Berlin: Two Tales of a City

The German capital is marking the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. When the communist structure began crumbling in November of 1989, many people from all over the world flocked to Berlin to witness the historic event.  This year,  many are flocking back to celebrate the anniversary of a key event that lead to the unification of Germany.  I was planning a trip to the country for different reasons, but it was a perfect opportunity to add Berlin to my itinerary.  A friend from Croatia joined me for what was the first visit to the city for both of us. Here are our two different accounts of a fascinating October week in Berlin.

First:  by Sina Karli, Zagreb, October 2014

Brandenburger Tor, Berlin

I arrived in Berlin on an earlier flight from Zagreb and was tasked with settling into our rental apartment in the Savigny Platz and making what preparations I could ahead of Zlatica's arrival from the United States in the evening.  I got off to a smooth start.  Bus 109 from Tegel Airport  dropped me off nearly at the door of our apartment building. I rang a doorbell per the landlady's instructions and was ready to enter what I imagined would be a German-style neat and orderly place - my home for the next seven days.

Croatians think of Germany as the country where trains run on time, everything is spotlessly clean, people are tidy and punctual, and discipline reigns supreme.

The door opened only after my persistent ringing and a rumpled young woman, still in her pajamas, blinked at me and mumbled "oh, you are already here?" as if she didn't know the time of my arrival.  She ushered me into a nice size ground floor apartment with windows looking onto a quiet courtyard.  The shabby, mix-and-match furniture was tolerable, but the bed linen looked suspiciously unclean as did the frayed towels of nondescript color.  The landlady seemed unperturbed when I noticed that there was not even one roll of toilet paper in the bathroom - a most essential necessity after a long trip from abroad.

I was much more forgiving when I learned that she was from Cuba.  It was easier for me to imagine a Cuban swaying to the rhythm of salsa than vacuuming and wiping off spider webs from a rental apartment.  That's what stereotypes do to you.

Those of us growing up in the communist Yugoslavia were taught from the earliest days at school to view the Germans as occupiers of our country who were defeated by much smaller but braver partisan forces.  We had to watch state-subsidized movies about  Tito's shabby troops fighting well-equipped Nazi forces and winning against all odds.  Nothing else was taught about Germany, and studying German was not popular.  At that tender age the concept of democracy was as remote for us as the concept of  Nazism. 

Attitudes toward Germany changed gradually after Yugoslavs began working there as “gastarbeiters,” and bringing home money, high-quality technical products and stories about disciplined and hard-working, although somewhat hostile Germans.  More recently, especially after Croatia gained independence and Germany lent support to that effort, the tenor of the reports has changed.  There is now mostly admiration for a people that arose from the ashes of World War Two destruction to become Europe's most powerful nation.  

So during my visit to Berlin I wanted to see beyond the remainders of the wall and the tourist attractions such as Checkpoint Charlie.  I wanted to envision the entire length of the demarcation that separated the people of one city for 28 years, forcing a half to live in tyranny while the other half was surrounded by it.  But the line of division is not that obvious today except in a few places included in sightseeing tours.

Checkpoint Charlie, Berlin, October 2014

An uninformed visitor has difficulty figuring out which part of Berlin was East and which was West.  Residential areas are easier to identify --gray and still somewhat dreary looking Soviet-style apartments on one side, and classic warm-colored Mittel-Europa buildings on the other.   Few people in the streets of Berlin were able to give us directions to the  Nazi-era sites such as Hitler’s bunker or the square where the  "un-German" books were burned.  No street signs are pointing to these places either.

As we strolled down the elegant Unter den Linden avenue, enjoyed an espresso outside Café Balzac, or lingered under the glass dome of the spectacular Sony Center,  Berlin’s dark part of history seemed as remote as if it had happened somewhere else.

The city feels both like a cosmopolitan metropolis of Europe’s most powerful country that it is, and as a haven for people from all over the world seeking a better life.  It is a mecca for artists, trendy Germans and young people looking for opportunities as well as for businessmen and politicians.  In some parts it is as elegant and formidable as Paris or New York, in others it looks like an ordinary central European city -- Prague, Vienna and even  Zagreb. 

Some of Berlin's gloomier neighborhoods still reflect their Soviet-style past.  Poor service in many restaurants and tourist offices also smacks of the communist era.  The Schiller Theater, which serves as temporary home to the opera, lacks grandeur and could be described as downright shabby.  So Berlin exudes power and vulnerability at the same time. Perhaps it was exactly its fragile side that made me feel at home.  Who wants perfect order anyway? 

The week in Berlin served to debunk many of my personal myths about Germans and Germany.  They are not all organized and disciplined and spotlessly clean.  But Germans are people who have rebuilt their cities, often from near complete destruction, and don't seem to be dwelling on the dreary part of their history.  Berlin reflects that.

Seeing the German capital also made me feel good about my own country.  Furnished apartments for rent in Zagreb are the epitome of luxury compared to the place we rented in Berlin. I also realized that work ethic in Croatia has changed and that the services are better than before the 1990s war for independence.  I saw our nation's capital with new eyes and found it to be gorgeous.  I was finally able to shed the lingering Croatian inferiority complex, stemming from our communist past and the association with the Balkans.  Berlin, Prague, Vienna?  I can feel at home in any of them, but I can also proudly say that I live in Zagreb, another European capital with an interesting history and abundant culture.

Berlin Offers Diverse Culinary Experience

Second: by an American with European roots, Washington, October 2014

"I told you twice to get your salad at the salad bar," an impatient waitress snapped at me in the Maredo steakhouse, a chain restaurant on the elegant Kurfürstendamm strip on my first day in Berlin. It wasn't quite clear what ticked her off. I had asked if I could have a salad with my steak instead of the coleslaw which came with it, and she said I could if I paid extra. I said no problem. There was no mention of a salad bar that either I or Sina heard, nor was one immediately visible from our table.  So when the waitress served me a plate with nothing but a steak on it, I asked if she was bringing the salad separately. It was a logical question because a little earlier she had brought only one soup although we had ordered two. I thought she was forgetful. 

A male server was then sent to collect our payment and when we said the food was good, but the service terrible, he just waved off his hand without a word, but with a facial expression that could only mean " I am not interested."  I swore then and there that I would never again complain about the 20 % tip we pay our waiters in the U.S.

The next day, we had a similar experience with drivers on the hop-on-hop-off sightseeing tour of east Berlin.  Since that tour is less frequented than the tour of west Berlin, drivers come and go as they please, regardless of the schedule, and God forbid that you complain. We made the mistake of getting off our bus before the loop was completed and then had to wait one hour in the rain before another one showed up.  That one left us standing in the rain despite our frantic waving.  The last scheduled bus finally picked us up, but the driver cut the tour short so he could finish his shift by 6 PM.  When he made a stop along the way, I first thought he was doing his duty, but quickly realized that he stopped for  a colleague on the bus who wanted to take a cigarette break. 

Memorial to the 1933 Nazi bookburning in Bebelplatz is an underground room lined with empty bookshelves, visible through a window in the pavement. 

Despite these first impressions, I enjoyed Berlin tremendously.  After reading so much about it in history books and having seen it in so many movies and documentaries, I felt that I was coming to familiar terrain.  It was Europe after all, not Mongolia.  I soon realized that my ignorance about the country, including Berlin and its history, is huge and inexcusable.  In central Berlin, I was never quite sure if we were walking east of the demolished Wall line or west of it.  I had difficulty locating places we'd seen in documentaries, such as the square where Nazis burned "un-German" books.  It was humbling to walk through the Charlottenburg castle and realize that the recorded tour was almost meaningless without a context in which to place the exalted people who once lived in it.  The bewilderment was compounded during a subsequent visit to Potsdam, which I had no idea was so close to Berlin or that it had so many palaces. Neither did I know that the KGB had its headquarters in Potsdam.  It would be embarrassing to go on. 

Berlin's monuments, creative architecture, grandiose foreign embassies, street art, parks and elegant avenues put it on an equal footing with London, Paris or Washington.  But its less glamorous areas make it more human.  It is fun for a change to have a cup of coffee in a funky Turkish cafe and grab a sausage or goulash in a neighborhood brewery, where you can chat with the owner and his Bosnian waitress.  Ours even offered neck-and-shoulder massage by practicing students.  

Berlin by night was the time to relax with a glass of  beer and clear my mind of all the Ludwigs, Friederichs and Wilhelms of Germany - or was it Prussia? - until the next day.  We happened to be in the city during the traditional October Festival of Lights, when its most famous landmarks, such as Brandenburg Gate, Berlin Cathedral and the television tower are illuminated with colorful light projections and video art. 

Berlin Cathedral During the Festival of Lights

To my regret, both opera houses were closed for renovation, the Berlin Philharmonic was not performing and tickets for the Arcadi Volodos piano recital at the Kozerthaus were sold out.  

We only saw the Staatsoper's new production of Tosca because I had purchased the tickets online several months ahead of time.  The performance at the seedy Schiller Theater was a disappointment. There was more chemistry between Tosca and Scarpia than her and Cavaradossi. Barenboim's first conducting of Puccini, although refined, was so slow that it further diluted the tepid drama.  The leading opera house of Europe's richest country, and the one that produced Bach, Beethoven and Wagner, should do better than such a forgettable Tosca.  The Staatsoper waited 38 years to stage a new production of Puccini's blockbuster - it could have waited a few more to come up with something more impressive.

On the way home we passed by a jazz club or cabaret, which looked like it would have been more fun.  But our stay in Berlin was at an end even though we only skimmed through it. We never got so see Nefertiti at the Neues Museum, we did not make it to the hipster  Kreuzberg area, or the bohemian Friedrichshain, and there was no time to take a boat ride on the Spree River, or climb up the iconic TV tower.

Berlin is worth visiting for whatever time you can afford.  I know I could live there.  That vibrating city offers something for every personality and taste, including  such local specialty as currywursts - hot dogs smeared with tomato sauce and sprinkled with curry.  Seriously!  

But if you want good restaurant service and friendly bus drivers,  kommen Sie, bitte, nach Amerika!

Santa Fe Opera

The Santa Fe Opera 2014 season includes the U.S. premiere of a Chinese-language work and the company's first staging of Beethoven's only opera.   The mixed results show that updating an older staging does not always work, and that sticking to the classical form in a new work sometimes does.

The long-standing motto in theater production has been "when in doubt, go Nazi." I've seen Ian McKellen as a crippled version of Hitler in Shakespeare's Richard III, I've seen Ionesco's Rhinocéros dressed in shiny black Nazi raincoats, I've seen a number of Wagner's operas with staging nodding to Nazi Germany, and countless of other "nazified" classics that I only vaguely remember.  So the Santa Fe Opera's offering of Beethoven's Fidelio with a Nazi twist was nothing new, but it was puzzling.   With names like Leonore, Rocco, Fernando, Jaquino and Pizarro, perhaps Franco's Spain would have been a more logical choice.

Alex Penda as Leonore/Fidelio

One could tolerate the unimaginative production if the singing or acting were first-class. Neither was the case in Stephen Wadsworth's drab offering.  The dungeon scene was so dark that you could not see anyone's face even through a good pair of binoculars.  Paul Groves, who once delighted me as Nemorino, was hardly suited for the role of Florestan. He seemed more angry than hungry or exhausted as he would be after two years of harsh imprisonment.  Petite Hungarian soprano Alex Penda was a passionate Leonore, just not an electrifying one.  The chorus was the star of the program although the group was too small to be representing inmates of a Nazi concentration camp as their clothing suggested.  The Mariinsky made the number of soldiers in Prokofiev's War and Peace appear huge by making the extras circle around the stage and throw their shades onto the backdrop. Wadsworth did not have any novel idea in that respect.  The program says it's the Santa Fe Opera's first ever staging of Fidelio.  One wonders why bother for such a mediocre result. On a miserably cold and rainy August night there was simply no reason to sit through the whole performance when a good book and a warm blanket beckoned back in the hotel room.

Since I did not go to Santa Fe to see Fidelio, the disappointment was not huge, but rather expected.  The real reason for my first foray into an opera house away from the East Coast was the U.S. premiere of Huang Ruo's Dr. Sun Yat-Sen.  It was my first Chinese language opera, but not first by Huang, whose one-hour-long An American Soldier premiered recently at the Washington National Opera.  As described by most reviewers, the music for Dr. Sun Yat-Sen is a successful blend of Chinese and classic western idiom.  Standard opera lovers who shy away from the often jarring sounds of modern music need not fear: Huang's music is gorgeous and the theatrical structure is mostly classical.  There are beautiful arias, duets, quartets and choral parts, there is drama, there is romance. Huang must have a thing about motherhood because two most beautiful solo arias he has written are the mother's aria in the closing scene of An American Soldier and Soong Ching-ling's aria about a baby lost by miscarriage in Dr. Sun Yat-Sen.  Chinese language (or languages) did not sound as strange as a westerner might expect.  In terms of sound, this opera did not feel any more foreign than, for example, a Russian opera.  War and Peace kept coming to mind.

The singers were good throughout, and some were excellent, especially Corinne Winters as Sun Yat-Sen's young wife Ching-ling and Dong-Jian Gong as her father Charlie Soong. The one weak point in my opinion was the title character.  As Huang said, his opera portrays the Chinese revolutionary icon as a private person with all his qualities and failures.  Huang said he wanted to show the human side of the revered historic personality, and there is nothing wrong with that.  But in my opinion, the composer did a better job with Soong whose leadership qualities as well as his human weaknesses were clearly delineated and well portrayed by the interpreter who made his character memorable and appealing.  Tenor Joseph Dennis looked and sounded more like a turn-of-the century British gentleman, than father of the Chinese revolution.  Without a synopsis, I probably would have mistaken the Charlie Soong character for Sun Yat-Sen. 

Reporter at Santa Fe Opera

Despite weaknesses, which I believe could be fixed (as they were in the cases of many world famous operas) Huang's opus is an exceptional work, that should enter standard opera repertory.   I hope Santa Fe will serve as a starting point in that direction.  A soprano desiring to record an interesting new album would do well to include the Ching-ling "lost baby" aria and/or find a tenor with whom to sing the lovely wedding duet. 

Unfortunately, the clips from the opera offered on YouTube do not include Corinne Winters' poignant solo.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4j3ydqeYINI

Santa Fe's Carmen was a pleasant surprise.  I got a ticket as an afterthought, and expected to leave early as I did from Fidelio, but the production was innovative in an attractive way.  The plain boxy sets were moved around and lit differently to change the setting from a cigarette factory to jail, then to a smugglers' hangout, a border crossing and finally a plaza outside a bullfight arena.  They also served as a screen for black-and-white video projections which showed events between the staged scenes, for example Micaëla's tending to Don Jose's sick mother, and Don Jose's grim attendance at the mother's funeral.  The latter actually helped understand his desperation during the final confrontation with Carmen.  A few production details that raised questions were prison bars on the tobacco factory and factory girls working in their underwear.  The girls' exit from the factory seemed like a release of prostitutes from jail after an overnight police raid.  Carmen's arrival to the bullfight in a blond Marilyn Monroe-style wig was also puzzling until Don Jose tore it off her head.  But was it necessary? 

The choice of soprano Ana Maria Martinez for the title role was an unusual one and in my opinion not the most fortunate.   She lacked the dark and brooding quality of the tragic gypsy girl.  But she looked the part of a modern drug smuggler she portrayed in this production, and held her own vocally.  Tenor Roberto de Biasio was not your favorite Don Jose.

The highlight of the season in my view (although I did not see Don Pasquale) was Stravinsky.   His short and rarely performed opera Le rossignol was preceded by Mozart's The Impresario and cleverly presented as a play within a play.  Bickering singers and their agents from The Impressario were "hired" to perform in Stravinsky's piece.  But while The Impresario was only somewhat amusing, Le rossignol was a jewel of scenic design, lighting, costumes, singing and acting.   A music critic might have found details to complain about, but I was too mesmerized by the production as a whole to be distracted by minutiae.  As far as I am concerned, that one hour of opera was worth a trip to Santa Fe all by itself.

Santa Fe Opera Auditorium

Finally, a word or two about the Santa Fe Opera business.  The building is attractive and offers a good view of the stage from every seat in the house, including the $40 spots all the way back and on the sides.  The income lost on cheaper seats is well recompensed by items of clothing and comfort sold in the gift shop at exorbitant prices.  Simple nylon jackets are sold for $65 a piece, or $95 if lined.  A cheap-looking thin hoodie you can get for a little over $10 at the Old Navy costs $40 to $50 at the opera shop.  The cheapest essential item, a bright red polyester lap throw, is $25.   And I say essential because the uninitiated may come to Santa Fe unprepared like I did.  When the night falls in Santa Fe and temperatures drop by some 20 degrees, usually just before the intermission, the chilled patrons rush into the store and buy whatever they can get their hands on just to be able to sit through the rest of the performance without shivering.  If it rains during the intermission as it often did while I was there, the shop and the restrooms are the only available shelter for a crowd of more than 2,000 patrons unless, of course, you want to remain in your seat.

On a clear day, the views from this beacon on the hill are spectacular - all rolling hills dotted with sage brush, pine trees and junipers.  But I found the open-air picnic tables mostly deserted in early August.  Who can sit through a meal with cold winds blowing from all sides and the threat of an imminent thunderstorm above your head?  The picnic-minded people brought their own little folding tables and chairs and set them up next to their cars in the parking lot, where they sat sheltered from the wind.  They enjoyed their wines and their salads with a view of other cars and in the air permeated with fragrance from the exhaust systems. But, hey, aren't we more used to the smell of gas than the pleasures of mother nature?  I certainly would have preferred to sit in my car all evening than returned to Washington as I did, covered in humongous mosquito bites  (or was it something else ?) . The Santa Fe bugs are a sneaky and treacherous lot.   I never heard a buzz of warning.  The repellent does not bother them either, so save your money there.