die Atzen

Today's word is particularly fitting, if I do say so myself. „Atze" is a slang word from the Berlinerisch dialect. It means anything from brother or bro to fella or pal. The plural is Atzen. This weekend I got to go see my Atzen in Berlin!

Actually I went specifically to see a Cirque du Soleil show that is touring through Europe, and my friends also happened to be in Berlin for the weekend. Erm, I mean, uhh, I went for the sole purpose of seeing them, nothing self serving whatsoever. Gracia, Sergio, and Jennifer live in Berlin. Clayton and Joe, the Madgebrothers, live in Madgeburg, Adam is in Kassel, and Andrea is in Dresden, and we all met up in Berlin.

I am actually in the middle of a Berlin streak. I'm going to Berlin again next weekend and I'll have seen some more sights by the next time I post. I think I'll divide it up so that this post is about Berlin the city and the next post will be about Berlin the tourist location. Sound good?

If you just consider the cities proper, without the metro areas, Berlin is the largest city I've ever set foot in. I ended up liking it a lot more than I expected to. My only previous exposure to Berlin was the Peter Fox song Schwarz zu Blau (below, and just ignore the ape motif, it's too complicated to explain). Granted, Peter Fox is a rapper, so it sort of pays to exaggerate the poverty and criminality of your hometown. You don't hear many rappers reppin' the Hamptons, do you?

But in contrast to the line from the song which goes:

(German) Guten Morgen Berlin,
Du kannst so hässlich sein, so dreckig und grau,
du kannst so schön schrecklich sein,
Deine Nächte fressen mich auf

(English) Good Morning Berlin,
You can be so ugly, so dirty and gloomy,
You can be so beautifully appalling,
Your nights devour me.

I find my opinion of Berlin more in keeping with the quote from the Berlin Mayor „Berlin is poor, but sexy." Yes, he actually said that, and it's become a sort of slogan for Berlin. To be sure, parts of Berlin are dirty as hell, and I wouldn't call it the most beautiful city I've ever visited. Still, something about Berlin fascinates me. A large part of my fascination is the size of Berlin. All you have to do is hop on the S-Bahn, ride for 10 minutes, and you can completely change your impression of Berlin.

Another part of my fascination is the history in Berlin. I don't mean the history you find in museums, though there is plenty of that. I mean, when you walk into an apartment building in Berlin, you quickly realize that this building was there during the Civil War and that there was a family living here when WWII broke out. And since the houses have changed so little architecturally, it's very easy to picture the children running down the stairs 100 years ago to get to school in the morning. Everywhere in Berlin I was struck with this feeling of raw history.

I took a picture, and now that I'm writing this, I realize that it makes a point very well for me. I took the picture last weekend. On the left you can see The Berlin Cathedral, which was build in 1451. On the right-hand side, you can see the Fernsehturm (TV Tower) which was built in the DDR in the 60s, and in the middle, there is the Humboldt Box, which opened this year and is...wait for it....another museum! These three represent very well the ridiculously long history of Berlin, the almost depressing recent history of Berlin, and the bright current times in Berlin.

At this point I am more than a little in love with Berlin and I cannot wait to get back there on Friday.

To close, I'll leave you with another part of the song from above:

(German) Diese Stadt ist eben doch gar nicht so hart wie du denkst.
(English) This city is simply not as tough as you think.