Doner Kebab, Fallen Leaves, the Wall

I woke up this morning thinking about laundry.  As we have traveled through Europe from one home exchange to another, I have been impressed by the variety and ingenuity of the various washing machines and clothes-drying contraptions I’ve come across.  The rack in our current home operates with a pulley system; you lower the rack to hang the clothes, then raise them to dry—in this way, it doesn’t take up valuable floor space.  A high ceiling is beneficial, but not absolutely necessary.

If it is true that switching from dryer machines to air drying clothes would lead to truly significant energy saving, why don’t we do it in the US?  Why is it that Europeans of a similar socioeconomic status, with smaller homes on average, typically dry clothes without machines?  Even at the low end of the SES spectrum in the US, people pay to dry their clothes at Laundromats rather than hang them to dry.  I suspect that there is a complex set of political, cultural, and patriarchal systems at work here. 

Dryers became popular following World War II, when women were being shepherded back into the home after having been urged into the work force while men went to war.  The on-site daycare and prepared meals for women to take home from the plant disappeared.  Many women enjoyed working outside the home and so, to entice them back in, advertisements pictured women standing in their kitchens, on the phone, the sparkling array of new and efficient appliances standing at attention behind them.  The image:  woman as manager of the home.  Many of them bought it hook, line, and sinker.  Many of them popped valium and drank martinis. 

At the same time, the combination of white flight, the new highway system, and cheap mortgages combined to create the American dream—at least for white Americans.  People moved from small, city apartments to large, suburban homes that had space for these appliances—and for large cars, swing sets in the backyards, TV rooms.    So for these and other reasons, the US has clothes dryers—and consumes more energy per capital than any other country.  There’s probably a paper in there somewhere.  But not today.

After my morning musings, I got up and took myself to a yoga class, a nice one hour morning stretch that my body needed.  It was in German, and the teacher did not even use the Sanskrit names for the poses, some of which I recognize, but no matter.

On my way home I noticed that Mustafa’s kebab house, around the corner from our apartment, had no line in front of it.  I had had my eye on Mustafa’s a little street kiosk, since we arrived.  Every time we passed, it had a line at least 30 people long out in front of it.  When I see a line like that in front of a food stand, I get curious.  It was 10:30 in the morning, and I had been up for a few hours, so I thought, “What the hell.  Time for a doner kebab.”  I ordered up a veggie kebab with everything—crunch lettuce, creamy hot sauce, warm pita.  I brought it home and tore into it.  Really good.

Berlin is not exactly a place you go to purely for food, but I am always determined to find my way to a good meal, a local specialty, a fabulous market.  Not being a huge fan of German food, my first plan was to focus on ethnic food.  And that may still turn out to be the right thing to do.  But then I read a few things, including a not-too long ago article in the New York Times, I thought maybe street food was the way to go.  Barcelona’s street food culture is practically nonexistent, and there are a lot of places where you have to be crazy or starving to eat street food, so I figured Berlin might be a good bet.  And Mustafa’s was terrific.  I printed out the NYT piece, plus some other street food pieces I found on line.  But the folks we met for a beer today were not impressed with any of the lists.  So it seems I’m back to square 1.  We’ve been eating just fine, but not much to write home about.

Once we got ourselves together—a process that takes a few hours—we walked to the Jewish Museum, a breathtaking building by Daniel Libeskind.  Apparently the building itself was such a success that people began to visit it two years before the museum was open.  It is incredibly thoughtful and provocative, with beautiful light-filled spaces like the glass courtyard that invite community, and oppressive spaces like the holocaut tower that evoke despair.  We spent nearly three hours there and saw only a fraction of what there is.  The building includes several spaces called Memory Voids, empty spaces meant to symbolize the loss of Jewish culture. One of the most powerful pieces is a work by Menashe Kadishman called Fallen Leaves; it is located in one of the voids. The installation consists of 10,000 faces cut out of heavy iron disks that cover a pathway leading into a dark tunnel.  You can walk on the path, and the faces shift under your feet and make a deep, clanking noise.  It is a heavy, disturbing piece dedicated to all of the innocent lives lost to war.  After walking the path, Milo said it made him feel sad.

Unbelievably, we ran into three of the kids’ teachers at the museum.  I’ll bet they were glad to see us!  (read with sarcasm). My mom used to feel like a minor celebrity just going to the grocery store.  All you need when you are running in to Shop Rite for milk in your sweatpants is to hear some 8 year old monster yelling, “Mrs. Servon!  Mrs. Servon!”  I witnessed many of these encounters firsthand growing up.  But Miss Lucia, Miss Angela, and Miss Rachel actually seemed happy to see C.C. and Milo.

From the museum, we took the Ubahn to Prenzlauer Berg.  When we came up from the metro we were immediately struck by the number of strollers sitting in front of the hip shops and restaurants lining the block.  Clearly we had made it to the cool neighborhood for young families.  We got some ice cream, and then took the kids to a playground in Kollwitz Platz.  I lay down on a wall near the playground and promptly fell asleep in the sun.  We popped into a fabulous kitchen store called Coledampf’s that our friend Deiter had told us about.  I love seeing what people use in their kitchens in other countries.    In Berlin?  Miniature cast iron pots with lids, very cool jars for canning, nice butter keepers, felted wool egg cozies—very cute, but they will not be coming home with me.

We had arranged to meet Deiter and his wife—Deiter spent three months at the research institute in Barcelona where Alec and I are based—at a local beer garden called Prater.  The day was gorgeous—apparently this kind of weather never comes to Berlin before late May—so it was perfect to sit outside at one of the many tables that at 5:30 were already filling up with the after work crowd.  The kids lodged themselves at the play place that was mobbed with other kids—why don’t we have more places like this in the US?—and the rest of us drank beer and ate sausages and pretzels.  I also had a nice carrot ginger soup topped with herbs and crunchy pumpkin seeds.

Deiter and his wife, a very pregnant Pauline (her due date is today)  walked us around the neighborhood, showing us the line between east and west, and the remnants of the wall (see our family photo in front of it, below).  What is truly amazing is that, at first, only a fragment of the wall remained intact.  And, frankly, it’s not that impressive.  Not very high, not very thick.  Tourists were underwhelmed.  So they are reconstructing a 150 meter stretch of the wall using original materials.  Somehow this seems bizarre, after all it took to get the damn thing down.  But there it is, going back up.

The kids wore their Barca shirts all day, as Barca is playing another El Classico as I write this.  Alec has gone across the street to a sports bar to watch.  But me?  I’m heading to bed.  I’m afraid I have to face Legoland in the morning.