What We See 03: Three Journeys

WHAT WE SEE is a new series of feuilletons to be published on Elsewhere, born out of a new project inspired by the work of the Austrian-Jewish writer Joseph Roth. On 11 March 2023, the first WHAT WE SEE event was held in Berlin, and the first four essays to be published were read by their writers at Lettretage, along with a discussion around Joseph Roth and his life and work.

Project Editors: Sanders Isaac Bernstein, Julia Bosson, Paul Scraton & Alexander Wells

By Kate McNaughton:

They are at once the arteries, the nerves, the bowels of a city: rumbling intestinally under streets and buildings, singing with electricity from their overhead lines, ferrying weary commuters and be-suitcased tourists, like so many nutrients, from one organ to another. Métro, tube, U-Bahn, subway, RER, underground, overground, S-Bahn: they have different names, different characters layered over their commonalities of wheels, tracks, sliding doors and beeps announcing departure. The hypertension of the Metropolitan and City line at rush hour, suits crushing in at Waterloo from their leafy suburbs, politely ignoring their unnatural proximity on their long one-stop journey to Bank; a more variegated crowding on the ligne quatre as it rattles through Barbès, the wretched of the Earth from the northern banlieue joining up with clean-cut cross-Channel commuters at Gare du Nord on their way to the centre of Paris.

And Berlin? Berlin is a city with low blood pressure, carriages half-empty most of the time, except on the U8 at 2 am, when its pulse is raised by the party moving between Wedding and Neukölln. Berlin is, perhaps, this:

Senefelder Platz to Leinestraße

I walk down the steps to the U2 at Senefelder Platz; just descended from the train that is now pulling out, a man is walking towards me. He is in his 60s, longish grey hair, sports a maroon velvet suit – and on his shoulder sits a magnificent parrot, its feathers an almost fluorescent pink. They are both proud, flamboyant – Prenzlauerberg is theirs, however many Bioläden and Montessori Kitas may have sprouted here over the past twenty years. I imagine them in the 1990s, the dash of their colour against crumbling grey walls, breaking open doors to empty flats, living free and extravagant in the newly-reunified city, as my train trundles off towards Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz – the U2 being a slow, digestive sort of a line.

Then the finicky change at Alexanderplatz, leaving the wine-red shades of the U2 platform for the pale turquoise of the rest of the station, up and down countless short flights of stairs, along endless corridors cloyed with the scent of industrially-produced sandwiches – until I am on the grubby, nervy U8.

By the time I get off at Leinstraße, I am almost alone on the train, alone on the platform. There is one other person here, though, I realise as I walk towards the Okerstraße exit: a young man is defecating between two of the pillars that line the centre of the platform. I only catch a glimpse: an image in perfect profile of him crouching, his heroin thinness, the paleness of his exposed thighs and buttocks, the dark shape of the turd coming out of him at that very moment, silhouetted against the white tiles of the station. Then my eyes, having registered what they are seeing, avert.

Ringbahn

The Ringbahn, somewhere near Ostkreuz. It is over two years into the pandemic, and we are all well-versed in the requisite measures: FFP2 masks, ventilate wherever possible. Late August, and the weather is deranged: a fat-dropped rainstorm that belongs in the tropics, not here on the continental plain. A young man sits, unmasked, at the end of a long line of seats; the narrow window above him is tilted open, letting in a heavy spray of water which arcs above his head leaving him mostly untouched, but drenching the man – equally maskless – standing in front of him. The standing man reaches over the sitting one’s head, closes the window; the sitting man stands up, opens it again with aggressive finality. The standing man, who is dark-skinned – perhaps Indian, perhaps Pakistani – complains in English about how wet he is getting, closes the window again.

‘I don’t want your fucking Corona breath on me, man.’ The young man, who is white, reopens the window.

But the young man isn’t even wearing a mask?

‘I don’t want to wear a fucking mask. I don’t want your Covid.’

A handful of other passengers get involved: quite a few of them are also getting soaked. ‘Better to get wet than to get Covid,’ points out a woman in a perfectly-fitted FFP2 mask. The young man glowers. The air is sticky, quite possibly with Covid, also with humidity and resentment – it has been a difficult couple of years.

S75

How wonderfully it slices through the heart of the city: Ostbahnhof, Alex, Museumsinsel, over there, the Reichstag, down there, the Spree, and now the glass cathedral of Hauptbahnhof. It is Christmas Eve, and my travelling companions and I are off to have lunch in the Tiergarten, full of cheer and goodwill on this crisp, sunny day.

A trio of young men bursts into our carriage, one carrying a speaker, another a trumpet, all three wearing Father Christmas hats. They greet us all heartily, and launch into an upbeat jazz piece; the trumpetist is amazing, his body twisting, fingers flying over a perfect solo. We are charmed, filled with joy that this pleasant day has been given appropriate musical accompaniment; we donate generously.

When we get off at Tiergarten, the musician lads do too, emerging from further up the train. As we walk along the platform, towards them, one of my group says to me: ‘I’m pretty sure that was just playback.’ No longer performing, the young men’s bodies have slumped, lost their wiry exuberance; they slink past us like foxes. I think of the improbable perfection of the trumpet solo. ‘Yeah, it was definitely playback,’ my companion decides.

I notice, now, how waxy their skin is, how sunken their eyes – how grim and devoid of Yuletide spirit their expressions. I am dismayed not so much by our gullibility and the cheapness of their trick as by our naive assumption that they were sharing in our festive joy. I consider whether to let the moment be ruined, but decide, somewhat guiltily, not to.

The young men, a handful of our coins still jangling in their pockets, get onto another train, as we continue our journey on foot.

***

Kate McNaughton was born and raised in Paris by British parents, which left her culturally confused but usefully multilingual. She now lives in Berlin. Her debut novel HOW I LOSE YOU was published by Doubleday (UK) and Les Escales (France) in 2018. Her next novel will be coming out with Doubleday next year if she manages to get the manuscript to her editor on time.

What We See 02: A Meadow, A Park

Photo Vincent Mosch © ZLB

WHAT WE SEE is a new series of feuilletons to be published on Elsewhere, born out of a new project inspired by the work of the Austrian-Jewish writer Joseph Roth. On 11 March 2023, the first WHAT WE SEE event was held in Berlin, and the first four essays to be published were read by their writers at Lettretage, along with a discussion around Joseph Roth and his life and work.

Project Editors: Sanders Isaac Bernstein, Julia Bosson, Paul Scraton & Alexander Wells

By Daniel Perlman:

The Amerika-Gedenkbibliothek is open on Sundays. SoAGB the program is officially called. There are no librarians, they are forbidden to work on the sabbath, but as long as the library hosts events and activities the doors may remain open to the public.

—

The meadow in front of the library is a pleasant place to sit on Sundays and weekdays alike. Staff set up lawn chairs when the weather is fine, hauling them out of a blue storage container. The Frischluftbibliothek it is officially called. In the late afternoon, if you look up from your book, you might see a gray heron flying past Halleches Tor, over the Landwehrkanal.

—

There is a feather-filled stairwell in Hallesches Tor that leads to the U1/U3. The windows confuse the pigeons and they get trapped and some of them die.

—

A lanky, long-faced fellow in stiff dungarees visits the AGB nearly every summer’s day. He sits on the low stone wall that rings the meadow and releases his pets on the grass, two box turtles, then turns his back and smokes cigarettes. The turtles take off as soon as they touch ground, making a beeline for the east. Most are delighted by the reptiles, but some simply snort and get back to work, as if to reassure themselves that they have better things to do than look at turtles. By dint of some internal turtle timer the man always knows when they’ve strayed too far. He strides forth, snatches them up, and rubs their wagging heads on the way back to his seat. Then he puts them down again; the scene repeats. 

—

Sometimes the man trades out his turtles for a remote controlled car which he crashes at top speed into Doc Martens on the sidewalk. 

—

One Sunday at the Frischluftbibliothek a man with a ponytail and cut off sleeves crawls on the ground beside me. He wears a plastic bag over his hand and scours the earth with a diligence I find disquieting. For over thirty minutes he’s at it, picking up debris. At last he rises. He ties a belt around his waist, a red band around his head. Kung-fu masters are permitted to work on the sabbath, apparently. Two children appear, pushed forward by their parents. Punch! Kick! Roll!  One of the pupils promptly quits. The remaining child wavers. Now, kung-fu master, bring your training to bear! Your dignity hangs in the balance! He adjusts his headband, draws a deep breath. . .but his little apprentice defects. Berlin Berlin/Du heiße Braut, how can you be so cruel?

—

When the wind is right, as are the time and the day of the week, smoke wafts over the meadow. Its source is the park next door. Hundreds of people, friends and family, claim their spots and set up their grill kits. Chairs and fold-out tables, footballs and paddles, charcoal semaver, fleisch and sides. Not a kartoffel in sight. An unkempt man ambles from camp to camp, piling his plate high with kebabs and cutlets, gladly given. He is not partial to vegetables or rice and accepts them, if he must, with a look of undisguised disgust. 

—

I sit in this park on a bench and inch from one end to the other to keep in the oak tree’s shade. A panorama of joy around me. I fill up on it greedily.

—

One evening at Grillfläche Blücherplatz (for so it is officially called, after the Prussian General who sent Napoleon back to Paris from Waterloo) I see a woman walk down the path that bisects the park. Sinewy, tanned, wearing faded Camp David, she pauses to admire a plastic pink scooter and even takes a picture of it. I return to my book. Entschuldigung! Entschuldigung! A girl, no older than nine, runs down the woman who is absconding with scooter in hand. I settle in for a session of that favorite local pastime. Bystanding, it is officially called. 

The girl is slight, patient and polite, but it soon dawns on her that this is no innocent encounter. She puffs out her chest, pluck undaunted, and holds her ground against the stranger until, baby on hip, her mother arrives. Surely, now, the woman will relinquish her ill-gotten prize. But no. She takes out her phone. She displays the picture as evidence that the scooter is her’s by right. So brazen is the claim that mother and daughter are rendered momentarily speechless. But only momentarily. Two aunties arrive, crowding the would-be thief. Her plan was to sell the scooter, I think, but who’s to say there’s not a little one in her life in dire need of a gift? She releases the toy and flees.

—

The aggrieved return to their grillplatz, I to my reading. Not really of course. I continue to spy. I hear them tell their comrades what happened. The little girl chimes in from time to time, emphasizing certain details with wild gesticulations. But an even grander gesture is in order. The entire clan rises as one. Young and old, men and women, they take off marching through the smoke, hot on the trail of their antagonist. Somewhere, the ghost of General Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher tips them an approving nod.

—

Will they call the police if they catch her? Demand an apology? Cuss her out? It is a moot point of course, she is long gone. Sure enough, a minute later the group returns, foiled, triumphant. 

***

Daniel was born and raised in the USA. He earned his MFA in Fiction from New York University. Currently he lives in Reinickendorf where you'll find him shopping at Penny.

What We See 01: Tentstation

Photo: Joerg Heidemann

WHAT WE SEE is a new series of feuilletons to be published on Elsewhere, born out of a new project inspired by the work of the Austrian-Jewish writer Joseph Roth. On 11 March 2023, the first WHAT WE SEE event was held in Berlin, and the first four essays to be published were read by their writers at Lettretage, along with a discussion around Joseph Roth and his life and work.

Project Editors: Sanders Isaac Bernstein, Julia Bosson, Paul Scraton & Alexander Wells

By Jen Metcalf:

Berlin was once a city of empty spaces. Many were voids created by bombed-out buildings from the war, and a wide scar left by the death strip that sliced the city in half for 28 cruel years. I didn’t move to Berlin, didn’t start “building my Berlin” like a Colson-Whitehead New Yorker, until 2006. But even then – decades after the bombs had stopped falling, the Wall had been chipped away, and the city had stitched itself back together – even then, Berlin was a city of vacancies.

The year I arrived, one of them, a former lido, had become a campsite. Tentstation. It occupied a leafy, paused space smack-bang in the centre of Berlin, right by the shiny new main station. Prime real estate given over to four young Germans on a temporary contract that should have ended after one year, but went on for six. 

The lido’s 50-metre pool remained, drained of water, but still blue-painted and with graffiti splashed over the walls. A basketball net had been fixed up in the deep end. The diving blocks and diving boards stood motionless at the edge, waiting for the swimmers to return. Instead, they got young backpackers, local clubbers, and fashion shows. Then the dancers came.

That was us. A patchwork community of lindy hoppers. We were scientists, teachers, office workers, freelancers. We were in our 20s and still new to the city, or in our 70s and part of the fabric since the days of the Wall. Most evenings we could find each other in spaces all over the city and dance the day out of ourselves to Count Basie, Cab Calloway, and all that jazz. A world away from the techno thudding in Berghain or Weekend.

Photo: Joerg Heidemann

Sometime around 2009, we began gathering by the pool on summer Sundays, surrounded by trees heavy with leaves, the needled disco ball of the TV Tower just visible over the top. As we walked down the path from the campsite entrance, the rumble of the city faded, replaced by the DJ’s music weaving through the bushes to meet us. At first just the suggestion of that familiar eight-count beat, the rise and fall of a song. Then hooting trumpets, rolling drums, and Ella singing louder until we were there, at the edge of the pool, its blue floor already part-filled with couples connected in an easy embrace, bouncing and twisting their steps to the beat. One, two, triple-step, one, two, triple-step. On and on in a hundred different variations as the sun set, the fairy lights clicked on, and the night air began to cool our sweat-soaked skin. 

After those evenings I would cycle home, breathless and in flight. Soaring past the Reichstag, through the Brandenburg Gate, and down Unter den Linden. All of Berlin’s proudest buildings and boulevards lit up against the ink-black sky, carrying their centuries of history forward in steadfast, unforgettable bricks and mortar that are familiar even to those who have never visited. 

Tentstation was never going to join those ranks. They are out of its league. And anyway, it was never meant to survive. After six summers, the actual owners of the land were finally ready to send in the diggers. I never saw the construction site, never watched the heavy machinery in action, but I recently found a photograph online. A still life of a death. A white digger is parked by the pool. Its steel teeth have ripped up the grass where the tents once stood, turned it into mounds of dirt and excavated a mess of cables that might be electricity, or maybe they have been brought there by construction workers – ready to tie around a diving board and rip it out of the ground. The pool’s blue, graffitied walls are torn at regular, blocky intervals that suggest the teeth of the digger’s bucket have been gnawing at it. 

When the ground was level and the diggers had retreated, the architects and their team moved in. They built a new, shallower pool, surrounded it with timbered patios, sun loungers, and low-roofed buildings. This is Vabali Spa. It offers Eastern-themed wellness and overnight stays to white-robed, well-off customers. I hear it’s very popular, though I haven’t seen it for myself. This description is entirely thanks to Google Images. A few Christmases ago a client of mine gave me a voucher for a day’s pampering there. It occurs to me now that I must have mislaid it. 

And so the void disappeared. Of course it wasn’t the first, and it was small fry by comparison. This is Berlin. The city is laden with places that were once hollow ghosts of the past, now restored to their former grandeur, or filled with bustling office districts, tourist sites, and shopping zones. Potsdamer Platz, Checkpoint Charlie, Alexanderplatz, and all the buildings we dancers flew past as we cycled home beneath the sky over Berlin. Chances are good that you’ve heard of them all. But I doubt you’ve heard of Tentstation.

Photo: Joerg Heidemann

So many parts of a city are never visible to those who don’t live here – never even visible to all those who do live here. My boyfriend has been a Berliner since the 1990s. He is an honest-to-goodness German, not just a card-carrying one like me. And still he had never heard of Tentstation. Why would he have? He has built a different Berlin to mine, one constructed of people I will never know, places I will never remember. 

And yet all of Berlin’s small, secret places like the pool live on, even once they are gone. Not because they are so solid a war can’t crumble them, or so important that they will be rebuilt. But because we were there, danced among their graffiti, took care not to step backwards into the deep end, found friends and a skill we never knew we had. They survive because – to borrow again from the great Colson Whitehead – “what was there before is more real and solid to us than what is there now”.

***

Jen Metcalf is a copywriter, translator, and editor who arrived in Berlin in 2006 and accidentally made it her home. Having spent most of her adult life working on other people’s texts, she recently decided to start creating her own. Berlin is a recurring feature in her essays, which she uses to try and understand her place in a city that now feels like a partner in a long-term relationship -- with all the joy, disappointment and compromises that entails. 

Photos by Joerg Heidemann, who organised the swing dance evenings at Tentstation (and DJ'd and danced at them, too).

Cranes at King's Cross, St Pancras

By John de Plume:

Today, cranes define the skyline of London’s King’s Cross, St Pancras. Their ever presence makes them as if invisible, and yet they are at once unignorable, looming as they do over the proceedings of that immense reservoir of electrical energy. Cranes express the permanent flux of the neoliberal city, the endless growth of capital accumulation made manifest in the endless building and rebuilding of the urban space. Cranes are a concrete representation of the abstract logic of capital, where construction assumes continuation not completion: accumulation with no end other than that of perpetual accumulation as an end in itself.

Each crane alone is an impermanent structure, but cranes and construction remain permanent here. Cranes announce that buildings must be built and, implicitly, that buildings must be torn down too. High in the crane cabin – that liminal space that lays claim to the acquisition of the air by the promised commerce, coming here soon – the atomised subject of capitalist modernity pulls the levers of creation and destruction. Inside or outside of the crane cabin, it makes no difference, such levers are familiar to us all.

***

John de Plume is a writer whose work explores political economy, critical theory, and the socio-spatial effects of place. He is a member of Plan C London.

Three Cornish Landscapes

By Richard Skinner:

i. Over Mevagissey Harbour

from pitch-black night
the first to encroach 
the horizon
a strip of milk-blue
seeping in minutes
into electric cobalt
then comes peach 
bleeding into pink-white, thus
re-enacting day
growing, glowing light 
develops the harbour
spots of red & orange buoys first
then boat names, shop fronts
no clouds yet manifest
the last to drift from  
darkness—
the gift of granite 
& gneiss

*

ii. At Chapel Point

Or sun rising
is a bath of 
golden acid, 
pure voltage, it 
baffles us with 
its infinite patience,
the great silence 
yellow turns to blue 
the day peals by 
autoharp of light 
later
curtain of winter
light, stopped
(hush/bloom)
into the simmerdim,
solvitur ambulando—stride side by side
into the west
Come 

*

iii. Polkerris Bay

coming down 
off the cliff 
through the trees
a bundle of stone buildings 
tantalise below
the setting sun 
scintillates 
through a tangle of 
miraculous leaves 
and the whole scene 
is an abstract painting 
of green on red
the wood spews us out 
onto the beach   
the small bay is a tight curl
with one harbour wall
tiny waves break like ripcords
on virgin sand
there is no depth, everything is on a flat surface 
the bright sky is a pulsing membrane
the kettle drum sun 
hums and all the world 
could plunge into it
at any moment

***

Richard Skinner has published six books of poems. His next collection, White Noise Machine, is out with Salt in June 2023. A great deal of his work has to do with his love of long distance walking and a sense of place. He and his wife spent December 2022 on retreat in Mevagissey, where these poems were written. 

Richard’s website