To get there, take a half-hour ride on a regional train from the S-Bahn station Wannsee and get off at the sparse two-track platform. Walk down the street on either side of the tracks past many overgrown guard posts and you will find infirmaries and sanatoriums in varied states of decay. Beelitz Heilstätten’s main street once served as a divider; institutions for men and women were strictly separated.

One of the first buildings we stumbled upon, as one does literally, was the lung sanatorium for men. It is a beautiful old stone building with many intricate windows and little towers.

We couldn’t find a open door or unbarred window through which to enter, but did spot this cow-sized spit from outside. The eerie atmosphere had us convinced at first this must have been a terrible torture instrument.

Other buildings are readily permeable. Fences and “Betreten Verboten” signs ward off only the most timid visitors. Entry seems almost to be encouraged by a conveniently located restaurant and beer garden. We consider a post adventure beer the price of admission.

Beelitz Heilstätten must have been majestic place in its heyday. Hallways that stretch in every direction and such grand staircases like this are no longer made.

Some more pictures from the inside of this building:

By night, this would have scared me enough to shrink back and fall off the platform from which the guardrail has been removed. In the daylight, it still gave me some serious creeps.

The heavily wooded area that surrounds the more than 60 buildings adds to the otherworldly atmosphere. I can only imagine what it must have been like to walk along one of the many connecting roofed pathways when Beelitz was still in full splendor.

The natural beauty and serenity outside are in stark contrast to the eery chaos inside. After World War II, Beelitz was the biggest soviet military hospital outside the Soviet Union. The soviets only relinquished control in 1994, so Beelitz is teeming with Soviet intake forms, operational instructions and even Russian graffiti.

These facilities were exemplary in their time. The buildings were constructed along an east-west corridor so that the side of the building which housed patient rooms and terraces were facing south for maximum light and sun exposure.

The operating rooms in particular were designed to make use of natural light. This one was complete with old IV-bags and needles.

Now to my favorite building so far. This one must have been abandoned for more than twenty years. A walk up to the fifth floor makes you feel as if you’d fallen into an M.C. Escher drawing–up the stairs to another ground level.

A walk around the top feels like a hike in the woods of Lake Tahoe, but be mindful to not trip over the many little vents and chimneys protruding from the forest floor.

Vandals and the damp have done their work. No layer is left unstripped and different skins emerge. Faded, gutted, chipped, charred, bent, moldered, smashed, abandoned, colonized.

What a feeling to be alone in this vacant auditorium–giant pylons high above laid bare, the cool moist air, the redwood-forest-quiet of softened walls.

Before returning to the safety of a city alive with people and functioning buildings, sit down, relax, and have a beer – if you can withstand the smell of death, that is. A distinct stench of rotting flesh permeates the woods around Beelitz Heilstätten (consistently in recent months, at least), lending a morbid air to this otherwise cheery destination for good clean family fun.

Unlike race tracks in America (which I understand can be quite sleazy), Hoppegarten is a polished venue filled with men in nice suits and women in big hats. There is a grandstand complete with flower-laden balconies, white tablecloths and champagne glasses for folks like this dapper fellow. In the accompanying lounge, bets can be placed on races which are taking place all around the world – at Longchamp in France and Abu Dhabi in the UAE.

There are also some less glamorous bleachers for the more common folk. Plus a big band of grass which is occupied by families on blankets. You can bring your own drinks and food so the atmosphere here is that of one huge communal picnic.

Even the youngest, though not legally allowed to gamble, participate and have their dads place 1 Euro bets on a horse of their careful choosing.

At the end of the day, all the bets have been made, all the wine has been drunk, all the picnics have been eaten, and I hope everyone’s losses are within a bearable limit and maybe someone has won big.

Before our ride home trough the dusk we strengthened our spirits with some surprisingly tasty Radeberger Bitter. I don’t really like their beer but this Bitter has a nice taste of cinnamon and cloves like the Czeck Becherovka. Perfect booster as the days are getting shorter and colder.

The next day or racing will take place on April 17th 2011.

The implements of state surveillance and control are now showcased in the former Stasi brain basket, which remains uncannily as it was abandoned in 1989 (1979 Eastern Time). We headed out one morning to the desolate middle-east of Berlin where the avenues were built for tank battalions. We took a tour. Cameras in tree trunks, microphones in rocks, car doors made of one-way glass–all the juicy bits of spy life are on display. The lid-to-mate Seventies plus the purging of more scrupulous artists led to devotional tapestries such as this. “Secure borders, secure peace”. Thank your lucky stars these two disheveled meat-heads are on the case. How does one defend a city with four vanishing points? The bond ‘twixt East Germany and Mother Russia is commemorated in this luxurious muppet-fur bath mat. I want it.

Not pictured above is the Stasi collection of scent jars. Whiffs of suspected subversives were swiped from barstools and hampers, then cataloged for potential hound-siccing. They’re not much to look at really, but you really need to smell D. Freudl (#86127). I’m reasonably certain he didn’t make it.

Despite the importance of the Stasi in recent world history, the museum premises is sadly (and ironically) unsecured due to lack of funding and has lost some key artifacts to break-in robberies. So be sure to support the museum–book a tour in advance and stop for a coffee in the old agents’ break-room, where you can set the scene by watching old VHS tapes of East German television.

Please relax yourselves, because what you see above is one of many strategically situated scumball surety stations. This particular one is conveniently perched atop the rather steep bank of a fast moving canal. Perhaps as an afterthought, the city has installed some sort of aquatic scumball retrieval device right next door.

I had to think of my Grandmama upon discovering the rather aptly named White Chips pictured above.

Oh, White Chips, what are you made of? I’m guessing the same stuff as Funyuns, minus the fun and the onyuns. That basically leaves pulverized goat bones and poultry mucus–plus the White Chips trademark: two hefty scoops of Slovakian factory air.

Second place for whitest bag of chips goes to TACCOS, a product that suffers from a special kind of ethnic identity dysphoria. TACCOS offers the big shish-kebab taste you crave, in the little calamari shape you love, with the Tex-Mex image you know absolutely nothing about. This is one reason half the Germans in Berlin think “tacos” and “nachos” are synonyms for tortilla chips.

It seems this rogue spelling might actually be catching on: “TACCOS”–a tiny picture of two cheese n’ ground beef, pre-fab hard shells–has 52 friends on Facebook, and there are some Americans up in that mix as well (talking to you, Young Idaho).

The best thing about White Chips–they call it like it is.

]]> http://berlining.wordpress.com/2010/02/05/the-whitest-chips/feed/ 0 Edward white chips taccos http://berlining.wordpress.com/2010/02/02/learn-englisch/ http://berlining.wordpress.com/2010/02/02/learn-englisch/#comments Tue, 02 Feb 2010 22:07:00 +0000 Edward http://berlining.wordpress.com/?p=1993 ]]>

The Wall Street Institute used to advertise English classes around Berlin with a pretty conventional subway poster that depicted a gang of businesspersons in silhouette, heading for a bright future on The Wall Streets. The implied message: “Come join the crowd!”

Recently though, they’ve flipped the script and gone all negative, calling out members of the as-yet-untapped non-anglophone demographic, or “turkeys”. Yes, you know who you are, even though you probably have only a vague idea of what is being said about you.

Turkeys. Excellent point. Whenever Germans aren’t speaking English to me, all I hear is unintelligible gobbling sounds. Come on, Volks. You’ve lived in Germany your whole lives; I’ve been here 18 months and my English is almost perfect.

Get with the program.

This is our neighborhood pet store. It has been here for fifty years, at least, he says. The old man is certainly old enough. He is old enough, in fact, to have opened the shop fifty years ago as a pet project upon retirement. He is small and bald and amiable. He shuffles very slowly between the bird seed and the fish tanks and the musky hamsters. He sports thick spectacles and a white lab coat, which makes him appear both adorable and wholly overqualified. He also happens to be the Mona Lisa of liars.

Behold the bird seed rainbow. I love these old fashioned packages with their colors and pinstripes. Zoo, zoo, zoo! Only trust ZOO Brand bird seed, and not that newfangled Trill-Ass Budgie Food.

As you can see here, the Zoomeister slings his fish in pickle jars. They always reek of brine, but the fish don’t seem to mind. Actually his stock tend to be quite hardy. One pictured above survived a frantic ten minutes deep in the trap of the bathroom sink before I managed to extract it with tools. Perhaps the brine fortifies. Tricks of the trade.

All might seem to be on the up and up with the little old man in the little old pet shop. Nice to think so. But the fact is he’s a die-hard fish pusher masquerading as a seasoned, reasoned homme de science.

The incident concerns our purchase of four aquarium plants and a snail, a lime-sized aquatic snail called an Apfelschnecke (“apple snail”). We hadn’t intended to get the snail, just some greenery for the aquarium, but as we were oggling the remarkable creatures, the Zoomeister sidled beneath us and said in a hypnotic little soprano, “die Apfelschnecken sind schön”. I agreed, yes, they were nice, but surely they would eat all the plants. He looked at me as if I had suggested that his very own ancient mother might slither into our aquarium by the light of the full moon and ravage the resident flora. Never, he assured us, would the Apfelschnecke touch a plant–only algae. Simply not in its nature. He dropped the snail into one of his pickle jars, nodding at several species of fish that might compliment the brown behemoth. We resisted the upsell and went on our way.

So great was our faith in the white lab coat that we gave the snail the benefit of the doubt when one plant disappeared entirely overnight. The suspicion was there though, and maybe the weight of that scrutiny touched off a neurotic feeding frenzy on the part of the snail. A few days later every plant save for a few blades of grass was stripped, uprooted or vanished. The fat snail sat stupidly on the ground sideways, clutching the barren tip of a bended stem that failed to support his substantial heft.

The Apfelschnecke had to go, klar. I sunk him in a tupperware and sealed the lid until we could get to the pet shop. The next morning, I found the lid lying on the floor and no sign of the snail except for two enormous turds that might have been produced by a teacup poodle. My parents, who were staying in our living room at the time, reported having heard a crash in the wee hours. The escape, no doubt. We scoured the room–every inch–but no sign. We eventually moved to the hallway, though it was a very long way to travel. The prospects seemed grim. But just then my mother shrieked as she extracted the earthen Easter egg from the toe of Ludmilla’s shoe. He was alive; saved by the sequestered foot mist of an odor-eater insole.

The next day, we passed the Apfelschnecke back across the counter. The Zoomeister eyed it like a ring brought to pawn. Ludmilla explained that the snail had eaten all of the plants we had bought that day in spite of assurances made. All of them? All of them and some more. Alright then, he would accept the thing back in that case. No additional charge.

Being a Zoomeister for 50 years means never having to say “I’m sorry”.

We like the old Silberfuchs okay just the same, but we no longer leave the research to the white coats.

Faces abound on Berlin’s markable surfaces. Some are tiny and elusive like the baby Mao my dad spotted around Warschauer Straße, pictured above. Others span vast windowless walls. The good ones belong.

Here is the other side. Anthropomorphosis done right doesn’t create a personality, but rather articulates and makes explicit a feeling the inanimate object already possesses.

This beauty is actually from a monastery wall on a quiet hill in Prague. There could be a different face there, but this really feels like the one to me.

This is from the Habermeyer bathroom in Friedrichshain. I like to think it was drawn someone named Dallas Tibet.

Come here, let me holler at you face to face.

See Ace been place to place and seen plenty of them.

But don’t let the face fool you.

So many of them must still remain faceless. –Aceyalone

In the winter months, Berlin’s high latitude and low altitude yield a bleak urban tundra. The abundant summer green deciduates and rots. Bushes and trees become dark skeletons. But if you look closely there is another kind of spring with strange and lovely blossoms all its own.

The winter berries of Berlin are like tiny ornaments, bright as glowing lights on their spidery black branches. What is pictured above was gathered from bushes around just one S-Bahn station. There are many shapes and colors. One looks like a habanero. Another looks like a plum. There are miniature pomegranates, fuschas and lumpy little clouds.

One just might miss the winter spring with all those leaves in the way.