Nobody Intends To Put Up A Wall!

Two months before the Berlin Wall was constructed, Walter Ulbricht, leader of East Germany, said, "Niemand hat die Absicht, eine Mauer zu errichten!" Now, on the 50th anniversary of the wall's construction, it is a phrase Germans, especially Berliners, use when they intend to do something. It has been a big month for Germany so far. The EHEC outbreak has left Germany with a bit of a black eye after they blamed the outbreak on Spanish cucumbers, leading to losses of hundreds of millions of Euros for Spanish farmers. The wall's construction fifty years ago is not the only painful anniversary this month, it is also the 70th anniversary of nearly three and a half million men being launched in an offensive against the Soviet Union known as Operation Barbarossa. This began some of the most barbaric and ruthless warfare ever waged on a nearly incomprehensible industrial scale. Needless to say, the two events are linked. To put it in perspective: in seven years of war in Iraq, 3,500 American soldiers have died in combat, during the most intense fighting at Stalingrad, the Red Army had that many combat deaths per day, for weeks on end, with the Wehrmacht losing 1,000 per day. 


Aside from some unpleasant anniversaries and e coli, it is a lovely time in Germany; their economy is booming, and the summer festival season has begun. I have been able to get out and about to a few of these events. 


The first happens every Sunday afternoon in a large park next to an old communist sports arena a few subway stops north of where I live. There are vendors selling food, drink, plants, and trinkets, but the main attraction is in the amphitheater dug into the hill on the outside of the stadium. There, in front of a crowd I'd estimate at 2,000, karaoke is being sung. Most of the people brave enough to go out are actually quite good, a few are just quite drunk. When David Langley is ready for his big break, he needs to come to Mauerpark in Prenzlauerberg and meet his public. I attended the event with a group of Au Pair girls, which is actually the term in German. I was the only male in the group, of course, continuing my noble fight against the sexist, heteronormative attitudes of society. 

Another event was held on the southern edge of Berlin, called Kulturlustgarten. It was sort of a cross between a music festival and a carnival. There were several music stages, some rides for the kids, and lots of good food. I had a Hungarian dish that was essentially fry-bread topped with sour cream and cheese. They were serving "Erdbeerbowle," meaning "strawberry bowl," essentially a strawberry punch that deceptively doesn't taste like alcohol and is traditionally served at the beginning of the season when there is an abundance of the fruit. There was even a medieval themed section of the festival, with archery and ax-throwing booths, and a stage where folksy music was performed with strange and archaic instruments. The main stage performed the kind of pop-rock that makes Europeans go nuts. An unusual feature of this festival was that I witnessed three fights, the Germans are typically very orderly and don't tolerate that sort of thing. The first was between two women, I don't know how it started, I just heard a crack and turned around and saw one woman standing over another, the victor was probably 6'4" and 235 lbs. One of the people I was there with said they were fighting over who got to take me home...shudder. A few hours later, a Euro-trash muscle head in a tank top with some Mike "the Situation" sunglasses popped a very thick farmer-looking type while in line for one of the beer sellers, I assume the fight was over cutting in line. The farmer was with a group in matching shirts and a brawl nearly broke out but thankfully about a dozen police quickly infiltrated the crowd before anyone caused me to spill my beer. Shortly after another fight broke out just out of my line of sight so it would be dishonest of me as a writer to make comical observations about the appearance of the antagonists. I again stress how unusual such a thing is here, in all the time I spent at Oktoberfest I never saw a punch thrown, although the bouncers and security there look like retired offensive linemen from the NFL. That and the excessive cleavage produced by dirndls at Oktoberfest tends to calm and quiet the men-folk. 


This past weekend in Kreuzerg was the Carnival of Cultures which draws crowds of hundreds of thousands of people. Again there is food, drink, and trinkets to be bought, but also a parade of floats and people in ethnic dress, if you can get close enough to the street to see it. There is a surprising amount of South East Asians in Berlin and I have had some pretty good Thai food here. During the Cold War, there was an international exchange of workers within the communist world. Since Germany was recovering from depopulation during the war and low birth rates afterward (and still is), East Germany welcomed their comrades from Vietnam and Cambodia to come and take up some crappy jobs. Not to be outdone, West Germany welcomed refugees from the conflicts in SE Asia in the 1970's. Unfortunately, the streets were so clogged with people that all the food lines were extremely long, and becoming impatient, I left the area where the festival was in search of food, and found some pretty tasty Käsespätzle, one of my favorite dishes from Southern Germany. The best way to describe Käsespätzle is if dumplings and macaroni and cheese had a baby, with fried onions. As you can imagine, it has a similar effect to eating pancakes or biscuits, with the food reforming in your stomach as a brick that induces sleep. I'm getting hungry and tired just thinking about it.


I will leave you with a funny picture of a couch I saw on the street near my building. The people who put it out there were kind enough to post a warning, "Do not take, has been marked by the cat." I then wondered if the lost cat on the sign above was the same as the one that marked the couch.