Bookpacking’s Blog

Glancing at the news on Germany’s English-speaking The Local, we came across this interesting opinion piece. Recently, arsonists caused huge damage to a military base in Dresden and Berlin is gearing up for the annual May Day riots. So as anarchists spray acid in bars and destroy cars in East Berlin, and local bohemians start to rethink just how edgy they like their cool, is Germany on the edge of mass unrest?

The writer thinks not. But as Bookpacking has previously mentioned, things are bubbling on the continent. One only has to look at all the banners on display outside French universities, or attempt to access the Eiffel Tower on a public holiday to see that there’s a steady simmer of discontent as the economy bites and purse strings tighten. Some French employees have even resorted to ‘kidnapping’ their bosses. This generally involves barricading them in their office, rather than bundling them into a car boot.

Reading on The Local that a “socialist firebrand” had called for similar activity in Germany, Bookpacking thought this was perhaps a little tactless: over there ‘abducting industrialists’ brings to mind the infamous fate of the kidnapped boss Hanns-Martin Schleyer. His body was dumped in a French wood on 19 Oct 1977 by the Baader-Meinhof gang as they waged war on the (then West German) establishment. It may be 32 years ago, but it still exercises a hold on the nation’s imagination. As a whole heap of anniversaries roll around in 2009 including WW2, the Weimar Republic and the Berlin Wall’s demise it promises to be an interesting year.

The Paris landmark Hotel de Ville is the scene of the well known Robert D’Oisneau picture Le Baiser de l’Hotel de Ville. But there wasn’t much love on display today as students and lecturers of the 8th arrondissement started their non-stop walking protest.

La Ronde Infinie des Obstines (literally the “unceasing circling of the stubborn”) takes its inspiration from the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo in Argentina, who protested the disappearance of their children under the Junta. The protesters intend to walk – night and day – in circles before this piece of establishment real estate. Until when, we asked? “Until we get what we want,” said a bearded middle-aged man holding a sign.

What they want is an end to the reforms of the education system initiated by unpopular President Sarkozy. French universities already suffer from large class sizes, and Sarkozy’s attempt to increase teaching hours whilst allegedly cutting back on research is the last straw for some.

Striking and protesting are intrinsic parts of the French psyche, ever since the events of 1789, and Hotel de Ville is emblazoned with the revolution’s enduring motto Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité. Napoleon made his name putting down a Parisian revolt and the barricade-loving Communards were one of the reasons why Baron von Haussman (under Napoleon III’s patronage, nephew of the original Bonaparte) built such wide boulevards in the 1850s.

A few days earlier a national strike had been called, though in these times of job insecurity, some did not answer the call. The Palace of Versailles closed, RER double-decker suburban trains were down to 1 in 3 on some lines, but the Metro ran almost normally.

But the nation is unhappy, and in two successive visits Bookpacking has come across demonstrations in the education sector. The passing of the spirit of ‘68 is sometimes lamented, but if the recession continues to worsen, those cobbles – which make such excellent ammunition – could be dug up once again. The day before the strike, the street outside the Sorbonne was lined with CRS (paramilitary riot squad) vehicles and the entrance guarded by police in body armour.

For now, the university staff and pupils of Saint-Denis are happy to make their point peacefully. Like planes stacked over Heathrow they circle, waiting for the right conditions to descend. Will it be a happy landing, or will they run out of fuel first?

(see their website for a video: La Ronde Infinie des Obstines)

It’s perhaps crass of the artist to make comparisons with the Stasi, but the stencil makes its point.

Sometimes puerile though often political, the simple medium of stencil art is enabling a new generation to make their point all over Europe – using striking images instead of cliched sentences.

This follows in the tradition of such groundbreaking agitprop as the Berkeley 4973 posters of the 60s. A picture tells a thousand words. And it’s difficult to shout down a drawing…

It’s difficult to imagine that Prenzlauerberg was ever anything but a playground for the stylish young professionals of Berlin. Boutique shops sell the latest retro sportswear look for local hipsters, while tattooed 20-somethings brush the pavement outside low key bars that will later be filled with creative and media types sipping on premium beers. Yummy mummies drop into the local bakery for some of that richly fibrous bread that Germans adore and which makes them turn their noses up at anaemic British breakfast offerings.

There are kids everywhere in what was recently declared one of the most fertile spots in Europe; the ratio of children to adults shot up as it became the place to settle with your firstborn when suburbia is a wrench too far for the still young parent who has yet to leave books, bars and me-time behind. And it is very civilised. Having dodged HGV’s in London’s erratic and intermittent cycle lanes, it’s a sight to behold these phalanxes of mothers – and the odd father – sedately crossing the boulevards on dedicated cycle paths with their own set of signals. You know for a fact that everything is recycled here.

And the art! The walls are a living canvas. Ironic exchanges of postcommunist banter: “Capitalism sucks” then the answering “Communism sucks” mix with the latest in stencil art. Huge dayglow pink letters on flyposters seem to challenge you to a fight as they announce “F*** Amerika”. Dark stone buildings from another age have their gravitas subverted with rampant spray can colours and a plethora of pop art posters.

But these contradictions run deeper than the imposition of 21st Century culture onto pre-war buildings, where parents obliviously push their single child under a sign for a club which shouts “B*stard”. When I told a German girl I was going to visit my friend on Kastanienallee (Chestnut Tree Avenue) she immediately said: “Well she’s not from the East then, if she lives there”. She smiled as she said it, but with that trace of a raised eyebrow that accompanies a point being made.

And indeed, my friend isn’t. She’s an academic who moved to Berlin and did reasonably well for herself, and so moved to the steadily-gentrifying Prenzlauerberg to enjoy the fruits of her labour, in every sense. This was my first inkling, as someone new to Germany, that ‘unification’ is a small word for a long drawn out and incomplete process.

The area aroud Schonhauser Allee is the setting for the hilarious vignettes recounted in Vladimir Kaminer’s book Russian Disko. Just like my first time in Prague in ‘97, I had missed by a mile the early wave that the Zeitgeist-chasers spotted years ago, and I pondered how much the area had changed and the disappearance of that naïve sense of freedom that must have followed Die Mauerfall.

But the done-and-dusted appearance of that era’s history belies rifts and the baggage of unfinished business. History is not comprised of discrete boxes that slot neatly next to each other in the academic’s bookcase, but instead of thousands of strands which overlap like a bowl of spaghetti. On one side of the street, a crane, probably engaged in building a cool apartment block for more cool people who want to live in a cool neighbourhood where they can cycle to work and drink coffee in the morning with similarly fashionable friends.

But on the other side of the road is a huge piece of graffiti which some enterprising individuals have managed to put on the side of a 5-storey high building. apartment block despite it being around five storeys high. “Diese stadt ist Aufgekauft!!!”. Something about the size and font instantly tells you this is not some tagging rubbish from juveniles, but a protest. It says: “This state is bought”.

Just down from the street, past an army surplus store with a suitably sinister fighter pilot’s helmet in the window – black and red-starred – is White Trash Fast Food. Here, check-shirted German rockabilly staff serve burgers in a Chinese-themed room to an international crowd who lap up country tributes from visiting American retro bands.

But over the road, and a little more discreet, is the legendary Kaffee Burger. One of the great things about Berlin – in a city where so many are single and so many are disenchanted with the meat and two veg’ daily fare of more ‘vanilla’ capitals where they couldn’t find what they were looking for – is that you can go out alone to a bar or café like this and not feel awkward.

As midnight approaches and it starts to fill up, I’m relaxing at the bar when I get talking to Wolfgang and his girlfriend. A native, like many others, he has been priced out by the ‘yuppy invasion’. “I live further out now, in Wedding. A lot of people live out there, artists and musicians, because we can’t afford it here in Prenzlauerberg. Foreign investors are buying apartments and then they push up the rents so the locals can’t afford it.”

It’s a familiar story, from Shoreditch to Barcelona – gentrification causing dislocation. The uneven spread of prosperity which is capitalism, carving up a previously static population and diluting the local identity with outsiders.

And there are strong differences. I had come to Kaffee Burger to hear some open-mic German poetry. I don’t speak the language, but it’s possible to appreciate the rhythm and I wanted to see what it was like. You’re always guaranteed an interesting crowd too. One particular poem was drawing a lot of response from the crowd, and I could tell by the tone that something or someone was being mocked.

Asking someone on the periphery, they told me that the politician Wolfgang Bohmer was getting it in the neck for his dig at the folk of the former-DDR. That week he had been in the news, after allegedly saying that Godlessness had encouraged a cavalier attitude to abortion and even infanticide. Statistics had struck again, but no-one wanted to hear any conclusions.

Needless to say, this touched a nerve and many of these east of the former divide were incensed. It suggested a primitive populace who have still not caught up with their western brothers, despite millions of marks poured into their ailing infrastructure by a victorious west – an investment resented by some on the ‘winning’ side. I tried asking a few mothers on Kastanienallee what they thought, but they said hadn’t been following the news – and they would have been Wessis anyway, living in the protective bubble that money provides.

Just like the tv tower which looks down on so much of East Berlin, the present is  ambiguous. Shades of grey replace the black and white clarity of the polarised past. On the one hand, this shiny space rocket is symbolic of an energetic and arty city which draws people from all over the world; a European version of San Francisco, a playground where you can reinvent yourself. On the other, it’s a reminder of recent revolution and of a scarred pysche.