It's Christmas, and I'm leaving Berlin again. I've said goodbye to Berlin so often that it's become comical; everyone knows that I will never really leave, and never really stay. But it's taken me much longer to realise the truth of it. This city has been my home for longer than anywhere else in the world. And like every home, there are corners of it that are particularly home, that you don't realise have made you what you are until you start to leave them. Zehlendorf is one of those corners.
I've always lived in and out of Zehlendorf, passed through it (in the old days, as fast as possible) on the way from the city to Kleinmachnow, when I lived there, or from Kleinmachnow to the city, on the way to school or university or to the breathtaking, almost unbearable excitement of a night out. I'd hurry from bus to S-Bahn or from S-Bahn to bus, anxious to get through this most boring of Bezirke as soon as possible on my way to somewhere real, as I felt it to be then, like, say, Neukoelln or Zoo. Yet then something changed. No, I changed. Perhaps I became more real myself, and began to notice other realities more as a result. And through all the changes, through all the excitement, the many moves and dislocations I've undergone in this and other cities, Zehlendorf has always been there, in its particular reality, reliably, almost unchangingly (changing less, perhaps, than it ought to have done); one might say, boringly.
And plenty of people would say just that. Zehlendorf, for many Berliners, is possibly the most boring Bezirk in the whole city. Although technically speaking, Zehlendorf is no longer a Bezirk in its own right. In a municipal shake-up in 2001, as Wikipedia notes with a resigned sigh on its page called "Berlin Administrative Districts" (a subject so tortuously, incomprehensibly dull as to make even Wikipedia blanch), it ceased to be a Bezirk and was downgraded to an "Ortsteil"; a place for which Wiki can find no other definition than "a place that has its own identity".
Well, thank you Wiki, it certainly has. But not the one you might think. Zehlendorf's reputation for staid, respectable wealth and
snobbishness is only one part of the story. Its joys are manifold, likewise its mediocrities,
its absurdities and its irritations. And you don't have to be a cool kid from Neukoelln or a punk from Friedrichshain to find parts of it alienating - Wannsee for example, where vast villas with never a soul to be seen
blankly shine their dead eyes towards the lake, huge cars purr their way
through empty roads and yachts sail across the blue bay while unfathomable money talks its
way into and out of everything. But here in Zehlendorf proper, we are not like
that.
In Zehlendorf proper, that is,
the small town centre of Zehlendorf from where the S-Bahn has been taking me
into the city or out to the lakes and the forests for over 25 years now, we are a mixed bunch. We like the certainties of our
little town, the Turkish greengrocers at the bottom of the S-Bahn
steps endlessly chanting the sweetness of their mangos or in winter, of their
clementines (Suess suess suess, mango mango mango!) and exchanging "Guten Tag"s with the young families on their way to school, while inside, the women
dole out hummus or tsatsiki or figs and you pay for your vegetables amidst
piles of pumpkins and crates of cauliflowers. We like going to Butter Lindner where on a
Saturday you stand forever in the queue while middle-aged, well-dressed Germans
lurk shiftily, trying to steal a march while you're not looking and get their bread
rolls, croissants and Stollen before
you do, while their womenfolk in upmarket furs or down at heel padded jackets
wait to be served by young, glittering, disillusioned waiters with sliced veal,
caviar or Italian ham. The cheaper bakeries up the street where elderly men
stand alone at red linoleum tables drinking coffee and frowning at their cheap newspapers, and contractors, staring
off into the middle distance with fatigue, munch on sausage and Schrippen. The Tchibo where middle-aged
couples sit at the bar for hours chatting over that epitome of the German shopping experience, Tchibo
coffee, or wandering the shop in search of reduced leisurewear or Christmas
candle-holders.  |
| Butter Lindner at Christmas. |
The accordeon man with the bad teeth and cloth cap who is there
summer and winter outside the now closed Commerzbank, endlessly smiling, in all
weathers, forever playing the same tune. The respectable mid-range clothes shops with their
anxious lady shop assistants, unsure whether their customers are rich or poor (it
can be hard to tell in Zehlendorf, where respectability demands that one makes
an effort, no matter what one's circumstances), alongside the little independent
bookseller-cum-chocolatier with
its delicately assorted books and every imaginable kind
of chocolate, always full of enthusiastic Zehlendorfers (mostly women in the
bookshop, more men in the chocolate shop). We even like the strange
designer, organic clothing shops where the sales lady eyes you suspiciously as
you stare in the window, trying to work out why the skirt on display costs 300
euros. (There is a reason. As the shop-owners know, the need to be thrifty wages perpetual war with the need to display one' s
well-to-do-ness in the hearts of elderly Zehlendorf women, determinedly donning
their smart heeled shoes even though they know they will need a Zimmer frame to
get on the bus, while in their conversations, they cunningly vie for the moral
high ground while shamelessly stepping in front of any young people who might
have the audacity to be before them in a queue.)
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| Looking up Zehlendorf high street |
All these things I will miss,
more than I could have thought possible 25 years ago when I first learned to
stand patiently, or not so patiently, outside the Volksbank waiting for a 101
bus. (The 101 does not go to Kleinmachnow, where I first lived, so I always had to get off it at the crossroads and walk another half hour home, but it
is a proper Berlin bus, run by the BVG, so I feel able to lay claim to it; it
is and has always been my bus.) Back then I never noticed the other passengers; in the obscuring fug of my twenty-something self-absorption, those people didn't
even exist.
Now
things are different. I am older, of course, perhaps myself on the way to
becoming one of those stalwart elderly women whose beliefs, political passions, habits, manners (or
lack of them) are as certain and reliable as the S-Bahn; more so, actually. I
have learned to cherish the fact that I see the same people most days; that the
shops and their owners make an effort to invite you in, to be pleasant; that as
soon as one o'clock strikes, the streets flood with over-excited
school-children gossiping, shouting, teasing, eating, dreaming and drifting
their way home. I like the fact that people of all ages stop to chat on the high street, exchanging political views or family news. I like the way that there are little cafes full of people who know each other, and that there are music groups, reading groups, a library that is busy every day, but also a kebab shop, a Lidl, bicycle shops and shoe-mending shops. I like it being boring, because it is not; because there are
pockets of interest wherever you look, in people's everyday lives, people who
are not absorbed, as I was, just in themselves, but in the life all around
them. But now we are leaving.
We are going to Mitte for two
months; a temporary flat before we leave Berlin for a while to go back to the UK. I am scared, but excited too. What will
it mean, being at home in the centre of town? Well... I suddenly realise it. One
thing won't change. We'll be on another border. Here, we' re five minutes
from where the Wall once cut Berlin off from Teltow, Potsdam, Kleinmachnow
itself; where the 101 came, and still comes, to its end, unable to go further; we live with the trees, the canal, overgrown paths, secret places where
those who slipped through were forever suspicious, and only staying in one
place could keep you, theoretically, safe. But now we will be at that place
where Berlin was cut off from itself. On Bernauer Strasse, where the front door
of your house marked the border; where the Wall ran down the middle of the
street, where tunnels criss-crossed the earth, where Conrad Schumann jumped to
the West over the barbed wire, where people died as they tried
to escape across the death strip and families saw each other reflected in
warped mirrors, one street to another, one world to another a minute apart.
It's not boring. It's dislocating, disturbing, at the edge of what one can imagine and yet one has to try to imagine it, and beyond it
all Berlin's skyline drifts into transcendence, into the vagueness of all
cities at dusk, and there won't be elderly women to annoy and comfort me as I
make my way along the streets, because they've been mostly forced out by the
young tourists, the start-ups and the investors who've been buying up and colonising
the area. But that's a whole other story. For now it's enough to bid farewell to Zehlendorf, knowing that inevitably, one day sooner or later, I will be back. Thank you for being boring.
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| Life, compacted |
