Week 3 Psychic City in the Wedding Neighborhood

I spent the late morning into early afternoon in Wedding, known as the “Schnauze mit Herz” of the city according to wiki. It is a working class neighborhood in the Northwest of Berlin. I meant to visit Volkspark Rehberge, a huge people’s park with apparently a lot to explore, but because it was raining and maybe because the Saturday bustle was attractive to me I walked around the main streets for the duration of my time.

Coming home I stopped at a bar in Steglitz and wrote out what I had to say about the visit. Here are two extracted prose bits from the scribbles:

Rule #1: every third word

Wedding city’s a a a was end first from assigned flag to wars

other the the Herz a an poor of I go people’s try the or discover mean boar

it rainy and want on so toward and lined of the were Zehlendorf

shops main just interspersed space were because Saturday

seem felt home not was who wallet Euro hip a and I it park.

Rule #2: 2nd // 3rd // 2nd // 3rd….words

neighborhood a satellite village

a later was end the gasp the the flag

to ego the nations city the Herz not but affordable

poor of city to to park try the enclosure at what mean boar

but grey and I want on feet I the and lined arteries neighborhood structures

more flats on main just few home the busy it Saturday seem it a Euro

hip with cheap warm never it park

I caught the u-Bahn to the zoologischer garten thinking I would like to go to the zoo at some point, but I knew it was closed this late. I was expecting it to be a little bit more difficult to find the zoo when I got off the train, but I walked up the steps out of the station and boom, the zoo was right in front of me. Looking around I took stock of the scenery. This area was some of the most urban/ industrial I have scene, matching that if Alexanderplatz. This isn’t a place to find traditional architecture and cafes (unless it’s McDonald’s) but rather stores, lots and lots of stores. One building had too many stores to count, so I snapped a pic; got the Mercedes logo in the background too. Oh, there was also a theater nearby, the zoo palast, which was actually the first movie theater I have scene, and not like a stage theater. I’m thinking of seeing the Jungle Book sometime soon, so maybe I’ll go here. I checked the tickets 18.50, that’s pretty pricey. They seem to offer a couple extra things in addition to the ticket for that price though, probable a drink and a snack.

I wanted some coffee, but I knew I was going to have to settle. As in Dunkin Donuts settle. I like my coffee sweet, they make donuts, they can do sweet coffee, this is my logic. As I pull the door open and walk in, some kids behind me approach, and stupid, STUPID me decides to be all nice and shit and holds the door open for them. They are immediately followed by four more of their group, all going to dd’s, all ordering whole boxes of donuts. It took quite a while before I finally got my beverage. Once I did so I did more exploring. I saw that there is a huge train station there, right next to where the u Bahn gets off. There was also a big church in the middle of all the big hotel buildings which seemed so out of place, yet so perfect. Snapped a pic. There was a cool building next to it too with a bunch of lights, which actually turned out to be stained glass windows. From afar I thought it was a mosque, but at the entrance it was simply another church. Standing outside the doors I could hear someone hammering away at the organ in there. Didn’t sound very pleasant. Moving on.

I walked a little way, looked down at my phone to see what the streets were called. This ones called Kurferstend——“Excuse me, parlez vous francais?” I look up, two girls are standing there looking at me. “Uhhh….. Quick remember something, what we’re all those years of French in high school good for?” More stuttering by me, they start listing off different languages; Japanese, Spanish. English? I say. Ahhh English. They spoke pretty much fluently. Paris, like the city and sounds different, and Ronja, with a j as in job sound, were two students from Copenhagen out wandering about. They had been here for a week for their class, this was their last night in Berlin. Eventually, we sat on the steps, me drinking my coffee, which was terrible by the way, them their monster energy drink. We chatted about random stuff, until I found out Paris had been in Brussels a mere block away from the attack when it happened. She said when the bomb went off in the morning, she thought her mother had fallen over. When she went down to the street, everyone was crying. She admitted that when she gets nervous she starts laughing. So she was laughing while everyone was crying. She had been at that terminal the day before.

I chose to try Gabrielle’s and Kate’s Degenerate Art experiment. For this I visited the Berlinische Galerie in Kreuzberg, where they are currently exhibiting Berliner art from 1890 to 1980. For my translation I chose to work with Jeanne Mammen’s Valeska Gert (undated, before 1929), which was not featured in the Degenerate Art Exhibition, nor do I believe were any works by Mammen, but the style and the subject (the eponymous and legendary Valeska Gert, whom you should look up if you don’t know her) struck me as utterly unacceptable under the Nazi ideology. The painting can be found here (it’s the big one in the background, click on it to see the whole thing).

Below is my visual translation of the painting, entitled:

Time and a Half on Labor Day

(text is from the Sex Workers in Europe Manifesto found here)

After doing some research it is clear that a child’s youth is often oriented, (sometimes without a choice), towards a professional football career. For instance, many fathers in Deutschland are ex-players themselves. With the experience they have on the matter, they may believe they are capable of turning their child into the next Messi or Ronaldo. Hence they turn themselves into a coach for the child and force rigorous routines on them at a young age. Now I’m not sure how early into a child’s life this can be, but I do know that there are elite schools for athletic youths. At said schools they are separated from their families and are raised with their fellow classmates, who are also football players. This life isnt very different from what we know as boarding schools. School and football are essentially what a child’s life consists of. His can happen as early as 12 years old, however, I’m almost positive it can happen earlier than that as well. At around fifth grade, many kids are out through various tests to deem whether they are worthy or not of acceptance into these schools. Now I don’t know about you, but this seems far too early. These are prepubescent years, and these schools are gambling on the fact that they can get lucky and a child grow into a perfect football playing machine. During these years a lot is going through a child’s mind, and it may so happen that they find that either football isn’t for them or maybe a child who wasn’t accepted grows up with an unique chance passion to succeed. However I feel about it ethically, it cannot be argued that this is an effective method at creating a nation that is a world powerhouse at football.

There is something that I wonder about, though, and that is what goes on in the earlier years, before a child is even 10. This range of what we know as elementary school, is undoubtedly a breeding ground, or rather a sorting ground for choosing the most active kids at a young age and putting them into a football oriented world. One thing I have noticed is that there are playgrounds EVERYWHERE. And not just any old playground, heaping, Goliath, mammoth playgrounds. Tell me you wouldn’t want to run around every day as a kid if you lived near a playground that looked like this:

This brings a whole new meaning to the word ‘jungle-gym’.

And thus you have kids who perform better than others by the time they would be entering into high school. And are given endorsements and contracts and are basically set for life before they play their first professional game. I don’t know how I feel about this.