversation.

“Quick, say something in German!” I said with a rude excitement.

“I hate it when people ask me that.”

There went my social dysfunctions again.

Sara, Cindy and I sat in a booth over rounds of weissbiers and left just as the place was getting crowded passed midnight.  Our early departure didn’t really matter because our hostel lounge was pretty happening anyway (picture above), with dim lights and music to make any night a party.

In a modern city with a turbulent past, it was heartening to see that for the most part, it had overcome its dysfunctions.  Perhaps it was me that should follow its example before opening my mouth sometimes.


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This blog entry about the events of Wednesday, July 21, 2004 was originally posted on July 25, 2004 on the blog, "The Global Trip 2004: Sixteen Months Around The World (Or Until Money Runs Out, Whichever Comes First)," hosted by BootsnAll.com. It is one of over 500 entries that chronicled a trip around the world from October 2003 to March 2005, encompassing travel through thirty-seven countries in North America, South America, Africa, Europe, and Asia. It was this blog that "started it all," where Erik evolved and honed his style of travel blogging. (It starts to come into focus around the time he arrives in Africa.)

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