Story Twenty-Three

That time I tried to buy souvenirs.

I had only meant to go up to the Brandenburg Gate because I knew there would be tourist shops there, just like there are in Times Square. I owed my kids some snow globes or door hangers or something; I’d forgotten to buy them London souvenirs, which they would probably forgive, but forgetting in two countries would inescapably lead to childish mutiny. I found a tea towel and some door hangers that I could have picked up anywhere in the States, and bought them cups that say “Berlin” on them, and I walked out the front door into the square with the Berlin sun low in the sky.

I noticed, near the Gate itself, a group of people with Ukrainian flags. They gathered and sang what I assume is the Ukrainian national anthem in the shadow of a monument that has largely come to remind residents of the unity of a city that had once been at least partially under Soviet control; the symbolism was not subtle. A man came to ask me about my photos; we did not have German or English in common and so I gave him my card and he wrote down his email and I promised him that I would send him my photos; I don’t know if he understood but it won’t matter because if I use simple words he’ll be able to translate my email at his own time.

Journalism, or at least the kind that I do, often works like that; you go to buy souvenirs and wind up photographing a demonstration, and then you have a contact and a lead, and then you run that down until you have a story. It is very often just being places when things happen, and those things are not usually predictable. Formal groups might send out press advisories about protests, but far more often these things are planned ad hoc on Facebook or Twitter, someone has the idea to bring flags to a monument and sing a national anthem and their friends agree and then they invite more friends.

I have been thinking a lot about what my job is these days; Dominic is talking about going to Poland or Moldova and those are places that I cannot go, as I would be a danger to myself and others. I am confined (if one could call it that) to safety, to the sorts of places that it is very unlikely that I will ever have to run. And I am not just a writer anymore, these days I do photography and audio interviews and videography. The last time I left the country I wandered around with a notebook and a cell phone and these days I probably have those things but I also carry a laptop and a DSLR body and a spare lens and a bunch of cords and a handycam and batteries for all of it and wall plugs. It is somehow not restrictive but it is far less free. It takes more planning, because lack of a critical cord could simply end your day’s work.

The other thing I have, of course, is the walker. My fingers are numb most days when I get home, which I asked Twitter about and am told is just pinched nerves so I started popping into every bike shop I pass here to ask for gloves. People bike here as much as you’ve been told Europeans do, but for some reason bike gloves are hard to come by. (The word for gloves, by the way, translates directly as “hand-shoes” which I find delightful and also couldn’t think of when I stopped into the one store in which the proprietor spoke absolutely no English, so I kept miming gloves and he kept asking me if I wanted hand shoes and I thought that I couldn’t possibly be understanding him properly, until he brought out the box of children’s gloves and I realized that yep, I wanted hand shoes. I wasn’t trying to be rude assuming the man wasn’t aware of his own language, I just…hand shoes. It seemed too easy.)

The walker is, however, very convenient for carrying a lot of heavy gear around! People here don’t play walker chicken like they do in the States; I’ve had more than one person try to help me by picking the whole thing up to get it over a curb. I understand that even benevolent help is rude in the normal way of things, but in each instance the person in question saw some bikes coming and avoided catastrophe for everyone involved. It felt invasive until I saw people doing it to prams as well. It seems like some kind of unspoken agreement in a city where curb cuts are standard but not guaranteed and you’re in the bike lane sometimes. I have come to know this equipment well enough now that I’ve strapped my camera and phone to the side of it which seems like I should be an absolute mark for pickpockets, but I am the only person who knows how to detach any of the things. A man stopped me to warn me that there were thieves, and as we were having a cigarette and I was sitting on the chair with my 213 pounds, I knew there was no way for him to steal anything. So I dared him to try, and when he realized how I’d made everything I need available to me without leaving it vulnerable, he started laughing and said that I should start a business just helping tourists. Honestly, that was good for me as I hadn’t had a chance to prove the theory yet but I am sure at some point I will.

What it all means, of course, is that I am striding through Germany with the kind of confidence I used to have when it was just me and my briefcase and my journal. I am soaking up the language and the perfect breeze and the weird amount of 80s music, meeting people who aren’t strangers once I’ve spoken to them. I just move more slowly these days. Day before yesterday I came to a bar that bills itself as Irish, because I couldn’t take another pub where my beer and whiskey was going to be Jack Daniels (people here think of “Jackie” as quintessentially American and I suppose it is but I wanted a Jameson) and on the way, I passed a man’s home under a bridge. He has collected couches and a dinner table and beds and a shattered mirror, and he has rigged a shower made of plastic bags, and people sometimes sleep there with him and some nights he isn’t sharing his place. I sat down on my chair in the shade and lit a cigarette on my way back from the bar and he unearthed himself from under pile of things and said hello. I was on the other side of the pathway, not wanting to be invasive, but it was clear that this whole bridge was his place and he was welcoming me. I told him I was a journalist, which was a word we had in common, and I showed him my camera. I do that so that people don’t think I’m trying to be sneaky about it; homeless folks are used to being objects rather than people and I don’t want to make people anxious. He told me he was Polish and showed me his passport. I offered him a cigarette and this man pulled out a bottle of shitty red wine and poured me a glass into a cup that he also pulled out of thin air. We talked then, for a few minutes, laughing at the ridiculousness of it because he spoke very little German and no English and I only speak a few words of Polish and all of them rude ones. So I swore at him and he understood those were all my words, and he called me a bitch and yelled ‘AMERICA!’ a lot to let me know that he didn’t mean harm, he just was trading profanities. When I stood up to leave, he hugged me and kissed my cheek and his beard was very scratchy and now I really do have a friend here. Today, when I went back to the same bar to write this copy, he was asleep on his couch and he had replaced all the empty bottles on his dining table with a loaf of bread, or possibly someone left it for him. One has to appreciate the work it must take to build a whole apartment under a bridge to the point one might invite a friend and pour a glass for them. I had brought him some nice cheese and instead of waking him I just left it next to the bread with a note that said “geschenk” which means “gift.” The next time I pass by I will leave a bottle of wine, to make up for the glass that he poured me.

I had thought London was a green city, one of the places with more green spaces than anyplace else, but Berlin is lush and it isn’t just the parks. It is everywhere, trees and parks and bike paths with trees older than most buildings in America. There are fewer flowers, fewer garden beds, but more green. It is difficult here to feel like one does in the Mountain West, where one can feel the drought and see death in the sand and the scrubby kinds of plants that survive there. I have not yet found the part of the city that feels like home, but then I have only been here a few days. And I like the parts that I’ve been to in neighborhoods that aren’t very well known, because there is always a coffee shop and a bar and some shade and a place to buy a bottle of water, which are all the things that I really need in the world to be quite happy. I am sure that I will find someplace vibrant and exciting but for now, I am happy writing in the little bars I have adopted and bringing bits of cheese to new friends who live under bridges.

All that’s left now is to get these people into Springsteen, because if we’re doing the great white dudes of American rock I do have to say they’re playing too much Bon Jovi.