The President of Germany had to resign over this? On the bright side, it doesn't seem as important as Lena winning the Eurovision contest.
And so I am back in Berlin and for a good bit of time. I've already blogged my 1985 visit to East Berlin with Kroszner, which remains one of my strongest and most influential memories. I also returned the summer after the Wall fell, and spent about two days walking and driving around the Eastern part, more or less pinching myself to see if it was real. The same people who had been afraid to talk to me five years before suddenly were friendly and open. It felt remarkably like West Germany…and yet not. I don't expect to personally witness a comparable liberation in my lifetime and those days too have stuck with me deeply. For a number of reasons, just stepping foot in Germany is for me an emotional experience.
Twenty years later, I experience Berlin as a normal city for the first time. But I just arrived, so we'll have to see.
It is striking how cheap rents are. I have a two-bedroom apartment, fully furnished, short-term, in a neighborhood comparable in quality to Manhattan's Upper East Side and yet it costs less than many a mediocre place in Fairfax.
what are you up to in Berlin? Public readings by any chance?
I moved to Berlin for the summer a couple of weeks ago and rents are truly cheap for great apartments. Also, good beer and bad weather…
phd students from other universities, i meant.
Berlin’s cheap, but it’s boring beyond belief. Nothing’s open after seven pm, nothing’s open on the weekends. No outdoor sports, no coffee shops. Just cheap liquor stores everywhere.
i’m sure zach meant berlin, north dakota.
- no outdoor sports? its full of parks and surrounded by lakes
Have you ever been in the outdoors? It’s the part of the world where the grass isn’t covered with litter and there’s more than ten feet between you and the next person.
clubs go to noon the next day!
Yeah, and then the entire district is empty until eight the next night while everybody sleeps it off.
no coffee shops just liquor stores ? are you sure you are not the boring beyond belief here?
I live in East Berlin. That’s what they’ve got. Once you get past the tourist attractions, there’s not much to do.
If you want to get wasted all night long, Berlin’s fine. If you want to have some fun during the day, sober, it’s pretty grim.
Yes. Many people in Germany and the rest of Europe still remember 9/39.
The opera is fantastic value. Though I must say that only in Berlin have I been subjected to an attempted con trick at the interval at the opera.
Which part of the upper east side.
5th, Madison, and Park or Lex, 3rd, 2nd, and York?
Although technically, most New Yorkers consider the more eastern avenues Lenox Hill or Yorkville.
“i’m sure zach meant berlin, north dakota.”
he he he
How did you find the apartment? I’ve always had a massive amount of trouble finding good deals on extended stay housing in foreign countries.
The author sounds interesting. The book rather less so? I wonder why the English are buying it. Do you think sales of this book might have something to do with England’s worry about hyperinflation and riots? Anyway this will be a fascinating time to live in Germany for a while. I heard an editor of a big German newspaper speaking about the Greeks and he sounded like an editor of the Daily Mail or Sun during the Falklands war…
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