This weekend was totally insane. (My apologies to ZR for having reschedule his weekend visit to Berlin! Tut mir leid!)
On Saturday, rather than sleeping in after the exhausting week at work, I got up at the ass-crack of dawn (well, maybe a little later than that) and headed over to the apartment of by best friend Chris Rudolph to help him move to his new apartment which he just purchased, through the success of his books, his DJing and radio enterprises, and some help from his parents. Chris made breakfast, and then for the next five hours we moved all of Chris' stuff (he has a ton of stuff) from his old Gruenderzeit apartment in Pankow, in the North of Berlin, to his new duplex rooftop apartment in Prenzlauer Berg. It is a Neubau, but has the same proportions as the turn-of-the-century buildings around it. He faces onto a quiet interior courtyard. Maybe a bit to quiet for my tastes, but for a writer, it is ideal.
Even though we were sweating like pigs, and one chandelier broke, the event was so happy. There is something inspiring about helping someone move; it provides an example of how even in a city that until recently was economically depressed, people are moving up. As cheesy as it sounds, I couldn't help thinking: life keeps getting better. That is something my father, the eternal optimist, would definitely say.
Then I went to work, but I was so exhausted from the move, I didn't get much done; I had to go back in today in order to finish some work. Also, I was repeatedly highjacked by the Camp Nou competition team to help them write the text that accompanied their entry for the redesign of the stadium. I was planning on going out dancing and drinking at Berghain with some of the guys that helped with the move, but it just didn't happen. I slept like a baby.
After work today, I met up with Max Wagner, one of my oldest friends. He's in town on business on behalf of the Stuttgarter Kammerorchester and also to attend the birthday of his former roomate and mutual friend Katrin.
We met in Mitte, at the Indian restaurant on the Rochstrasse, coincidentally in the same building that I used to live in. We headed up to a park near the hip Monsieur Vong restaurant to meet Felix, a friend of mine whom I know through Max; I subletted Felix's incredible atelier apartment on the corner of Tucholskystrasse and Augustrasse, now, the heart of Berlin's booming gallery district, in the summer of 1998. He's now married, with a gorgeous wife and a beautiful two year old girl, Charlotte. They invited us over to an impromptu dinner in their spectacular apartment in the heart of baby-central, Prenzlauer Berg. The party grew larger when the upstairs neighbors who joined us with their adorable 2 year old Lars.
In the kitchen, I grew nostalgic, looking at he old cupboard and table that once used to eat on in the summer of 1998; Felix noticed me looking wistful and said: "so you remember the old furniture?" Their apartment is incredible. Their bathroom, and I'm not kidding or exaggerating when I say this, is larger than most NYC apartments. The building lost it's facade in the war, but the interior was perfectly preserved, complete with the old stucco, hardwood floors, 3 meter-high ceilings and French balcony.
Dinner was held in the dining room, with faced west and looked out over a brilliant sunset; the walls were lined with bookcases. The table, which Felix made himself, had been babyproofed for Charlotte: he had taped packs of Kleenex (or in Germany, Tempo Taschentuecher) to each corner. Ghetto, but brilliant. He has babyproofed the stove by constructing a frame around the range, so that Charlotte couldn't grab the pans or put her hands on the oven range. Words cannot describe how much I was in love with their place. The window of the living room looked out on the television tower, and also on the Metzstrasse, where in May of 2005 my parents and I had looked at a beautiful haut-parterre apartment. I kept thinking: we should have bought it. 2005, the market was so depressed, you could by a palace for a song. Although Berlin real estate is still cheap, and nowhere near the insane and astronomical prices that were a product of the NYC real-estate bubble, they are starting to climb: the price of apartments was a topic of conversation that continued to return over the course of the evening. Katrin has also purchased a apartment in a converted abandoned factory not far from Felix.
The apartment is decorated with works of art by Max's father, Rainer Wagner. Each wall displayed a single work of art by both Rainer and other local young Berlin artists. It was wonderful.
I gave Lars and Charlotte too much chocolate and then proceeded to whip them into a frenzy until they were running and screaming around the table. I don't know if I'd be a good parent, but I'd be the best uncle and spoil kids rotten.
The evening was pure magic... the kids were put to bed by 8 PM, and the adults stayed up until 11, when the hosts politely told us it was time for bed for them, too. Max, Katrin and I walked back to Alexanderplatz by way of the apartment on Metzerstrasse that might of been mine. I looked up at it wistfully, but thought: it's not too late. One day like Chris and Felix, I'll have a place like this, too.
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