TV Tower & Tram Wires
Berlin, Germany

I love Berlin. I’ve been there twice and the second time I was looking to stay and work and learn German.  Although I do freelance now for a German publishing company, the winds of travel kept me moving on and I haven’t taken my chance to live there…yet.

This is a shot of the Fernsehturm or TV tower near Alexanderplatz in central Berlin.  Built in the 1960s, it remains the tallest freestanding structure in Germany and the fourth tallest in Europe.

My friend Sherry has invited me to crash with her at her cool Berlin pad thanks to the Go with Oh project in which she stays in holiday apartments a week at a time in Rome, Venice, Vienna, and Berlin.  I can’t believe I am now having to turn down travel offers. Sigh…but I know I will get back to Berlin, someday.

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Berlin is a city on the move. It is one of those rare places that grabs you, takes hold, and never lets you go. You can’t help but love a city that looks back and acknowledges its (undisputedly awful) past with great reflection, no more denial, and respect for the tragic events that either took place or were rooted here. And at the same time Berliners are not just looking toward the future, but sprinting toward it with progressive thought, bold ideas, and striking architecture.

City of Neighborhoods

I tend to like cities that are big and thriving, but made up of smaller, friendlier neighborhoods where one can build a life and a community. Berlin has this. For a more local, neighborhood-feel you can find  a place to stay in the hip, leafy ‘hoods of Prenzlauer Berg or Kreuzberg (pronounced kroitz-berg).  P’berg is situated in the heart of what was East Berlin. This area had become rundown and filled with squatters after the fall of the wall. Yesterday’s bohemian, alternative-artist types have morphed into today’s hipster pierced parents pushing prams around the quaint, refurbished blocks past innumerable cafes and independent boutiques. During an afternoon stroll around Kollwitzplatz, you can stop in for a latte and a quiche slice at the Anna Blume Café and enjoy sidewalk seating under the awning while watching the young urbanites walk on by. For a younger vibe, head just a few blocks over to Kastanienallee (say that three times fast) where actors, artists, and expats are often found at many of the cafes and bars.

Afterwards you can head north a few blocks to the Kulturbrauerei -a former beer brewery turned ‘culture brewery’ with a lively mixed use space of galleries, restaurants, and cinemas.  Also here you will find Berlin on Bike. They do a comprehensive and down to earth four-hour city tour – very worth the 17 Euro cost. Seeing the flat city on two wheels is a great way to get an overview of this sprawling town and much less ‘insulated’ than one of the many double-decker bus tours around. Besides watching out for cars, you will notice how bike-friendly Berlin is by all your fellow cyclists whizzing about. From your bike saddle, you will see the tourist musts:

• Alexanderplatz and the Fernsehturm (TV Tower)
• Hackescher Markt
• Berlin Dom and Museum Island
• Unter den Linden
• Potsdamer Platz and huge modern Sony Center complex
• Checkpoint Charlie
• The Berlin Wall
• The Reichstag and other modern government office buildings
• Brandenburg Gate
• The Holocaust Memorial
• The Tiergarten – Berlin’s huge, ‘Central Park’

Back in Prenzlauer Berg there are several choices for Berlin accommodations. For something a bit more affordable I checked into the EastSeven Hostel – one of the nicest hostels I’ve ever stayed in. It’s a squeaky clean place with singles, doubles and dorms. There is a great backyard with tables and even a grill and a lounge and kitchen to use at your disposal.

The more arty bunch of today have left Prenzlauer Berg behind and are pushing the limits in Friedrichshain – around the grungy-turned-trendy Boxhagener Platzand in Kreuzberg – dining on tapas or Indian food on Bergmanstrasse or hanging out at the bars lining the Landwehrkanal (canal) during the balmy summer months until the wee hours.

If I lived here I would pick one of these neighborhoods to live in. And living here seems pretty easy – you can find a small one bedroom apartment for under 500 Euros. No wonder so many people are moving here Quentin Tarantino has flat here, Brad Pitt bought a place here (both are in town filming Quentin’s latest flick currently titled “Inglorious Bastards“, Even 80′s pop star Joe Jackson moved here. Now that says something. I think.  Berlin is one of the cheapest and coolest cities in Europe to live in…something I just might do.

The first time I traveled around the world, I really wasn’t running away from anything. It was more like I was running toward something – a dream; doing something I had always wanted to do, but just never could. But then a small window opened and I slipped out into the world and never looked back.

That was two years ago now. Starting October 2006, I left the comforts of my well-appointed home in Chicago and traveled, literally, around the world – staying with friends, meeting strangers who became friends, and having the time of my life. Fifteen months later, I returned to the US. For eight months I bopped between coasts from New York City to Chicago to Los Angeles and back to New York again. And now I actually think I am running away – away from having to ‘root’ myself in an ordinary life; away from having to make a decision about where to live; away from having to work full time again; away from having to pay actual bills and away from the reality of the fact that eventually I will have to give up this vagabond lifestyle and someday buy a bed of my own again.   Or maybe I figure I should just keep traveling until I just can’t stand it anymore. But I think that is highly unlikely.

I am sitting in seat 21D on a Swiss Air flight headed to Europe.  This time around it didn’t seem as monumental leaving the US and all; sort of anti-climatic actually.  No goodbye parties. No big farewells. No major life changes.  I just hopped the subway to JFK in New York City and blew a kiss goodbye to one of my favorite cities.

And soon I will be in Berlin, perhaps my favorite city from my last trip. I am returning for several meetings/interviews for some possible freelance opportunities. Then I will be heading to France and Italy for a few months. I’ve been to these popular destinations a few times before, but not on my last trip. Paris was the first city I had ever set foot in in Europe more than 10 years ago and it had me at ‘bon jour.’ And Italy, oh Italia, I’ve been three times and am anxious to return to see if I still love it like I did every time I was there in the past.

Then I’m not sure where my wanderings will take me. As any traveler knows, my list has not gotten any shorter. In fact the more you travel, the longer it gets. This trip is currently looking something like this:

• Berlin
• France (Paris, Normandy, Lyon, Swiss Border towns, Provence, Bordeaux ?)
• Italy (some of these: Turino, Verona, Assisi, Gubio, Orevieto, Bologna, Perugia, Arezzo, Lucca, Roma, Sicily)
• Malta
• Cyprus ?
• Egypt
• Israel
• Jordan
• Istanbul
• St. Petersburg
• The Baltics (Latvia, Lithuania)
• Denmark
• and eventually back to Berlin and Paris again.

As always, if you know anyone - friend, family, animal, mineral – in any of these locales, please let me know. I would really appreciate it. I love to meet new people and have new friends when I get to a new town.

Unlike the last trip, this time I do have a return ticket. For two reasons: one, I’m taking advantage of all my racked up frequent flyer miles and flying for free to and from Europe therefore needing to book an actual roundtrip ticket and, two, I have a ‘save the date’ in New Jersey in the Spring.  I will return home for my father’s wedding. After thirty odd years of bachelorhood, dear old dad is tying the knot and my tiny family is getting just a bit bigger. Mazel Tov!

Roaring down the autobahn at 200 kilometers per hour (125 mph) was only the beginning of my love affair with Germany.I met my good friend Mark in Berlin and loved it instantly. Berlin is a progressive, innovative, cultured European capital. Every thing in this metropolis is thought out and well-designed. And, of course, beer is plentiful and cheap.

Considering how much of it was destroyed in WWII, and following that, how it became an ‘island’ in a sea of communist East Germany and thus split in two for nearly thirty years by a big concrete wall, I guess they had a fairly clean slate to work with. Kind of like after the Chicago Fire of 1871, world famous architects (Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier, Gehry, Libeskind, Jahn) descended on Germany in the last couple decades…especially after the iron curtain fell and the wall literally came down. The 100-mile “Anti-Fascist Protective Rampart,” as it was called by the East German government, was erected almost overnight in 1961 to stop the outward flow of people into West Berlin which had been divided into French, British, and American Sectors like the rest of West Germany (3 million poured out between 1949 and 1961). The Wall was 13-feet high, had a 16-foot tank ditch, a no-man’s-land that was 30 to 160 feet wide, and 300 watch towers. During its 28 years standing there were 1,693 cases when border guards fired, 3,221 arrests, and 5,043 documented successful escapes (565 of these were East German guards).In its progressive way of looking ahead but acknowledging the past, Berlin has laid down a double line of bricks all around the city marking the former site of the wall. Berlin has now taken the opportunity to reinvent itself and has done so in an amazing way.

Forget Singapore—Germany is an uber clean place with one notable exception—dog shit is everywhere. Not sure how or why the innovative and law enforcing Germans have not been able step up to the plate on this one and force their citizenry of dog owners to bag their pooch’s poop like we do in cities in the US.

There was a ton to see in Berlin, a city constantly changing with crane’s silhouettes in the sky as proof, from the reproduction of Checkpoint Charlie to the many green spaces and bike lanes to the haunting Holocaust Memorial and the oft-photographed Brandenburg Gate and so much in-between. I won’t bore you with all the details. Suffice it to say I would live in this city in a heartbeat. If I had to pick, I had two favorite and opposing neighborhoods. The first is Prenzlauer Berg in what once was bleak East Germany. It is now a cute leafy ‘neighborhoody’ village-like place full of young couples, an inordinate amount of strollers, and cute little boutiques and cafes.My other favorite place is the architecturally stunning skyscraper ‘times square’ sector known as Potsdamer Platz. It is dominated by the new and jaw-dropping Sony Center designed by German-born and Chicago’s own Helmut Jahn.This is the same man that did the controversial space-ship-like James Thompson Center in Chicago and the huge new Bangkok Airport. Like his other creations, the Sony Center is steel and glass everywhere you look done in a sleek sexy style that makes it hard not to stare upwards in awe. The striking glass atrium is topped by a cirque du soleil-like tent cover that hangs over an entertaining mix of several restaurants, shops, and cinemas.

And rounding out the whole ‘Ich Liebe Berlin’ (I love Berlin) experience was our hostel. Joining the list of some of my favorite sleeps on my trip had to be the brand spankin’ new Sleep-Inn. Run smoothly by a young Berlin couple, Yvonne and Ralph, it was spotless with fluffy new comforters and towels. Plus each room had all these fun whimsical touches like bright splashes of color here and there, murals on the walls and your own cuddly gnome in each room. You don’t know how much brand new pillows, sheets, and towels mean to this world traveler after sleeping on 87½ different beds, trains, chairs, floors, and couches throughout the year…where, hundreds or perhaps thousands, of other icky travelers had laid their own greasy heads. I liked it so much I went as far as offering to work there—something I hope to still pursue except for that pesky law forbidding non-EU citizens from working without a work permit. If I can only get them to treat this law as they do with their dog poop…I’ll be all set.