The thing to snack on here is the currywurst. Which as my ex-chef friend Ari words it, it’s a fried hotdog, drenched in cheap sweet ketchup with curry power sprinkled on top. Sounds awful, but people seem to love that. I’s ok. And just about every Italian restaurant, it doesn’t matter the region will serve up Vitello Tonnato because I’m told the Germans love it. It’s thin slices of boiled veal covered in a tuna mayo sauce. It’s actually one of my favorite things from the Piedmont region. Absolutely wonderful.  Restaurants open late, serve up to 12 and much like New York it’s easy to find what you need if you could only decode all that German. The other day I asked for an English Menu and the German desciption was long and elaborate and the English version translated everything into simple basics: soup or pasta with vegetables. When I asked what kind of soup, what was in it, they said, oh many things. It’s good. One thing that I have learned is that just about every soup in Berlin, but lots of  other plates as well,  has tomato sauce.

I also stopped trying to understand the German language. Instead I feel what people are trying to say. And it’s been working for the most part. I have been communicating much better. Wasser is water. Except the W sounds like a V. And now the German is starting to sound more like English at least the music of it.  Nuss is nuts. Glacier is ice cream.. but glacier is almost like gelato and glacier.. think eating a big white snow cone. What I came to realize is that German seemed more foreign even because for the last four or five weeks I have been speaking exclusively in either Spanish or Italian. Now that I turned my English brain on… it’s much better. Which explains how much easier it is to write since I arrived to Berlin, because without knowing it I was writing always in translation.

Prenzlauerber is very GREEN. Full of leafy trees, and untamed weed gardens. Lots of flowers blooming. And the streets, part cobblestone and alsphalt, are uneven and I am always tripping on them. People are always warning me about the bikers. There is always a story of some tragic biker and pedestrian crash. Most buildings have been painted in brights sunny colors, peach, yellows, white, which reminds me a little of the colors in the south of France,  and then there are a few buildings that are still this moldy green or grey color a throwback to the commie days. But these are few and far in between because this area has been seriously gentrified.

As for the rest of Berlin… I will discover today. I have been too sick, or busy reading and writing to adventure far. But I did make a visit to Potsdamer Platz, where the Sony Center is. I wanted badly to see a movie in OME  i.e in English. And when I arrived Potsdamer Platz looked like a replica of Columbus Circle. I was told this is no accident. Dunkin Donuts on one side, Sony theaters/ imax on the other.  There was not a decent movie to watch in all the bunch, so I chucked the movie idea and went back to my hotel to read and write some more. The guys that work with my husband have tagged me as the “reading and writing girl.” Every time they see me , I’m doing one or the other.  I could be called worse things.

I do think that my ambiguously ethnic appearance makes it easier for people to open up to me. I always feel and believe to look like an outsider, a stranger. I have yet to find a place/ outside from my mother’s kitchen where folks don’t ask me where I am from. In the south of France, most thought I was Arab, my olive skin, my long curly hair, until I tried my tourist guidebook French and instantly they were aware I was “Latin,” a Spanish speaker. In Italy, most think I’m from Spain or Latin America, never Dominican, the Dominican women they know, if they ever met one, are supposed to be darker. In Germany, most folks speak to me in German, which gives me the impression that they must assume I am a Berliner. But I immediately say that I’m American, because I don’t know an ounce of German and many do speak English. In Dominican Republic, I am straight up gringa. Or a Dominican York. In New York I am Dominican. In Texas a New Yorker. And when I say Dominican to my many geographically challenged Texan students, they ask, “Where’s that in Mexico?”

All this to say that as soon as I make it clear to folks that I’m not from where ever they are, and that I am a good listener, people reveal their living history. They also feel free to speak about their lives and politics because they assume that as soon as we finish talking I will disappear.  And more often than not, when I just let the conversation go where they want it to go, they answer my many questions, that I didn’t even know to ask.. It’s as if they know what I need to hear, what they need to say.  A real give and take. I always tell my students that these serendipitous moments, these moments when the universe is working in harmony with your desires, are gifts. Very precious gifts. And for me as a writer I accept these gifts as signs that I should continue my work.

And speaking of my work, I write the following in response to some emails I have received asking about how my novel is going and if I abandoned it. Since my arrival to Europe I have been questioning if my travels are a form of procrastination from working on my novel; a book that is taking me forever to write, about a fifteen year old Dominican who is married off to a man in NYC set in the 60′s. In theory and practice I should be in NYC, or DR. But Berlin, Turin? What does my travel in Europe have to do with the bigger work? It’s true that traveling in Europe has conjured all this other new work, and that’s always scary for a writer, because sometimes I feel like the more stories I start working on set in Italy or wherever, the harder it will be to get back to the novel. But I have been making a practice to say to myself to trust that the universe will provide answers. I continue to trust in invitations. And rationalize with myself by thinking things such as..”I was awarded a hefty grant to travel. That’s a good sign isn’t it?”  And finally I believe this trust is paying off. Someone once told me that men work in lines and women in big overlapping circles… well, here it goes…

The first day I arrived to Berlin, I went to the Biomarkt. It’s Berlin’s version of Whole Foods. I needed some ginger tea and yogurt. I couldn’t understand anything. The packaging was different, the language completely undecipherable. I felt like a complete foreigner and I was intimidated. I was frustrated and the two people I asked didn’t speak a word of English. And I thought, this is just an inkling of what my character in my novel, Ana, must’ve felt like when she first went shopping in NYC. Everything was foreign. The language, the abundance of food at the market, all of it was foreign. This feeling of helplessness and fear, isolation and incapacity. And that’s when it hit me that the reason I needed to visit a place like Berlin is because I needed to reconnect with her in some way. For the first time in a long time I connected with her on a very visceral, physical level and it happened standing in the Biomart, and also on many Berlin street corners, where I felt completely lost. (that was before I figured out the maps) And in this seemingly small experience of shopping at a supermarket, like going to have dinner the other night and meeting that man who spoke of the rumble of the underground beneath his feet, (read other blog) I was reminded the way the memory of sound, architecture, etc, all those things shape our lives. So in this way, so many things in my life that seem completely random or inconsequential, start to make sense, start to feed the work, and like Grace Paley used to say, writing provides the answers to the questions, one wasn’t even aware one was asking. But If you also live your life as if you were writing your own story, I believe life can play out in the same way.

The first three days in Berlin I was wicked sick and this was a good thing because while I was bed ridden I read up on Berlin’s history and also indulged reading a fat novel from beginning to end with small breaks in less than 36 hours. Something I haven’t been able to do ever since I had Daniel.  

Before arriving to Berlin I thought it would be interesting to visit former concentration camps and other  tourist attractions such as the DDR museum to understand better what it must’ve been like before the wall was brought down, during the Nazi regime, etc. In fact, this desire was unusual for me, because I’ve never been someone to think of following a tour or doing touristy things. And then I was trapped in a hotel apartment, without TV, internet or telephone, with loads of time to reflect and plan how I would spend my last days in Berlin as I waited out what I now believe was some kind of flu. Of course, I began to question the why I would even want to visit former terror chambers, virtually interact with some Stasi agents, as if I was playing some role in a film. Poverty, execution memorabilia and sites, are not for entertainment. Research perhaps, education, a way to remember/revisit history so we are aware, but I read books for that and I am not working on a WWII book at the moment. And then when someone told me that once there were some crazy talks about rebuilding parts of the wall to attract more tourists, I decided that I won’t visit the tourist attractions in protest (unless they visit me)  and I will have to make one exception  the Jewish Musuem (“it is something to see” I have been told repeatedly.)

And so my trip to Berlin begins. I went to dinner at a very good German restaurant and had an Italian meal. At our table there was a man, who knew I was an American literary person, and who pointed down the street and said ”The Wall was right behind that stadium.” It was difficult to believe that less than a block away from where I was eating, there was a wall, dividing the East and West. For a good hour he told me about what it was like to live in East Berlin. He told me about the mysterious rumbling under his feet, that he would hear but not understand when he was a child. Always around the same time. At the same place. This mysterious rumbling. And then much later, after seeing some of his father’s old maps, did he realize that the mysterious rumbling was the S-bahn (subway) that was traveling from West Berlin, under East Berlin to the rest of Germany. All the stops in East Berlin were covered, out of sight.

He said as a youngster he had never thought about The Wall as a problem. It was just there. He was born with it there, so it was normal to him. But as man, he  banged on pots in protest of the wall.  “It was a few of us that protested really. Most people just went living their lives because with The Wall people ate. They didn’t think about rent, they lived. Maybe they didn’t like, but they didn’t protest, they were okay. But I banged on pots.  On TV it might have looked like many, but it was just a few people, every day banging on pots.”

This was very inspiring to me to remember that protests do work. That few can bring on dramatic change. “I was one of the first 200 people to cross.” he said. When I asked him if he kept a piece of wall. “I hated that wall, why would I do that?” And then my very capitalist side was exposed, “To sell your piece of history on ebay.”  Of course I was kidding, but he didn’t laugh.

After dinner we went for a walk. He showed me where The Wall was and how it divided the city in a sharp zig zag like pattern. Every time we saw a shop (that I thought was cute) he said something like, “Many shops like this now, for people who buy things they don’t need. This is progress”.  His large bear like body shook with laughter.  He pointed at the renovated building that now have heat and intercoms. He recalled leaving notes to his friends at the front entrance of their buildings. “Meet me at 7 at such a place, and when the person arrived home they met because there were no telephones back then. Very few had telephones. Too expensive. Back then people had time to meet,” he said and then laughed some more. ”We had time for conversation, to think.” Then quickly reminded me,  ”but things better now. much better”  More laughter.

He told me that he stayed in East Berlin because his family lived there. But also, he paraphrased an artist who said that  with The Wall, there was something to fight for, the enemy was clear. ”In East Berlin, you didn’t think about how to get money, you did your art, you read your books, you had many conversations. Now we very America, always thinking about how to get money to survive. Not much time to have conversations. To think about much else.” 

 I read an article about a real estate agency that opened up to serve extra communiatari (immigrants) because they have such a difficulty finding a place to live not that all Italians are racist (but I find that many are afraid of difference) it’s because most people rent by owner and even white Italians in all fairness have a difficult time renting a place if they don’t have their parents, or someone respected in the community to vouch for them. (Very mafiosi mentality) The realtor who opened the agency was from Senegal and said that he once lived in an apartment/room/storage closet without windows, very small about 120 sq feet for 300 euros a month. For that money you can easily find an apartment in Turin with 400 or even 600 sq feet. He was actually very generous towards racist or fearful Italians saying  in his interview, saying that when an owner is renting a place that was once his home or that will be eventually inherited by a family member they need to trust who will go into it. In fact, the first year I visited Turin, this was in 2004, I remember seeing signs “rent by owner, no extracommunitaris.” But since then, things have changed, at least superficially. I haven’t found any more of those signs. I also see lots of efforts toward integration, educational events to show the way the city is changing. Change is inevitable.

For over a year now parents are protesting about the integration of the “zingari” (gypsies )in the schools. Activists pushed for bussing the marginalized community into the Turin schools in order to integrate them into society with the hopes that schooling and more integration efforts would curb petty crimes such as pickpocketing. But many parents feel that the schools are already on a downward spiral with the integration of immigrants (Moroccans, Senegalese, Peruvians, Romanians, Albanians, etc). So there is also a push the other way to segregate schools which is virtually impossible being that a high percentage of the youth are Italian born from immigrant parents.  Italians are not having children like they used to. Even White Italians who are for integration have confessed to me that they are for it and think it’s a good idea but still prefer their children to go to a better school for the sake of their future. When I spoke to a teacher who is at the front line of this situation, she said that its really complicated. The only way to become a teacher is to get on a list, the lists are forever long and not merit based, (many are relation based) by the time you become a teacher in the schools you are close to retirement and set in your ways. And then you enter the classroom and are confronted with children who speak languages you don’t speak. From cultures you know nothing of and then are supposed to teach the young people and prepare them for the exams. This particular teacher said the challenge was good for her because it gives her an opportunity to speak  the six languages she learned in her classical education. She’s also a rare person who has traveled half the world. But unfortunately she said that  most teachers are just babysitting because they don’t know what to do and are afraid of the students.

 When I asked a young man, 10 years old, who resides in Turin, who goes to a public school, he thought that segregating schools was a very upsetting idea. He said my parents want this because they say my education will be better but I feel that many of the Italian kids in my school learn a lot from the kids who are not Italian. because they work twice as hard and for example, “my friend, he’s Romanian, he was the only one who tried to help me with math. and I have a Peruvian friend who really works hard and when the other Italian kids want to joke around, he does his work because he says he has too or else he will get in trouble with his mother. So he’s a good influence on me. But my parents don’t see that. Nobody asks us what we think. But we are the ones in school and should have an opinion.”

Admittedly my hyphenated American Identity has been like a passport to go in and out of circles in Italy and feel that most folks find it easy to confide in me about what’s on their mind, and   I feel very privileged in this way. But regardless of my identity, one thing that is very refreshing is that in Turin, because so much of this stuff is so new, it is in a pre Political Correct moment, so people say some of the most problematic things unapologetically.  They say what they are actually thinking.  So people know where they stand. Which is so not true in the U.S. And in the end I feel because it’s all out in the open change can happen faster.

That’s all for now… The sun is beating on my computer and the battery is about to go out.

Anyways… because I love this hotel so much, and i have had so many people emailing me asking me for Italy suggestions I thought I would make a quick list of the best of Turin as I see it before I forget it all. And when I have time I will add more info with links.

TO EAT:

Da Michele (Piazza Victorio) The cook is actually the owner, the waiters all family, the quality high and price reasonable.

Don Gennaro (Best Napolitana Pizza)

To Snack

Bar Torre (Best Sicilian Granita) Try Coffee Almond mix. Or Chocolate with Panna. Or just Almond

Cafe Elena (The Literary Bar) Piazza Victorio

TO Stay

Hotel Victoria (Boutique Hotel with access to pool from spa)

To Drink

Pastis (In Quadrilato Romano) Go around 6-8 where there is a wonderful apperitivo being served. Free with any drink. And the free apperitivo is substantial enough to skip dinner altogether.

Drogheria, Piazza Victorio. Great place to meet for coffee or drinks.

To Buy Your Airline Ticket

Super cheap tickets from London, Paris, Barcelona on Easyjet and/or Ryanair.com

From the states: Try Vayama.com. I found the best price there. Much cheaper than Travelocity, etc.

See you here!

Before visiting Anne Frank’s hiding space,  I saw two paintings in a shop window, juxtaposed together. Obama and Frank side by side.  Enough said.  

There was a long line at the Anne Frank Museum. I could’ve skipped it, if I had bought my tickets online. But that felt a little like cheating. As you know I recently  read her diary and was struck by how self possessed she was as a young women. She was so affirmed as someone who had something important to share with the world in ways I still post publishing books feel challenged by my own self- censorship. It was inspiring to read about her experience and all it’s complexity. 

Visiting the 1000 sq feet ”Secret Annex” that housed Anne Frank and seven others for two years was in some ways anti-climatic. Maybe because the imaginative fiction we create when we read is almost always better than reality. The annex was unfurnished. Her father Otto wished it would be exhibited that way. So there were small models showing how the rooms were furnished as Anne’s father, the only survivor, remembered it.  When I read the diary, I imagined the attic much much smaller. But then again my perception of space is completely skewed living in Manhattan. There were a number of years, when I was a child, when I lived with eleven family members in an 800 sq foot apartment.  My mother still says that it was when we lived on top of each other that we got along best as a family.  But that’s not the point, what was impressive to me was how The “Secret Annex” was furnished in a way where there were clear living spaces,  sleeping spaces, and even writing/thinking spaces, the small desks to study for exa.  So even though it was crowded, there was space for Anne. A reminder to how important it is we give our youth and ourselves those spaces to contemplate, create, reflect, regardless of what kinds of circumstances/conditions we are living in. 

The stairs from one floor to another made a great impression on me. I had not imagined them so steep. It was as if the architecture itself was secretive, mysterious, dangerous. A majority of the townhouses in Amsterdam were built as early as the 1600′s , and stand thin and tall because they were easier to heat that way. Today they line the canals and lean forward as if they are looking down on you. In fact, everything in this city feels like it is off balance, or perhaps I’m too balanced. All the streets, uneven cobblestones,  slant one way or another.  I keep thinking enslaved peoples built these bricks, these paths, these buildings.  I have yet to see a sign of the Dutch colonies (except for the Indonesian restaurants, which there are many) and their participation in the slave trade.  But then again, I have yet to see signs of the other five million of gays, disableds, blacks, slavs who died during the Holocaust either. More on that later.

Peter’s room was the most impressive, perhaps because her diary entries about her longing for him were so vivid and when I entered the room I could easily imagine them sitting  next to each other, full of desire, lust, even fear of what they wanted to do, what they were capable of doing. Anne’s room was also haunting. There were all these magazine images of things she liked taped on the wall. 

I watched all the interviews on video at the muesum. There was one of her father discussing, how after reading her diary he realized he didn’t know her at all.  But I don’t think anyone knows anyone else truly. We may want to believe we do, but people change so much as we experience life, there is so much going on, we carry so much in us, it’s impossible to know someone. But it was still powerful to listen to him admit this.  Because he was the one to find the diary, I also wondered if he edited any pages that might have been critical of him.  Anne throughout her diary was critical of her mother and only showed respect and adoration for her father. It’s difficult to believe that Anne didn’t have more to say about her father.  But who am I kidding… I see it all the time around me and even in myself… women with a blind/forgiving love for the men in our lives men and a sober/and even critical love for the women in our lives.

There was a video of her young friend Hannali Gosler, a survivor as well.  For the interview she went back to the school where she first met Anne.  Hannah  tinkered with some bells outside the school remembering how Anne and her became friend. It was a beautiful moment how this object, the bells, reminded her of this. This is a good reason why we should rethink replacing something old for something new. Europeans seem to be good at holding on to things, especially when they function.  Objects are loaded with memories. If it wasn’t for those old, rusted bells outside the elementary school, Hannali might not have remembered that day as lucidly.

Of course I beam with pride when Obama gets praises. He’s like an international rock star. And when Bush was president I was always apologizing for him, explaining that not all Americans are alike. That America is a mix of communities, with different ideas, and the media exported to Europe does not reflect that.

But anyways… the point is I wanted to learn about their “free” health system and how it worked and was completely disillusioned. I have yet to meet an Italian that will trust or go to a “public” dentist.  So.. many don’t get their yearly cleanings and when they finally visit the dentist the problems are so out of control they are stuck with bills from private doctors for thousands of Euros. In fact a few told me that if they need a lot of work done they take a vacation to the states and get the work done in America. Where health care is not free.  Obviously I spoke to folks mostly of the working and middle class… but even these folks who claim not to make enough money to make it through the end of the month, still found a way to save and do holiday. Especially in Ausgust when most Italians take off to the sea and mountains. So I thought then it’s really about priorities… holiday or healthy teeth? Then I asked about visiting  a GYN in Italy to two woman. One was  pregnant in her late thirties, another in her late twenties. They both told me they only go when they absolutely need to and only go to a private for check ups where they pay like 100 euros a visit.  As for Obstretics it’s free. But you have to get a on list to have your baby in a hospital who can offer you an epidural. Some offer it only some days a week. Some not at all. “I want to make sure I can get one if I want it,” one of the women said.  As for regular doctor visits, that’s free. And the downside of free a young man told me is that people will go even when they don’t have problems. And the collective pays for that. Another problem is that, much like in the U.S. not all hospitals are the same, so because everyone tries to go to the better hospitals, the lists to be seen are very long and sometimes people just go to a private because it’s faster.

I have to say that I am pysched that the U.S. will have a national health plan if it’s even possible,  and maybe  I need to go to France to get my optimism revitalized.  Where I am told the system is amazing and efficient.

The truth is that even when I was making a good living wage I never chose to get health care. I wanted to keep the cash to buy stuff, or go out. And I have family members who did that too. They could have probably afforded some kind of health care insurance but instead I would just go to a doctor when I needed too. In Italy everyone is taxed hevaily for “free” healthcare (for those who pay taxes… but that’s another post for the future) The big difference is that Italians for the most part can live without the stress that if something happened where they needed lots of medical care they would be fine. The health system would take care of them and they wouldn’t go into debt. They wouldn’t lose their homes or have to files for bankruptcy. And that’s a good argument for national health care, no?

In the end, while inside these conversations, I found myself blaming our addiction to consumerism as a reason we don’t want to have a national health plan. If we forewent the latte, or whatever maybe we can afford insurance? Who knows? In Italy, I find people can do without, or live within their means much more easily that many Americans I know. And they also see taxes as a way to care for everyone not just themselves.  They don’t blame the taxes for things not working perfectly, they blame the corrupt politicians, or greed. But not taxes.

A cool thing I learned is that New mothers get six months paid off… plus extra time off for lactation. An employer told me how burdensome it was for her small business but in the end it is the right thing to do.