One of the trips taken thus far has been to Berlin’s City Office of Development. In this quiet building the future of Berlin is discussed and mapped out on a carefully crafted model of the city, in stark, modern miniature. Using these models both city officials and citizens of Berlin map out the future of the city. Berlin prides itself on being a balance of new and old, having many green spaces and city gardens for individual residences, and staying horizontal rather than vertical, and are staunchly opposed to setting up towering skyscrapers and getting rid of their green areas.

While I can understand their outrage over recent city development plans-a tendency to build up or take away Public greens to make room for more housing-I’m not sure what they can expect. Berlin is only getting bigger, and at the rate it’s going, it’s natural for its final stages to end up looking similar to New York. The plan to make Berlin grow and still possess green is optimistic, and sadly naive. Seeing the history of Berlin in 3-D and in miniature was  awe-inspiring, and really gave me a sense of just how big Berlin is.

Last night I went out to find somewhere I could watch the champions league football matches. I had missed the games the previous night, I was not going to make that mistake again. I have found that it is rather hard to find places where matches will be on tv. Sports bars are always a good bet, but those are few and far between. Most places to eat in Berlin are either fancy, high end restaurants or small, locally owned hole I the wall joints, neither of which would one expect to find a tv. However, I have come to realize that there are specific places I can always count on to have a game on, Irish pubs. I know what you are thinking, pubs in Germany? Let me assure you, almost everyone was German, the host was Irish but  spoke Deutsch. Before I get to that, I’ll start from the beginning. After googling, I found that there were two Irish pubs near my place. A hotel stood between me and both of them, though. Somewhere I had read that hotel receptionists were good people to ask about finding things locally. So I got to the hotel and asked the lady where games where available to be seen. At first she couldn’t think of anything, but then she made a phone call. I overheard the word ‘Finnegan’s’ and this was the confirmation I needed. One of the pubs was called Finnegan’s, the other ‘Cottage Cheese’, (which I will check out next time). I thanked the lady and set out on my way. It was only a ten minute or so walk. I didn’t know what to expect, if this place turned out to be a bust, I would go to the next one. But as I alluded to earlier, this was no bust.

I walked into Finnegan’s feeling nervous as usual. I will keep feeling this way until my German gets much better. But this feeling quickly disappeared, I looked up and there they were. Tv’s, glorious tv’s. Football players were shown warming up, coaches were being interviewed and I had got my groove back. I walked past the first layer of tables farther into the back, looking for somewhere to sit with a good view. There sat a small table with six stools around it and only one of them filled. I went up to the man sitting there and asked if he spoke English, he smiled and said yes in a peculiar accent I had not heard before and then that’s where the fun began.

After conversing with my tablemate for a little, trying out my German, the game began, Wolfsburg against Real Madrid. Wolfsburg has been having a dream run in the champions league so far, they are a small team compared to the rest of the seven other powerhouses left in the tournament. Needless to say they were heavy, HEAVY underdogs in this match, even though they were playing at home. The man I was sitting with did not know who was playing, but once he realized Wolfsburg, a German team, would be playing, he said “Wolfsburg is playing? Should be a good atmosphere.” This made me realize, Germans are fiercely loyal to their countries clubs, even if it isn’t their favorite local team, which he said was Hertha BSC. The game started as I would have expected, Madrid was running the field, all of their players looked fluid and comfortable and Wolfsburg was hardly seeing any of the ball. Things looked grim for the home team, but then the man said, “All it takes is one stupid mistake.” How true those words are.

Five minutes later, Schurrle is fouled in the box and Ricardo Rodriguez scores on the penalty kick! Wolfsburg 1- Madrid 0. Unexpected but surely there would be a response. 15 minutes later, Wolfsburg scores again! The place is going nuts, I’m going nuts, everyone is going nuts. How could Madrid, coming off one of their greatest victories in recent memory over arch nemesis Barcelona, be losing?

Haltime comes around and the two gents sitting at the table next to us move over and now we are four. I use the break to my advantage to interrogate them. Turns out neither of them were the biggest fans of football and they didn’t usually stay out and watch games like this. I asked them about local play and the looked at each other puzzled. Clubs, they said, were the only real way to go around here. Another blow to my search for pick up games. However another lead gained. “Try Stern” they said. FC Stern 1900 is one of the teams I have been researching as a possible club to meet up with.

As the second half began, I had a completely different experience. I’ll go ahead and spoil the game now, Wolfsburg won 2-0, even though this is one of the biggest upsets of the year and really was a great match, but this is besides the point, interesting things were happening elsewhere as well. Now that there were more Germans at the table, my original table mate had people to talk to in his native tongue and be more ‘expressive’ with. These men, who all said they were not that big of fans of football, all knew the game very, very well. The small little details of the game did not go unappreciated. For instance the went absolutely ape shit over one-touch, almost always, even when nothing of significance would happen. Maybe there is a message here, more one-touch perhaps? This makes the game faster, but less rhythmic in a way. Regardless, good one-touch is rarely a bad thing. One of the most hilarious aspects to watching the game with this certain crowd was that everyone laughed at the players when they dived. European football has a bad reputation for diving and theatrics. These guys were enjoying the flops. They laugh and whine, awwww, they would say, then mercilessly mock the player at fault, which ever team he belonged to. They also used fabulous vocabulary when describing great plays. “Das ist frisch” was easily my favorite.

Fresh. Wasn’t this a slang term young kids used to describe their clothes or something? Or a way to describe good food? Whats going on here? Maybe I need to go deeper, past my sloppy English translation. Fresh, new? Tasty? Original? Different? Raw? The average allusion of these words accumulates into some along the lines of Something Never Seen Before. Ah yes, the creative flair. Sure there really is no room for showboating and excessiveness, but what is the point of playing the game like a bunch of robots and not letting your inner self take co troll of your bodily expression? After all football is an art. Although this concept is not new to me, it will certainly warrant much more thought. Fresh…

I am ashamed to say that I walked out of the bar that night without knowing any of their names, I won’t make that mistake again. I did get a picture with them however, and I am thankful for that because this was an extremely enjoyable and memorable experience.

While walking through Kreuzberg near the CIEE, I found a small sign along the sidewalk that was filled with pictures and details documenting the rise of fussball in Germany. Apparently this was the site of the first team in Berlin back in 1870, a couple brothers founded the group along with some friends, nearly 150 years later the sport has exploded worldwide.

Every where I go in this city I have asked people “wo kann mann spielen fussball?” Unfortunately my questioning has yielded no physical results. Until last night I had been unable to find anyone to actually play with. After biking around I came across one of the caged, basketball sized outdoor courts that I have been seeing everywhere. I saw a group of people warming up, not yet playing, and I jumped at the chance.  Approaching the gate and being eyeballed by the whole squad, I asked the first person I found if I could play. He asked his friend for a translation, then said yes. The playing soon began and I immediately realized the situation. This was a practice for a team of people with mental disabilities, or ‘handicapped’. From the way they talked and moved, I knew that this wasn’t the appropriate skill level for me, but then I realized something. I have played with many people with disabilities back in the states, and let me tell you, this group was competitive. They were busting moves, sliding tackles and even talking trash! This was completely unexpected, but should I be so surprised? These guys, and one girl who could ball by the way, cared enough about the game to come out on a weekday night, even though, I was informed, they would all have to wake up early the next morning and go to work. I saw jerseys and gear from the locale professional team Hertha BSC and a Barcelona Messi jersey. The sport of fussball had been so important in their lives that nothing could keep the, from playing it and enjoying it with each other. I had thought that I was going to head out after a little, but I ended up playing four games with them for an hour and a half!

Although I seek more competitive, or rather ‘skillful’ play’ I am grateful for this encounter. Now I plan to follow up on some of the leads I have gained from my questioning. I have heard that pick up games can happen at Mauer, Gorlitzer, and Prenzlauer berg parks. I intend to make it to all of them.

A few notes in the meanwhile on the fussball situation here. Like Seattle, this is a big urban city, and fields are somewhat of a commodity. I was under the impression that every field I came across, all day would be filled with people playing non stop, but this is unrealistic, people have to go to work, and students have to go to school. Fields I come across during the day are usually empty, but I have found two, near the CIEE, that are potential meeting grounds. The fields here are all made of a much harder, less forgiving turf surface which is unfortunate, no one would want to slide tackle on that or you would get wrecked. Only the field complex at Lichterfelde, near my homestay has a grass field and softer surfaces, but then again, it is the training grounds for semi-professional team FC Viktoria 1889 Berlin.

Last note: there are tons of these little caged, concrete courts with mini goals everywhere. Perhaps these are the more common locations for playing. This difference between the courts and open fields are that a. they are much smaller so you don’t have to run as much, (but won’t build your fitness up either, or give you more appropriate game experience), however, b. they are small. In small places like this it is harder for you to dribble the ball around someone, so it is definitely a good place to work on your foot speed and control of the ball, which is essential. Maybe we need more of these in the states…

c/o Berlin c/o Berlin (which has moved and is no longer in Mitte; Hardenbergstraße 22, 10623 Berlin)  is a contemporary exhibition space dedicated to photography.  Out of the four photographers being exhibited right now, we focused on the central two, both born in the 1940s and still working today: American photographer Stephen Shore and East German photographer Ulrich Wüst.

The Shore-show is a retrospective, which means we moved through is work chronologically (although since Shore moved between New York and pan-US projects, the show had a spatial element and made me think in particular a lot about how we might document our time here in Berlin and after, above and beyond the standard food-and-culture memoir), starting with his move at age 18 into Warhol’s Factory, through a conceptual period (grids!) in the 70s, into larger format, rich scenes of suburban and urban Americana, and finishing (somewhat disappointingly but I’d love it if someone argued me out of that thought) into the digital, streaming world of Instagram.

The Wüst collection is otherwise-organized: categorically, spatially and seasonally, with Stadtbilder (Cityscapes), Spätsommer (Late Summer), and Randlegen (Peripheries).

 From the Brandenberger Tor to Checkpoint Charlie: Berlin, a swamp settlement on the Spree River, first mention 1237, came the Hohenzollern family for 500 years, all of the Karls and Wilhelms and Friedrichs until Karl Wilhelm abdicates in 1918, then Weimar, then Hitler, then Reichtag fire, then “state of emergency,” Kristallnacht, KZ (Konzentration) camps, Battle for Berlin, Allied victory, nation and capital in four sectors, then division, a wall, Bonn capital in the west (BRD), Berlin in the east (DDR), 1989 a press conference gone wrong (just so story), reunification.