Hit the ground running

My first 24 hours in Berlin have gone really well. I’ve been surprised by how much and how little German I remember since my last course about nine years ago. I managed to chat with a group of middle-aged Germans at the airport about how nice their Christmas trip to Los Angeles had been, but when it came to asking whether I could transfer from the bus to the subway with the same ticket, I got nowhere. Thankfully there was a German-speaking tourist there who helped me out.

Within 30 minutes I found the street my apartment is on, which I had already seen some pictures of thanks to Google Maps. But why did the landlady (and Google) tell me the apartment was only a few meters from the train station?

I had already walked a couple blocks with all my bags, in the rain, before realizing that the house numbers on one side of the street were increasing while decreasing on the other. So, I’m in building 81, but across the street from me is building 40-something. I started walking on the 40-something side and just kept going. Alas. (Has anyone seen this before? Isn’t this unholy or something?).

The landlady was very nice and I really like the apartment. It reminds me of one I lived in for a couple months near the Galata Tower in Istanbul–high ceilings, wood floors, huge windows, simple furniture, etc. (It’s just cleaner and missing a few chinks in the wall.) It’s also really bright because it’s on the third floor of a side building that overlooks a school playground, so it’s not boxed in like a lot of the buildings on my street. It should be great for my stay.

When I told the landlady about my research she said I was in the right place. Something like 90% of the kids at the school next door are Turkish, there’s a huge mosque being built just up the street, and there are Turkish shops, markets, etc. in all directions. Of course this is exactly why I chose to live in Kreuzberg, but it was really something to see first-hand. Determined to stay awake until night to adjust to the time difference, I set out to explore after unpacking. For the next 5-6 hours, I visited one Turkish establishment after the other. Need to make an international phone call? Turkish newsstand. Need to check email? Turkish internet cafe. Need something to drink? Turkish teahouse. Need a döner (gyro)? I could probably eat at a different Turkish fast food restaurant each day for the rest of my trip. I kept walking and walking but the Turkish shops never stopped. I’d never seen anything like it outside of Turkey. Paterson, New Jersey probably has the most concentrated Turkish community in the US, but there you have just one street that “feels Turkish” for a half-mile or so. Here I don’t feel like I’m back in Turkey–I think the architecture is just different enough–but then again, it was a national holiday and most places were closed.

Who are the people in your neighborhood?

So far I’ve had really friendly interactions with people in the area. I spoke with the owners of a bakery up the street for well over an hour, and later I met an interesting man leaving a market we’d both been shopping in. I think he was disabled, because he had some difficulty walking even empty-handed, but here he was trying to carry about 30 pounds of groceries. I asked if he wanted some help and he gave me a couple bags to carry…just across the street, right? No. It turned out that he lived near the next subway station down the line but didn’t want to spend money for train fare. So we walked and walked. Along the way he told me about the economic crisis affecting immigrants in Berlin. High unemployment and inflation was making life really tough and he thought living in Turkey would be much better. When he invited me in for tea I was somewhat surprised by his spacious apartment with brand new furniture, new carpet, a nice TV, DVD player, etc. He also told me that he was remodeling the place, putting up new cabinets and such, and hadn’t finished yet. His new wife (probably 15 years younger judging by her picture) was coming from Turkey in a couple days and he was getting ready. I was confused after all the talk of crisis, but he said he had some savings from before and that his wife worked. Anyway, we drank tea while watching the news on a channel broadcasting from Istanbul until I noticed I was nodding off even while he was talking to me. So I excused myself and left. I still don’t know what to make of him and his story.

Later in the evening I ended up taking a bus (chatting with the German-born Turkish driver all the way) to some touristy parts of the city, but there wasn’t too much excitement besides a polka band and young guys selling marijuana.

All in all, I’m really happy to be here and looking forward to the next two months. Stay tuned for more frequent, shorter posts now that I got the ball rolling. In the meantime, I welcome your comments on the mysteries of Berlin street addresses, economic crises, and the real stumpers, anti-splash(?) German toilets and shower curtain-less bathtubs.