The Grass Is Always Greener--And More Desirably Situated--On The Other Side

So, Berlin. A city of neighborhoods, just like my hometown of Seattle. Except the difference in Seattle is that the neighborhoods are characterized more by who patronizes which clubs, bars, and restaurants; and what sort of view of the Cascade/Olympic Mountains, Elliot Bay, or Lake Washington they command. Or how hard it is to get to work when it snows; which unscalable hills it contains; how many Satanists, LaRouchies or Republicans live there. Its Trader Joe : Burger King ratio. And so on.

But in Berlin, the bezirks, or kiezes, are defined more by lines on a map. As a matter of fact you can live right across the street from a different kiez. You may live in Neukölln (as I do) and have the same bike guy as someone who lives in Kreuzberg. But the most visible difference between parts of town are, of course, their political standings during the years 1947 - 1990.

The former East is full of old, gray, deteriorating buildings with improvised toilets (referred to as Altbaus) and weird communist ideas of new buildings, which usually take up two city blocks and are made of uniform concrete slabs which have only in recent years been painted happy shiny rainbow colors in an effort to stave off the stench of Stalinism. The former West is much more densely inhabited and has its share of renovated Baroque-era Altbaus and newer buildings that look like every other building in America built after 1965 i.e. boring but suitable to your average capitalistic tastes. But none of this is the point. The point is that nearly everyone in this whole damn city lives somewhere cooler than I do.

Do you ever go for walks in your neighborhood and wish that you lived in the building with the blue door, or the one with the twisty baroque staircase, or the one on the tree-lined promenade, or the one next to your favorite bar? Chances are, if you live in North America, the answer is: not so much. Everything looks the same, nothing has any cool old pre-WWII charm about it. Seattle in particular is a developer's heaven; any time a single chip of paint falls off of a structure there are cranes on the spot to tear it down and put up a new stainless-and-glass monstrosity. Or they drench the new building in a coat of paint meant to closely resemble the shade of burnt sienna cast on sun-bleached stucco at sunset in Tuscany. Barf.

This town is great because most of the buildings have some sort of individual flavor. The 'Stoph's ego, as he picked out and furnished our apartment before I got here, always seems to suffer a blow when, outside of a foreign building, I jump up and down and clap my hands and exclaim that if we ever move, we're totally going to move here. With a dreamy expression and eyes like saucers, I envision coming home from whichever fancy-pants grocery store is in the immediate vicinity, heaving open the impossibly heavy wrought-iron and glass door, gliding lightly through the fresco-tiled foyer, tripping up the carpet-clad steps to my third-floor apartment, inhaling the fresh scent of hardwood, enjoying the luxury of 14-foot high ceilings, and placing my groceries on the spacious marble counter next to the window which looks out on the vine-draped and lilac-scented Garden of Eden we call a courtyard.

Then reality sinks in. I live in a 37 meter squared flat, on the ground floor, with cheap carpet and no counter space, that someone tried to break into not long ago, and which smells funny if you don't air it out every other day.

Maybe someday I really will live a posh life in the neighborhood across the street.