Then
it was a
place refracted
by the prism of history and
still in a kind of shock
of the past,
Berlin
May 12, 2015
Dispatches
All posts tagged: Germany
Haben Sie Schleim?
June 11, 2014
Dispatches
By GEOFF KRONIK
Because I had a roomy exit-row seat on a full plane to Berlin, I sent a photo of my gloriously unbent legs to my wife. A petty triumph, the frequent-flyer’s tame version of sexting. My seatmate was a small, physically non-intrusive man, but troublingly prone to coughs and sneezes.
thread your fingers through whole hinges
November 1, 2013
Issue 06, Issue 06 Poetry, Poetry, Translation
By ANNA GLAZOVA
thread your fingers through whole hinges
if the opening is blocked if there is no new
no old moon in the window.
the superior sun will never move
November 1, 2013
Issue 06, Issue 06 Poetry, Poetry, Translation
By ANNA GLAZOVA
the superior sun will never move
chained into itself by the moving heft.
for us the sun moves and pulls
the heft behind
Changing Places: Ich Bin Ein Berliner
We painted lipstick on our lips and watched businessmen in suits flip open Die Welt, grazing the top of the newspaper with their line of sight, conspicuously shy in their observations of two foreign frauen. The train shot into Berlin’s Hauptbanhof with succinct precision, confirming one of our German stereotypes: 7.00pm exactly on Dec 31st, 2003, and not a minute late. My friend and I hoisted backpacks and flowed out of the central station and into a city that was eagerly, furiously rebuilding, was humming with energy, and was dusty and heterogeneous and still could not quite figure out how to contain itself. 2004 seemed like an inauspicious year to welcome.
Their Names
November 14, 2012
Dispatches
By ROLF YNGVE
I told Christopher, the wall passed through here. We stood on the sidewalk and looked down at a plaque set into chic, new cobblestones.
Berliner Mauer 1961–1989.
Currency Exchange
November 9, 2011
Dispatches
By LYNNE WEISS
There’s a big church conference in West Berlin and the streets are amazingly crowded, but many shops are closed. It’s the perfect day, we decide, to visit East Berlin, the land of Godless communism, as my husband Bob calls it. We hope to find bookstores selling cheap editions of classic books (Marx, Goethe). Also, because we are traveling on a tight budget, as always, we hope for some inexpensive but substantial meals. The Wall has been down for about seven months, but East and West are not yet unified, and they still have separate currencies.
