Settling in Schoneberg

.



July 12


We have established a pattern already. There is a café around the corner, the BilderBuche Cafe, that offers great breakfasts at great prices. John orders the ham omelet, and I order the “vegetarian”, which consists of cheeses, olives, vegetables and fruit. He has a “milchcafe” and I have black tea. Both beverages are better than we get in Canada. The tea is more expensive than the coffee, which is more expensive than the beer, but who wants beer at 9am? Some of the people working there speak a little English, but it doesn’t matter. We point and smile. Works every time.

We have done our best to see the highlights of Berlin, but it is something like 35° C here, and the humidity is high, so it feels a bit like slogging through a bathtub to get from museum A to historical site B.

We have seen most of Unter den Linden (the “scenic” street of what used to be East Berlin), the Pergamon Museum, the Nuer Museum, both of which have a lot of plundered antiquities (oops, I mean, artifacts rescued by courageous archeologists), taken a boat cruise, and wandered one neighbourhood in particular—Shoneberg—which, I am assured by someone who ought to know, is not only a magnificent neighbourhood, but also the home of the most gay-friendly area in Berlin, which is just fine by me.

By this time, if all had gone according to plan, I would have bicycle-toured and walking-toured most of the Nazi and Communist sites of Berlin. But it’s too bloody hot, so we have been takiing it easy, breakfasting for an hour or two, bussing or U-bahning or S-bahning to places we think might be cooler than the great outdoors.

I have learned a thing or two.

1. When you eat at a restaurant/cafe, you have to ask for the bill if you actually want to get it. Then the waiter will...wait...for you to pay. A tip is assumed to be included in the price, but the idea is to tell him/her the total you want to pay, rounding up a Euro or so, and he/she will give you the change from that amount. We in North America are now at the 20% mark for tipping, but 10% in Berlin will have them practically kissing your feet.

2. You can’t count on getting away with not paying on the transit system. Yesterday, heading home on the U-bahn (the subway system), there were two transit “cops” showing a couple of tourists how to pay and time-stamp their tickets, which is unusual, according to Ezra, who lives here. Normally, they would simply charge €60 for the infraction.

The two officials got on the same train we did. They have a pattern: they get on the train, announce to people to produce their tickets, then move to each end of the car and sweep towards the center, kind of like a garbage compactor. There was a young guy sitting across from me...well...his look said “oh shit” or “scheisse” or whatever that look might be in German. He tried to fake it with a student card, but ended up escorted from the train. Damn. I actually wanted to hand him my ticket. Or pay him some of the fine. I told myself he had probably been riding for weeks or months for free, but still. . . .

3. Museums are not air-conditioned. Or, at least, you can’t count on it. We thought we could escape the heat at the Pergamon. Nope. The Neues Museum. Nope. What the heck? Don’t these artifacts need the same conditions we need, to last through the ages???

4. In Germany, “smokers are us”. They’ll pass a law soon, but meanwhile, enjoy your breakfast with second-hand cigarette.

5. Most people will not read your carefully crafted (if wine-induced) prose, but will jump to the pictures. So….