22 July 2007
berlin report der fünfte
In the interests of balance, this report will consist of a summary of the (very few) things I don't like about Berlin.
1. The dogs. There are an awful lot of them. Ease of living in Berlin presumably means that a lot of people have enough room to keep these frequently gigantic animals. A lot of then are very barky, and dog owners here, like everywhere, always seem surprised when their dog behaves a bit animally, even though it is the very nature of most dogs to jump up at and make loud noises at strangers. 'Oo, he never normally does that!' their expressions convey, lyingly. The only exception to the not liking dogs rule comes with this guy:
The most rational, helpful dog I have ever seen, he assisted his owner in selling papers on the U-Bahn.
2. The traffic-light button pushing system. Whilst the pavements are just the perfect width, and cyclists rule the city with an autonomy not witnessed anywhere outside of those super-civil Scandanavian countries, the traffic light system is confusing. Less the lights themselves, with their East-west provenances marked by the presence of a dapper little man in a hat (East) or without (West), but the strange yellow boxes mounted on the poles. Some of them actively invite you to press them, which you do with all the glee that a false signal of one's subjective addition to the situation accords, others merely have a print of dots on them, that look a bit like buttons, but don't move or make anything light up when you touch them or wave your hand over them. The fantasy would be, of course, that one is really 'making the lights change', but we could at least have one consistent fantasy, rather than several baffling ones. Of course, most Berlin-folk are far too cool to do anything but breeze through all traffic lights, whether for cars or pedestrians, on their bicycle.
3. Disappointment that not everyone dresses as well as they do in the Berlin in my imagination. There is some hotness about, usually after about 3am (don't you people have jobs?! Oh wait...), but daywear is irredeemably casual, with lots of flip-flops (blurgh). The best-dressed people I've seen are probably the prostitutes on Kurfüstenstraße, but dressing like a sex-robot from the future with giant platform boots is always a good look. Still, can't helping wishing they had somewhere more comfortable to wait, and that the men had to get out of their cars to talk to them...
Here are some images:
A recently-smashed phone box on Karl-Marx-Allee.
the sublime Cafe Moskau.
A Butchers on Karl-Marx-Allee. My new favourite related word is 'Schweinerei', which means a mess or a scandal. I'm rather hoping there will be less online Schweinereis in future, as they have a tendency to keep me awake at night. It's harder to take a holiday from the internet than it is from anything else, apparently.
1. The dogs. There are an awful lot of them. Ease of living in Berlin presumably means that a lot of people have enough room to keep these frequently gigantic animals. A lot of then are very barky, and dog owners here, like everywhere, always seem surprised when their dog behaves a bit animally, even though it is the very nature of most dogs to jump up at and make loud noises at strangers. 'Oo, he never normally does that!' their expressions convey, lyingly. The only exception to the not liking dogs rule comes with this guy:
The most rational, helpful dog I have ever seen, he assisted his owner in selling papers on the U-Bahn.
2. The traffic-light button pushing system. Whilst the pavements are just the perfect width, and cyclists rule the city with an autonomy not witnessed anywhere outside of those super-civil Scandanavian countries, the traffic light system is confusing. Less the lights themselves, with their East-west provenances marked by the presence of a dapper little man in a hat (East) or without (West), but the strange yellow boxes mounted on the poles. Some of them actively invite you to press them, which you do with all the glee that a false signal of one's subjective addition to the situation accords, others merely have a print of dots on them, that look a bit like buttons, but don't move or make anything light up when you touch them or wave your hand over them. The fantasy would be, of course, that one is really 'making the lights change', but we could at least have one consistent fantasy, rather than several baffling ones. Of course, most Berlin-folk are far too cool to do anything but breeze through all traffic lights, whether for cars or pedestrians, on their bicycle.
3. Disappointment that not everyone dresses as well as they do in the Berlin in my imagination. There is some hotness about, usually after about 3am (don't you people have jobs?! Oh wait...), but daywear is irredeemably casual, with lots of flip-flops (blurgh). The best-dressed people I've seen are probably the prostitutes on Kurfüstenstraße, but dressing like a sex-robot from the future with giant platform boots is always a good look. Still, can't helping wishing they had somewhere more comfortable to wait, and that the men had to get out of their cars to talk to them...
Here are some images:
A recently-smashed phone box on Karl-Marx-Allee.
the sublime Cafe Moskau.
A Butchers on Karl-Marx-Allee. My new favourite related word is 'Schweinerei', which means a mess or a scandal. I'm rather hoping there will be less online Schweinereis in future, as they have a tendency to keep me awake at night. It's harder to take a holiday from the internet than it is from anything else, apparently.
