[lit-ideas] Re: Erin (and Ursula) in Berlin ... and Chris in Dresden
- From: Chris Bruce <bruce@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 8 Sep 2006 19:51:08 +0200
On 8. Sep 2006, at 01:08, Ursula Stange wrote:
Yes...Berlin is great. I was there for the first time just 10 days
ago (sandwiched between Paris and Riga).
Great food. Great wine. Great people. Great people watching. Great
museums -- although I missed the Kathe Kollwitz...damn. More great
museums. Great modern architecture. Great fusion of past and future.
Great...Great...Great...
I don't want to start school tomorrow. Take me back to Berlin...
From: Erin Holder <erin.holder@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sun, 3 Sep 2006 07:30:53 -0400
Oh my god...
I LOVE BERLIN!!!
this is the best fucking city in the world.
OK, time for more beer.
YAY!!!!
Hm... food is also a necessity. Must remember that...
Erin
Berlin
I, too, was in Berlin for the first time this year. And I liked it
very much, indeed. But I'm wondering whether these judgements by Erin
and Ursula of Berlin as superlative aren't a little hasty. Have you
both - or either of you; or any other Lit-Idealists, for that matter -
been to Dresden lately?
Being of a dialectical frame of mind, I was particularly taken (during
my 4-day visit in April of this year) by the contrast between the
tourist-overrun 'alte Schinken' (literally 'old hams' - as one native,
referring to the baroque architectural gems that give rise to the name
'Florence on the Elbe', put it), and the thriving 'counter-cultural'
scene in the 'Neustadt' ('New City' - an area of Dresden more
'recently' annexed by the old city - i.e., in 1549 - and 'newly'
rebuilt after a fire in 1685) area of Dresden just across the river.
(Although nominally a 'child of the sixties', I thanked my lucky stars
- or was it good judgement? - that I'd never experimented with the
then-popular 'psychedelic' drugs; even without them I had to argue with
myself continuously that I was not experiencing the mother of all
'flashbacks'!).
Although Dresden's botanical garden is not a patch on Jena's (even
though I have only seen the latter in mid-winter), other features of
the city make Dresden one of my favourites. Perhaps i am
overly-influenced by the luck I had in the coincidental opening of the
streetcar museum during my visit, which allowed me the opportunity not
only to tour the city on the modern system, but also to take
'cross-city' rides in streetcars from the 1960's and 1920's (to be
accurate: the latter was a reconstruction). Some of the people we
passed by on the street literally dropped their jaws at the sight of us
(esp. in the '20's model) whizzing by; others, obviously forewarned of
the routes to be taken by the historical cars, were waiting on
street-corners with the widest range of tripod-erected digital and film
still and video cameras I have yet seen).
Much of downtown Dresden is still under (re)construction, much of which
is driven by enterprises (and entrepreneurs) that (sadly) lend a
seemingly inevitable homogeneity to commercial areas of many large
German cities. But - at least to my eyes - certain particular historic
and geographic features of Dresden have resulted in a 'cultural -
counter-cultural' dialectic that, while certainly ongoing in cities
like Berlin, Munich and Hamburg as well, is more obviously present
(especially to a visitor on a short stay).
Chris Bruce
Kiel, Germany
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