Light and fog

OK, let’s get cracking. These automated bottle recyclers are in a lot of grocery stores, but you really have to look for them. They’re marvels of technology, really. Once you insert a bottle, two rubber rollers hold it in place and spin it around. A diode scanner takes a picture of something (a bar code?) and decides whether it’s a legit bottle or not. I dropped about eight bottles in here, and the only one it rejected was a Tyskie, a Polish beer I bought at a corner store. No clue what the criteria is. Press the green button and out comes a store credit.


I headed down to Kurfurstendamm, which is the closest thing to a city center that the former West Berlin had to offer. Here’s KaDeWe, billed as the biggest department store in continental Europe. I suppose that careful wording means Britain has a bigger one? The gourmet food section is supposed to be jaw-dropping.


The little green man wearing a coat and hat is something of a cause celebre. He’s certainly a boon to souvenir hawkers. The story goes that Berlin is intent on making all its traffic signals conform to a standard that doesn’t include this little guy, so there’s a save-the-green-man-with-the-hat campaign afoot. I’m sure it’s a manufactured controversy, but I fell for it and got a magnet.


Frische fische and lots of other things for sale at Wittenbergplatz.



How’s your German? Yeah, mine, too. I find it helps not to focus on the words too closely, and just try to do some free association. What about this one?


Yeah, eatin’ and drinkin’. I think that’s pretty close. And what do you think they sell here?


Blooming plants, for sure! So when you see an establishment like this selling gluhwein, I suppose that means …

Yeah, wine made from glue, mos’ def. Seriously though, this is a nasty concoction. I don’t know how it’s possible to fuck up hot spiced wine, or maybe I just drank from a bad batch, but this stuff would be roiling in my innards for a good while. Lesson: Stick to wasser or bier.

Overlooking the festivities is the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, which was blown to ruin by Anglo- American bombs. In the late 1950s, when West Berlin authorities proposed to remove the shattered tower, there was a public outcry in favor of preserving what was left of the church. And so it remains -- a lasting reminder of how much of the city looked in 1945.


Here’s a view of the modern interior. The stylized Jesus reminds me of the one at the main cathedral in Dresden -- another German city that was blown to smithereens. I took a seat for awhile just to slow down time for a bit when an organist started playing.


It wasn’t a formal performance; I think it was a music lesson of sorts, actually, and what I heard sounded less liturgical and more like “The Abominable Dr. Phibes.” Judge for yourself:



What is it with Gypsies? I have no reason to think they’re bad people, but they’re cliquish, they refuse to assimilate, and though seemingly young and healthy, work is beneath them. This one was wailing mournfully -- not for redemption or inner peace or for bad deeds done. No. For money. That’s it. Just money.


After the Wall was built, Western investors really turned their attention to this area. I can’t think of a single global retailer that isn’t represented on this street.


Some notes on tonight’s concert by pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard: It was held in the Kammermusiksaal, which has the same in-the-round configuration of the philharmonic hall, but smaller. I first learned of Aimard a couple years ago when I downloaded some radio shows from DimeADozen. I thought he was really good in a clinical, professorial way, and I expected the night to be a pleasant diversion.


He opened with Mozart’s Piano Sonata No. 6 in attack mode, with almost Gouldian tempos. Sure doesn’t sound French, I thought, with little of the tempered roundness that characterizes French musicians and French orchestras. Boy, is he good though, buoyant and full, executing this nifty crossover move where his left hand reaches for the higher registers.

He proceeded to do some piano figures from George Benjamin. I figure they must be friends, being about the same age. I say this because any time you hear Benjamin’s name, it’s in association with Aimard. I don’t know of anyone else who plays Benjamin. This was a pleasant surprise. The 10 pieces were modern, impressionistic and highly textured, with apt titles like “Knots: Fast and Crisp,” and “Around the Corner: Flowing.” Accessible and not at all pin-headed.

I couldn’t have been the only one at intermission dreading the Stockhausen to follow. At least the Klavierstuck 9 was brief. Look, if a modern man in middle age can’t fully appreciate this stuff, isn’t it time that this atonal garbage is hauled out to the curb? During some passages, a good five seconds would elapse between notes. I could hear myself swallowing. Yes, this work, like Benjamin’s, was also impressionistic and highly textured, but the difference is that Benjamin’s figures have a playful humanity, while Stockhausen’s anti-melodic approach borders on the nihilistic. The human mind searches for patterns. I closed my eyes and sought out geometric shapes, landscapes, memories, the sounds of human speech, anything that would contextualize the notes coming from the piano, and they defied all attempts to do so. And I think that’s precisely the point. Next, please.

Variations on themes from Beethoven’s Third Symphony, the “Heroic” one, followed. I know the symphony as well as I know “Happy Birthday,” and I’m still not sure where some of Aimard’s themes come from. Hence the term “variations,” I guess. But boy is this guy good. An assured touch, light on the pedal, always digging deeper and darker. When it’s over, some numb nuts in the audience get up to leave. What’s the matter? Gotta catch the 10:30 airing of “The Nanny”? (That show is on here constantly).

Aimard returns for an encore, as I knew he would. He tells a joke in German and launches into a shimmering Debussy prelude dripping with nostalgic longing. He sounds utterly French now, and I think to myself, he’s just pulled off a hat trick -- he’s covered four centuries of the classical repertoire --equally at home in all of them. He concludes the Debussy with quiet sensitivity, a thick fog of melancholy settling over the room. Handkerchiefs dab at moist eyes, a gaggle of 13-year-old French kids, yet immune to these subtle shadings, whoop it up for their countryman. It’s cute, sad and beautiful.

We exit the hall into real fog, the tops of buildings now invisible, trying to hang on to what we’ve heard. As with anything beautiful, you try to preserve it as long as you can before having to let it go. And then you buy the CD.

I take the long way home and run across this store display. I guess these are Bauhaus designs.


This is a $5,000 chair.


As I turn around I see a strange glow in the sky at 10:30 p.m. It takes awhile for me to realize it’s the lights from Potsdamer Platz lighting up the low clouds a mile away.


Here’s some of those retractable barriers I was talking about. If you’re going to truck-bomb the British Embassy, you’ve got to get past these. Good luck.




Hardly anyone is on the streets now. I stop in front of the Brandenburg Tor.


And take a stroll down Unter den Linden.


Back home, the doner kebab place around the corner is open, thank goodness. Far from wailing for a handout, this guy approaches his job with the robust passion of a Pierre-Laurent Aimard. If everyone did likewise, wouldn't that be a merry Christmas?