Pankow Blues

For all of its extremely foreign splendor, Prague was maybe the whitest city I've ever visited. Going to Berlin, a mere six hour bus ride, proved world's away, as the largest German city is also one of the biggest emigrant destinations of the past two decades, the streets filled with a melange of skin shades, accents and languages, all lending to the sort of extremely cosmopolitan atmosphere you can only hope to find in the most amazing of places.

So I should not have been surprised to experience the unexpected, but that's exactly what happened on our seventh night in town.

So, I'm going to have to jump around in time a little bit for this one, starting back in the year I spent living in San Diego. I made friends with several regulars at my local watering hole, but spent a lot of time in particular chatting over beers with Tom, a Southern California born-and-bred blues drummer who is about as earnest about music as anybody is about anything.

Though he'd just finished getting a degree in music theory that made him an avid classicist, Tom's old blues, rock and roots band still had a fan in the form of a European booking agent, and last summer the Mississippi Mudsharks kicked off a tour of the continent here in Germany (I'm in Hamburg now). When he returned to Ocean Beach in the early fall, he told me he'd fallen in love, and was moving to Berlin in the winter. I might have been disappointed, except of course that I was on a similar path. We traded emails, made loose plans to meet up, and left it at that.

When Max and I arrived late friday, we immediately experienced the first of a few thunderstorms we'd encounter in Germany. If it's raining, it must be laundry day, and between the weather and a couple of additional days working, I did not spend as much time exploring the town as I might of liked. However, on Sunday evening, Tom found us in our hostel bar and led us on a whirlwind tour of East Berlin that left us finally feeling we'd arrived.

The history of a city that had once been forcefully, at times violently, divided is unquestionably inspiring, even given the horrific sequence of events that led up to it. I can remember touring part of Okinawa, back in high school, where Japanese soldiers and people had fled the invading US forces, only to commit suicide by opening grenades in caves or hurling themselves from a cliff. Being forced to mull over the inhuman acts of war - people driven mad by fear, hatred and greed - can be jarring at best. It's not exactly the sort of stuff that makes for a delightful venture through a foreign culture, so I made the deliberate decision not to visit anything commemorating the Nazi regime or their holocaust.

I feel it important to mention because there seems to be a feeling in the world that not to face up to the atroicites of the past is to risk repeating them. I frankly do not feel I need these visceral reminders in my life - as a student of history and rhetoric I understand and am appalled at the willful destruction reaped by those with power, and almost moreso at the willingness of masses to enjoin it at their behest. Stirring up anger at these memories, feelings of righteousness and vengeance, doesn't feel right. Am I really, as an American in 2007, going to come over here and shake my head at a half-century ago?

But the draw to that wall is too alluring. As much for the fact that the Russians seemingly enacted their revenge for 20 million lives lost on East Germany, as that West Berlin stuck out in the middle of it all as an island representing freedom and opportunity, even as it was surrounded on all sides by concrete, barbed wire and snarling hounds. Tom's girlfriend remembers seeing westerners peering over the wall from observation towers, curious at the lives led on the other side. We visited a museum at Checkpoint Charlie that details the great lengths people would go to in order to get into West Berlin, burrowing tunnels and folding themselves inside machines to smuggle themselves past the armed Russian guards.

I suppose a case could be made that it's just dessert for the atrocious policies and unprovoked violence of the 'third reich,' and that it's tough to turn around and sympathise with such a culture's subsequent suffering - but maybe it's also dangerous to do so if we wish to stay on the side of human progress and peace, and avoid the sort of rueful sentiments that separate people to greater degrees than borders do. Living past one's sins, be they personal or national, is complicated work - a great function of religious faith I believe - and facing the stigma of history with both humility and dignity almost impossible.

Today, Berlin is proud of its (at least superficial) unity. We stayed in Mitte (meet-uh), which means the 'middle', of town. Once a part of East Berlin, it's now testament to the pervasive power of capitalism, with hundreds of shops, clubs and restaurants. But there's a different side to it as well, as it retains a quasi-leftist underbelly. Max and I were particularly fond of a place called Cafe Zapata, which is a large building and courtyard once slated for demolition, but which squatters have turned into bars and artist lofts. The courtyard, or biergarten as it were, is filled with metal sculptures, seating made from reclaimed junk, and young Berliners sitting around chatting over beers, enjoying music. Vaguely postapocalyptic and almost a little too hip, it's nevertheless one of the most free-feeling places I've been. Somewhere between the rusting helicopter husk and the endless unintelligible strings of graffiti, these guys have created their own monument to Berlins wayward past, at once humbled and spirited, reflecting violence and oppression, but optimistic that legitimate inroads can be made towards a more positive future. I'll stop short of saying the place perfectly encapsulates the mood of Berlin, but in a week filled with parks, museums and dance clubs built under train overpasses, it was my second favorite spot to see, and has helped my understanding of this pretty fascinating place.

Of course, the best waited for that last night. The plan was to meet up with Tom for a couple of beers, then head out to a nightclub until the sun came up (which, this being the solstice in Northern Europe, is like 3:30am). We caught the train up to Pankow, an East Berlin neighborhood a little off the tourist path, and found the bar Tom frequents now that he's no longer in Ocean Beach.

The Garbäty is a small place, an eighteenth century building refurbished by hand by the bar's owner. It was packed almost to overflowing by a crowd ranging from twenty to seventy, all of whom were rapt in attention to the rock band performing on a small corner stage. Now when I say all, I mean ALL. I have been to popular concerts back home that cost $70 to get into and still seen people milling around, more interested in chatting than enjoying the music. But in this place, even those of us in seats without a clear view of the stage were caught up in the classic rock covers. These guys rocked it out, even succeeding in putting their own stamp on some Beatles tunes, which I'd previously thought impossible.

After a couple rounds of beers, the band finished up, and Max and I chatted with the one or two English-speakers who greeted us welcomingly. Anya explained to me that, before the wall came down, if you wanted an electric guitar, you built one. 'Stormin' Norman (didn't say where he got those scars and we didn't want to know) enthusiastically brought over a round of tequila shots, toasted 'Prost!' and joked about anything possible.

Then, someone came over to Tom and said, 'So-and-so says they're going to play some if you want to sit in.' So, he jumped up to the stage with a few guys and started jamming out blues tunes. These guys had never played together before, but it worked. It was tight and rhythmic and moving and, as Max says, 'Mind-Blowing.' Tom kept the shuffle upbeat while the guitarist's traded riffs and solos, the yamulke-wearing bass player kept it rolling, and the singer alternated between wailing soulfuly into the microphone and belting out a Delta-style harmonica. It was more fun to experience than I can say, and we whistled, hooted and quite thoroughly enjoyed every minute.

We never did make that dance club, but hey - those are the same the world over, right down to the records played. This was a bit of recently acquired Americana, which might not have worked so well back home, but here has been filtered through reprisals and discovery to get right back to authentic; mournful but upbeat, not for a moment jaded, and just plain celebratory of life'S highs and lows. Man, I wish you could have been there.