BERLIN by way of KREUZBERG and PEKING DUCK

Throughout the years of self-shame and retrospection, Berlin is back on its senses. At peace with itself. At last. A unified German city and forever will be. An exuberant capital basking in the warmth of a promising spring. 

I had long wanted to visit Berlin. So, when the first sign of spring came into view, I was off to “where the Kaiser swaggered, where Hitler strutted, where the malignant Stasi skulked!”, as the late travel writer Jan Morris once penned.

It wasn’t that I needed to swagger at Check-Point Charlie, or strut at the Brandenburg Gate, let alone skulk at Kottbusser Tor or in Görlitzer Park at night, but rather witness a season that whisks away all lingering ghosts of the past and the disquietude that comes along with the monuments they’ve left behind. For spring not only carries an air of inspiriting guilelessness, but also reverence. It’s when Berlin begins to write poems to its citizens as well as those who share the city’s spirit.

Attempting to be ‘ich bin ein Berliner’ in a span of three days (not a krapfen/jelly-doughnut or pfannkuchen/pancake), I prepared a long list of things to do while embracing the city both through its sights and the strangers that I’d meeting along the way.

As someone visiting for the first time, navigating the city can be daunting on top of finding an ideal base camp. Berlin is huge. A city amongst cities. It’s four times the size of New York, and about nine times the size of Paris. 

Its psyche is as enigmatic as its weather. A friend once cautioned that Berlin is an impossible city, despite having lived there for many years. To understand it, is to know Berlin’s neighborhoods or boroughs. There are twelve. Each is of different breed and recondite by nature. To catch a glimpse of the city’s character at the very least, I reasoned that I shall have Berlin itself take me to where it wants me to be. For some unexplained reason, Kreuzberg or Xberg, as locals endearingly refer to, called out to me. 

KREUZBERG

There is a famous line about Kreuzberg that goes “Kreuzberger Nächte sind lang”, which loosely translates to “Nights in Kreuzberg are long”. A reference to a song in the 70’s by the group Gebrüder Blattschuss evoking a cultural experience among students, intellectuals and renegades, artists and outcasts, anti-capitalist and misfits who found refuge in one of the many pubs that remain open all night in Kreuzberg.

Having been known for decades for its dizzying alternative lifestyle, Kreuzberg is not only a melting pot of eclectics but also of continents – the old timers from the West and the new arrivals from the East.

While many of the former inhabitants have left the neighborhood pushed out by soaring rents, its immigrant population, mostly Turks, who were brought in as Gastarbeiter or guest workers in the 60’s, as well as their descendants, stayed on, stubbornly confronting the bite of Kreuzberg’s gentrification. Never has their defiance and grievances ever been felt more fully, then on every May 1st. Together with other angry anti-establishment protestors, they storm the Kottbusser Tor often resulting in riots. Just a few blocks away in Görlitzer Park and along Oranienstraße, revelries take place. “Kreuzberger Nächte sind lang”, how appropriate I ruminated. Kreuzberg is exactly where I needed to be. 

That cool April morning, I moved into my temporary residence at the Orania, a former 1912 office building with a cafe on the ground floor along Oranienstraße. The original cafe still stands, albeit bearing a new name after the building’s reopening in 2017 as a chic 41-room boutique hotel. The Breakfast Club, as it’s now called, is where one can swap a morning espresso for a martini or binge on a glass of champagne instead of a smoothie. Come midday, it turns into a cozy lounge. By night, a grand stagecraft for musical and opera recitals as well as a culinary masterclass.

If there’s an address in Kreuzberg that allows a traveler to be in the beating heart of the neighborhood, this is the place. So, when Jennifer Vogel, Orania’s custodian gave me the reassuring smile of approval and a big thumbs-up to boot, I knew I was in good company. A few floors up, I could spy on Berliners from the comfort of my room which overlooks a square. Amongst the line of trees seen from the distance, the TV tower above Alexanderplatz loomed with such smug as it pricked the city’s skyline. To my left, peering down and all the way straight along Oranienstraße, a thriving universe of cocktail bars, galleries, hip cafes, apartments, vintage shops, offices, kebabs, nightclubs and restaurants of all sorts; from Korean bulgogi to Mexican grill, Japanese ramen to Turkish döner, Indian and Uzbeki cuisine as well as angry chickens and Peking ducks.    

Setting up a base here, as it turned out, was not entirely mine alone. Guests of the hotel favor its location and love its proximity to the kind of Berlin any wide-eyed traveler imagines – ‘Berlin ist arm, aber sexy’ (Berlin is poor but sexy) as an old expression goes. I overheard an American couple making remarks about Kreuzberg, describing it as Berlin sans the superficiality and glossy postcard image of a city. The sentiment may as well be true when you have international musicians and visiting artists come and stay at the Orania. Aside from rendering musical performances for the hotel guests, they too want to be in the center, where new ideas could spark at any time in this creative neighborhood, in addition to reacquainting with former artists pals and revisiting old flings and memories.

Somewhere in town, as tourists gushed out from coaches and flocked around Checkpoint Charlie, posed for photos at the Brandenburg Gate, surveyed the surviving section of The Wall or made a beeline to the Reichstag dome, I sauntered aimlessly around Kreuzberg and was happy to be away from the crowd. 

I walked past several bars brimming with youngsters garbed in black, greeting each other with an air of cool casualness. One turned to me, smiling, and said ‘Alles paletti’. I returned the greeting of which he responded ‘Geil’ and winked enthusiastically.

Across the street, a colony of elderly Turkish men sat cross-legged and sipped tea. Punks emerged from a corner späti clutching cans of Berliner pilsner and energy drinks as they gave high fives to a ballet of bubbly gay men about to enter the same shop. From time to time, I would wander inside a gallery drunk deep in jealousy venerating vintage furniture, a gilded lamp, a modern piece of artwork hanging on the wall and then do just the same inside a ceramic and second-hand clothing store.

A few blocks away, graffiti greets the onlooker. Wafts of mouth-watering shawarma fills the air coalescing with Arabic hip-hop music as one approaches the Kotti station. Lost tourists ascend from the underground metro only to disappear after a few minutes and then reappear someplace else, perhaps in Mitte or Charlottenburg. I turned around Audre-Lorde-Straße, a street named after a Black American feminist-lesbian poet and erstwhile Kreuzberg resident, before popping by at Markthalle Neun to nosh on some bean cake from a Chinese teahouse.

In the north-western part of Kreuzberg, at Engelbecken Park, residents squatted on grass. Dog owners played with their mutts at the nearby Michaelkirchplatz. A vagrant stirred from his sleep and almost fell off his bench after being interrupted by uncontrolled giggles and the sporadic “Ich bin gleich soweit!” (I’m almost there! – literally, I’m coming! – contextually) streaming out of a makeshift outdoor tent.

My peripatetic stroll culminated along the banks of the Spree. Tourists aboard sightseeing boats glided along the surface. I raised my hand and waved emphatically looking foolish as the April breeze tossed my hair in all sorts of directions. I reached inside my knapsack and was pleased to feel the assurance of my umbrella ready to spring in to action. 

PEKING DUCK

As any outsider would guess, Kreuzberg is a petri dish. A microcosm of organisms living tightly side by side, floating in tangle, never being but always becoming. It’s a social experiment to say the least – constantly evolving, adapting alongside with the zeitgeist of each generation. This is a ‘kiez’ or neighborhood that fosters a culture entirely different from the rest of Berlin. Some live more powerfully in the imagination, others become myths.

Like everything in Kreuzberg, where things are grown, cultured, invented and reinvented, it’s no longer a surprise to spot a 13th-century recipe from the Ming Dynasty getting a proper Kreuzberg-esque take from a learned hand. If you ask Philipp Vogel who runs the restaurant at Orania, you get the feeling that you are not only to partake in the joy of devouring, what is believed to be China’s ancient imperial dish, but also have a hand, in this case a mouth, in the whole Peking duck experiment and banquet experience.

It begins with a humble dumpling floating in soulful broth. Followed by prized pieces of golden-brown skin delicately cut almost as thin as a petal. Crunchy at first bite only to melt like butter thereafter. Then comes the juicy breast meat, tender as dusk, served with pak choy and a rich pepper-seasoned sauce. Lastly, the comfort pulled drumstick meat and fried rice bringing the four-course ceremonial meal to a euphoric end. For 79 euros per person, a most extraordinary way to transport oneself to Asia without leaving Europe. But in Kreuzberg, one gets the sense of being in two worlds all at the same time.

Feeling full and content like a Ming dynasty empress, I stepped outside and smelled the fresh evening air. On one of the park benches, there sat a solitary figure accompanied by what could look like a black case. A few seconds later, he took out his guitar from the case, carefully adjusted the strings and began to play. I instantly recognized Ben King’s ‘Stand by me’. Then a heartfelt Arabic ballad floated in the night air. Tender and true. People started to gather around, swaying gently to the music. The moment he knew he had everyone’s attention: the guitar man put on an endearing version of Reinhard Mey’s Über den Wolken (Under the Clouds).

For a moment, the uncertainties of the future – unemployment, social problems, national identity, and the woes of Kreuzberg gentrification, seemed far away. Nächte sind lang. The night is long and, in the background, the audience singing in unison.

🎶 Über den Wolken

Muss die Freiheit wohl grenzenlos sein

Alle Ängste, alle Sorgen

Sagt man

Blieben darunter verborgen

Und dann

Würde was uns groß und wichtig erscheint

Plötzlich nichtig und klein.

(Over the clouds, freedom must be borderless

All your fears and all your sorrows,

they say

Remained unseen underneath,

and then

Whatever seems big and important to us

Became vain and small.) 🎶

When was the last time you’ve visited Germany’s capital? Which sights and landmarks did you see? Are you planning to explore Kreuzberg, a multicultural district of Berlin on your next foray to the city? Love to find out and feel free to share your comments below. Alles palleti! 😉

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