Berlin Does Not Believe in Tears
Current mood: fluorescentlich
That sound you hear? That is Neva screaming. That is Neva screaming across two continents and one very big ocean. Munch only dreamed of such a scream. Fear my scream.
OK. Better now. I just missed my 9 a.m. flight to Copenhagen after falling on my face in the rain in the middle of Alexanderplatz. Life and I have a mutual antipathy.
Mostly, it's been snowing in Berlin. Actually, it hailed the size of peanuts the day I visited the open-air Topography of Terror exhibit, located in the rubble of the old Gestapo/SS headquarters. I took refuge in the ruins, as did numerous other sightseers. And so a topography of terror became a topography of tourists. Ach. Such is the role of weather in history.
Have I ever mentioned that my late papa met Heinrich Himmler? Yes. As a red army POW with certain coveted engineering skills, he was sent to work with Werner Von Braun and V2 Schneider. Himmler dropped by frequently to complain about the slow progress of the V3 rocket, destined to level London and save the Reich's neck. (In sum: Progress stalled. London remained upright. The Reich's neck was wrung.)
Papa said Himmler came across as polite and soft-spoken. (Insert obligatory Hannah Arendt reference to banality of evil.) He asked papa about his university days, but not how he came to be with the Von Braun enterprise, which was that a German soldier dug him out of a pile of Russian corpses after hearing papa call for help auf Deutsch. And so in the end papa lived (until 1985, anyway), Himmler didn't and Von Braun got rich.
"So it goes," Kurt Vonnegut would say, in his lonesome, bushy way. He's dead now, too.
Me, I am alive and sitting in this fucking airport, waiting for an afternoon flight that required more cash than I care to say. Even WiFi costs here.... T-Mobile PWNZ the European Union.
Lessons learned:
1) Guidebooks lie 2) Calling a bus an "express" doesn't make it fast 3) Alexanderplatz is wet 4) Budget airlines don't give a shit
Maybe I'd better go to my gate and sit and stare at it to make sure I don't miss another flight. Hey, by the way, am I the only one who thinks Eat, Pray, Love reads less like a voyage of discovery than an exercise in mental masturbation? Because dude, if anyone knows about mental masturbation... well.
You know you have a problem with stasis when, after being in a city only two weeks, you're already loath to leave your apartment. In my defense, my place here is twice the size of my San Francisco digs, and three munchkin cats live in its garden. I can keep myself occupied at home. I need to floss my teeth, for example. I'm long overdue in washing my hair.
And yet I'm out for the day. Well, out and then in again: I grabbed my laptop and toddled to the Ebel Cafe off Tynska St. (itself just around the corner from Franz Kafka's papa's old shop, now a Kafka bookstore), where I've just ordered my third cappuccino. Europeans supposedly say only Americans want milk in their coffee after 12 noon. They're probably right, but compared to the continent we're still an infant country – make that enfant terrible country – so maybe it makes sense. Or maybe we just like packing in a little extra fat whenever we can.
Inside, the Cure is playing. Outside, it's raining, but unseasonably warm. The last time I was here, in 1993, a foot of snow covered the city by mid-November. So. Either a cold front is about to hit or global warming is trying to kill me.
Prague's changed in other ways, too. Obviously it has. Fourteen years is… boy, isn't it… a long time. Then, it still had its Soviet bruises and delirious Velvet-Revolution hangover, with socialist-era canned goods on the shelves and Vaclav Havel posters in the tourist shops. And, as far as I know, it had only one ATM, in Wenceslas Square.
Speaking of Wenceslas Square... yesterday I saw a kid skateboard off the memorial to a student who set himself on fire in to protest the Soviet intervention of 1969. Now the heroic dood's a one-man skateboard park. There's a metaphor there, just as there's a metaphor and no small irony in the fact that the Museum of Communism is sandwiched between a McDonald's and a casino.
An observation about Prague that those who live/have lived here might want to contest: International tourism and rampant capital might glut the old city, but I don't think they'll gut it. Heck, even KFC has to fit into a 15th century structure, and Europe's biggest mall on Revolucini St. erected itself within a series of belle époque buildings. Prague's survived a couple of empires, a slew of wars and a bad case of communism gone wrong. It'll survive capitalism, too, as long as it forces the market to conform to its topography instead of the other way around.
In sum: It could be worse. It has been worse.
MR F returned to Sweden last week to attend an academic conference, which, as it turned out, he did not attend because he overslept and missed his train from Karlskrona. Before leaving Prague, he bought a fabulous black leather trench coat from a hole-in-the-wall shop specializing in military antiques. We got it all the way home before noticing the faded stamp on its inner lining: "1939" and, on either side of that date, a pair of SS's stylized into lightning bolts.
Yes, MR F is walking around in some dead stormtrooper's vintage coat o' doom. Perhaps it's best he's not coming to Berlin with me, because… err.. y'know. The Coat might carry embedded memories and try to compel F into defending the Reichstag. Yo, Panzer man! Looks like I'll just have to dance on Hegel's grave all by my lonesome.
But first I'm going to Dresden. Tomorrow, I'm going. I haven't seen it since it metamorphosed from a ruined, sooty testament to Allied terrorism to a shiny! New! Testament to Forgetting the Past for the sake of commerce.
Go Saxony! I'll miss those damn munchkin cats.
P.S. Totally knew Dumbledore was light on his toes. Didn't we all? Now, if JKR would only fess up about Harry and Draco's schoolboy tryst, all would be well.
P.P.S.S. Colbert has been robbed. AGAIN. *shakes fist at oatmealy Democrats and Wonderbread Emmy voters*
The expanded! ultra-fabulous! industrial-chic! Frankfurt airport is the perfect place for the world's largest rave. I am serious. It would make Berlin's love parade look like a procession of shriners.
Killing time between connections on a ridiculously expensive T-Mobile connection. Getting a headache from a perfumed miasma drifting out of the duty free shop. Oh... yeah. Also from a sleeping pill some kind Deutsche Frau slipped me on the flight from SF.
I have no mouth, and I must scream.
Current mood: dumply
Hilarity can be cold. Members of Myanmar's military junta (qu'est-ce que c'est "junta" en Burmese?) are toying with the UN envoy sent to chastise them for killing their citizens, delaying a meeting and sending him off to various cultural functions while they concentrate on... um... killing their citizens.
Meanwhile, back in the States (ours), the Republicans have once again found their sea legs and are sending Democrats scrambling after phantom scandals. Example: MoveOn.org's NY Times ad that punningly referred to future-head-of-American-military-junta General Petraeus as "General Betray US." Now, remember: According to the neocon gamebook, criticizing any member of the armed forces -- hero, rogue, hired gun or tentacled serial killer -- qualifies as an act of treason. Treason is scary! So Democrats who might have countered with a dose of earth logic, some hard statistics about war casualties, questions about blood fever among Blackwater's born-again banditos, and, say, a quote from former General and President Dwight D. Eisenhower --
Here in America we are descended in blood and in spirit from revolutionists and rebels - men and women who dare to dissent from accepted doctrine. As their heirs, may we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion.
-- instead went on the defensive, cowering, chastising MoveOn.org and spewing patriotic bromides about Our Troops, most of whom would rather receive decent medical care than compliments, thanks.
Feh. At times like these, i almost agree with conservatives, in that I don't know if I trust the Democrats to keep us alive should they win (please, God) four years in office. Because dudes. If they can't even win a war of words in which they have all the ammo, what hope have they in a world filled with diplomatic landmines and hard-copy IEDs?
Go Team Democracy.
On a more cheerful note, I have finally discovered The Mighty Boosh. When I watch it, I roil in a sea of happiness that is both vast and buoyant. Alas, then I turn on the network news and sink, sink, sink. Ach, boot!!! An hour before midnight, along come Jon Stewart and le Colbert, and suddenly I rise yet again, a sodden phoenix spitting brine and the occasional shellfish, ready to do battle, or to order pizza, or whatever, yay!
In closing, it seems I won some award, but I guess the Chronicle gets to keep it. I'll bet it makes a nice paperweight, I'll bet. Hahaha! Go me! Hilarity, it can be cold.
That sound you hear? That is Neva screaming. That is Neva screaming across two continents and one very big ocean. Munch only dreamed of such a scream. Fear my scream.
You know you have a problem with stasis when, after being in a city only two weeks, you're already loath to leave your apartment. In my defense, my place here is twice the size of my San Francisco digs, and three munchkin cats live in its garden. I can keep myself occupied at home. I need to floss my teeth, for example. I'm long overdue in washing my hair.
Hilarity can be cold. Members of 
