Berlin

My way to Berlin. Being in contact with Berlin in what way ever all my life, my moving there, my experiences and how Berlin test out if you really want to be a citizen of this incredible place.


First Contact

Being young, my parents (then still married) went every summer to a place called "Grünau" near Berlin.

We were living about one month there over the summer and I remember being very eager in building houses for lizards. We catched them, put them inside and they started to live there like we in the dacha. Every morning having breakfast together, every evening saying "Good Night!" At the end of the summer, wenn near leaving, we had to let them go, wherever they wanted to. Hard farewell, but I am sure it was good that way.

Having got some experiences there with biting swans, getting swings onto my head for several times, fighting dragonflies, swimming with hands on ground and claiming I really can swim, and being thrown a stone directly onto my forehead because my brother tried to protect me from swans (and getting a great icecream that caused a terrible headache afterwards...) I would say Berlin starts already here to cause history in my life.


Training Camps near Berlin

Ongoing contacts with Berlin were based on a yearly training camp during May. I was active with doing gymnastics and dancing and came the first time to Berlin city when I was about 10. The only thing I remember about this day is that I did not want to go up on the Fernsehturm. I do not know why yet. Maybe I was scared because of its size. But I exactly remember the standing in front of the then grey big building waiting for my group coming downstairs. It was terrible standing alone as a ten year old girl in the middle of East Berlin.


Becoming FDLer

Concerning the political system in East Germany (GDR) I had to go to Berlin with my whole class for becoming an FDJler*. That was a youth association / movement you should belong to in the former state GDR.

In connection with this day I remember a scenery standing in front of a supermarket waiting for pupils coming out with milk drinks. In Berlin they had such great milk paperbacks with chocolate milk inside. It was not available in Leipzig and so it became unforgettable.

*FDJ = Freie Deutsche Jugend = "Free German Youth" (if you have not been into, you were not a good citizen of GDR; if you have been active in going to church you were NOT allowed to become an FDJler - so much about being free in the red times!)


The wall comes down

After the wall came down, my mother went with me and my two sisters to West Berlin in 1990. It was a great adventure. Only the fact of waiting a long time until getting the Welcome money was extremely boring.

Holding at last the money in our hands we went shopping - like probably everybody from the EAST that never has been in the WEST before. So I bought a quite nice coloured backpack and a watch. My sisters first thought about nice food and bought a lot of “Knoppers”. It is some kind of waffles with chocolate and nut cream inside. Because everyone of them bought 10 pieces I got more than one for free.

As a result of eating all that “Knoppers” I became totally sick. It took me two weeks to get healthy so that this is unforgettable, too. So I better prefered the old good EAST German food for being sure not to run again through this process...


Berlin becomes beautiful

I did not really like Berlin. It seemed so grey and big and made an impression of getting lost in an ocean of big ugly buildings. I mean, if we still had “East” it would not have changed that much. I think my impression was not that false. But, fortunately, “East” became “West”. The borders were open, we got a strong influence from the “West" and I am happy that the Internet era found a direct way into our daily life.

I met my former boyfriend via the internet and after having visited him twice in Berlin, I decided very fast to move to Berlin - exactly five weeks after I met my Ex for the first time. The day was pretty good for taking such a decision due to the fact that it was the 31.12.1998!

In January 1999 I came back to Berlin. I arrived around midday. It was not raining and the sky was totally blue. Sun was shining. During driving through Berlin I felt something indefinable in my heart. When I got out of the car, standing in front of Bötzowstr. 18, looking up and down the street I felt very emotional. Deep out of my heart came the feeling that I come home, home to Berlin.

I travelled half a year nearly every weekend between Leipzig and Berlin. It was adventurous. Into the train, out of the train. Every weekend full of fun, nature tours with bicycles, car driving at midnight, dancing, parties, meeting friends, playing table games, pub crawling, culture introduction via theatre and cabaret, night walks through Berlin along the most famous places combined with being told a lot of history facts (I really appreciate that Berlin people are very close to their history; it is remarkable to experience)... Sometimes very stressful, but wonderful. And when the point came I had enough from travelling every weekend the same way, I moved to Berlin.

 
Berlin - Bötzowstrasse

June, 18th, 1999 I moved to Berlin. First, I was living together with my then boyfriend until finishing my home course of English studies (A-level).

I loved this first apartment. It is connected with the feeling of being home in Berlin. I still go there from time to time. Then I stand in front of the apartment (it is in the basement) and remember the “old times”. There is also a little garden in front of the window. I was often sitting there, learning, eating, talking to people living in the house. I remember also sitting every sunny day from 2 to 5 p.m. on a pillow at the window sill, window wide opened. Every time people were coming and going and everyone changed some words with me. That is life. That is the air to breath. That is a warm feeling. A feeling of becoming part of a special family. A very individual family … the Berlin family.

I felt excited by discovering Berlin via bicycle. Every house, every street, every park, every building, etc. Everything I had to search for was an adventure. Like being in a jungle. I really started to love reading maps, because without map you are kind of lost in Berlin at the very beginning.

Do you remember the solar eclipse of 1999? Well, I did something nobody could understand. I was still busy with trying to finish my course of English studies and needed urgently some books from out of the Amerika Gedenk Bibliothek. I got the permission to use the car and was totally involved in planning how to drive there. It was so exciting. Driving alone in a car through the middle of Berlin to find a place you have never been before, sounded simply great. I have to add it was the first time for me driving the car alone through Berlin to a place I did not know. I knew that solar eclipse was coming soon but my driving to the library was much more important to me.  I drove, found the way immediately and lend some books. Only when I came out of the library I became aware of the uniqueness of a solar eclipse. Unfortunately, I did not have any sun protection glasses for this spectacle. So I could not look into the sky to follow the scenery. Well, sometimes …


Berlin - Ebertystrasse

At the end of August 1999 I moved into my first own apartment in Berlin. I was so happy although the apartment was not in the best surroundings. Quite a different place compared to Prenzlauer Berg although it was only 10 minutes by bus away from the other apartment. But I loved it somehow.

I worked a lot to built up my first high bed and learned how to build furniture at all. I learned how to use different tools to work with wood. Very interesting, but it cost me lots of nerves.

After five month I was near finishing work in my apartment. I bought a new carpet and when I brought it upstairs I was wondering why the house was so dirty and smelling like ash. When I was standing in front of my apartment door I began to understand what was going on. I found my door locked from the outside with a green paper hanging on. I read the paper and the only information I got was that they had to break into my apartment. Not why, not what happened, nothing. So I was running downstairs, telling my Ex-boyfriend my apartment burned down and he tried to calm me with saying it is not that way. At the end, I was right and happy of having signed the household insurance TWO weeks ago. So I did not really lost anything. Only my apartment and the work I put into. I was crying but more because of the work I had with renovating everything as well as concerning all that happened to me the months before:

1. One week after starting my Abitur I broke my meniscus (06.09.1999).
2. One week later my beloved bicycle was destroyed as somebody was trying to steal it – yeah, you should not have that good lock!
3. September, 28th, 1999 I got my first knee surgery.
4. On 20th of December 1999 on the way back from Leipzig [I visited my family] all our clothes were stolen out of the car.
5. My apartment burnt down on January, 21st, 2000.

Have you ever had the chance to stand in your living room and look into four other apartments??? Well, I had. When being allowed to enter my apartment for grapping whatever survived during the fire, I found a big, big hole in the ground and wall of my living room. Everything was a mess, the bed and matrass unable to be used again, the plants covered with ash, the carpet looked like being washed into mud and all was terribly smelling for ash and fire.



Berlin - Rudolf-Schwarz-Strasse

Moving there on March, 15th, 2000, we got a three room apartment so that everyone had an own room (my requirement). Both of us were very creative in designing the rooms (colour etc.) and built up a lot of new furniture. I became better with planning how to build something and at the end to build my bed and whatever. I also learned where to buy what. I felt so cool in driving to construction markets (Baumärkte) and buying like a MAN a lot of wood and stuff you need to fit your pieces of wood together. Really cool feeling!

What I really liked about this apartment were all the trees you could see in front of every window [it was like living in the middle of a park]. The apartment was situated in the first floor and had windows to three sides: South, North, West. A very sunny apartment. In the trees was living a big crowd of cheeky sparrows. Every morning, and I mean really every morning, from Spring to Fall they used to start singing at four o’clock in the morning. Because of the sunny apartment and the heat that was not to prevent in the rooms we had to open the windows all night. So, every day, during the week as well as during the weekends we got our own great concert. We have not been really pleased about that ...

I also used to feed the sparrows. I laid some bred crumps along the window sill and was watching their way of catching them. They were so cute in sitting on the branches always looking to my open window and waiting until I left the room. Then, quickly, they flew to my window sill and were happy of getting a great meal. Sometimes I gave them also Apple pips. Oh, were they happy! But as soon as I entered the room they tried to get a last big piece of something laying at the window sill and to leave quickly. I feel like a child if I can do something like that.

One day a little sparrow (it must have been a child sparrow) was flying into our apartment. Right into the kitchen. Maybe because we did not clean the table. You could find some bread crumbs there. Unfortunately, I did not recognize the sparrow. I was sitting in my room, hearing something like metal noising and thought it was the wind because all windows were open. Short time later I heard some fluttering and some crashing against plastic. So I began to search what was going on. In the kitchen I could not find anything. But I recognized some bird shit exactly at our microwave. Another one was laying on the carpet of my corridor. So I followed these signs and found at last a little sparrow sitting at the window sill inside one of our rooms. It was nearly crying because it did not find the way out. So I was thinking how to help. I knew I had to behave carefully not to scare it anymore. So I began to talk to it in a way a mother would do. I think I calmed it down, then took it in my hands and let it flew out of the window. I hope it found the way back to its mother.


Berlin - Prenzlauer Allee

Breaking up my relationship in November I had to find a new place to live. I found a really old and long time no rebuilt place. It is in the basement, has still an owen and a shower in the kitchen. So...why did I take such an old, scruffy place and paying even commission for it? Well, because when I saw it, I could immediatly imagine where I will put every piece: my bed, my bar, my big desk...etc.

I had to renovate more or less everything by my own (once I was helped by Ewgenij, once by Therese and some of her friends): scraping off the old wallpaper on walls and tops, filling all the soon poping up holes in the walls with cement, putting on new wallpaper on walls and tops (the apartment has 40 square meters and a hight of 3,02 meter...I am 1,68 m...), painting everything, buying carpet...

So after working 1,5 week every day about 18 hours, I could move here on 08th of December 2001.

The day before I already rented a car, went to pick up the bought carpet, but came too late. My fault? NO! What happened was that I was given keys, papers and the advice where to pick up the right car. I went but ... imagine, you come to a car-park and you find the car you want to pick up surrounded from every side by other cars. So...one question...if i may ask...HOW THE HELL SHALL I GET THIS CAR OUT??? Well, I went back to the office, had to wait several minutes (about 30 or more), arranging new papers, getting new keys and happily finding this time a car standing more or less alone on the car-park. What a great feeling!

The moving day was quite busy. Starting with buying the carpet, fitting the carpet into the rooms, packing all the stuff in the old apartment (nearly nothing was packed before, had no time), managing all questions of the seven friends helping me when moving, being upstairs and in the cellar at the same time (my brain was working fantasticly good), moving in two steps (had too many things), cleaning up everything, putting bicycle in the van (the biggest one you can drive when having normal drivers licence), bringing the van back to the car company, and driving home about 40 minutes by bicycle...

When coming home, after this 1,5 weeks in which I renovated everything by my own, organised the moving, and drove the van by my own the whole time...I just wished to rest for more than a night. I prepared the bed, which was a matrass on the floor, and fell asleep deeply...

Unfortunately, the work was not done yet. I still had to build my new high bed and a leg for my bar, to fit bar and bed on the wall, and many other things that popped up once having moved with all my belongings.

But finally, in January 2002, I finished work in my apartment and could start living there a normal way.

Crash Test      [top]

Every year takes place a crash test at the Technical University (TU) Berlin. This time with a Nissan Micra, the first car I ever drove after finishing my drivers school.

Watching how the first car ever droven by yourself is crashed against a wall let me suffer. My heart was deeply involved in this car. It was a feeling like losing a good friend. My ex-boyfriend was studying Vehicle Engineering and so he knew about the yearly crash tests taken by the University of Applied Science (FHTW) Berlin at the TU Berlin.

It was the way that he decided to buy a new car and so he was searching for giving his old one a special death. He went to the university  and suggested to take his car for the 2000st car crashing test. So it was. They crashed the car and when the car was on the way to the wall my heart nearly stopped beating. It was excitable. Everyone should have seen such a test to understand the importance of a good vehicle construction.

The test was based on different topics. The students of the FHTW Berlin tried to test what will happen if you drive frontal to an obstacle with a bicycle on cars roof and three bottle boxes filled with full glass bottles in the back of  the car.. A fourth box stand behind the front passenger. They used also a dummy sitting on the driver’s seat.

War on Iraque      [top]

Concerning the War on Iraq, I was discussing with many members of the European Student Association AEGEE (www.aegee.org) about the pro and contra of starting a war.

Right at the beginning of our intensive discussions on the Iraquian war, Onur (member of Aegee from Eskisehir, Turkey) joined in. He is an ambitious person, who started early in his life to work in Non Governmental Organisations (NGOs), fighting for a better life, justice, and understanding. While doing so for years, when the war on Iraq was about to happen, he contributed to the discussions with his experiences. Due to his experiences, he was convinced that our planned activity against the war would never work out. Though it was difficult to convince him never to give up, he later joined into composing a position paper of AEGEE Europe for acting against the war.

A while after the submission of the position paper to the European Commission, I received following Email from him:

“I am not sure if you’ve remembered me. We’ve discussed on the protest and to do something on it. 2 days ago something happened which I would not have believed before seeing it in my life. The Turkish Parliament rejected the offer and I thought that time that this came out of a synergy of the civil society. Since 99 I was working in NGOs but that day, I saw that this synergy can move the world like I believed years ago and forgot after some dissapointing results. I wanted to say thank for every single e-mail you’ve sent to the list; be sure that you’ve a brick on this result.”

I was moved by this email deep in my heart. Thank you, Onur.