Alone In The City

After passing by several times on my way to visit my sister at her apartment near Westhafen, and leading my student-led tour on neighborhoods border, I decided to visit Wedding. The area attracted me because of the large area that it takes up on a map, and explanation that my sister gave me about it being a poor, cheap neighborhood that was becoming "cool" and therefor, gentrified, much like Kruezberg has in recent years. I decided to get off not at the main Wedding ring-station, but a little further north at U6-Bahnhhof Seestrasse, where I hoped to find a more distinct feel away from the neighborhood's transportation center as well as the asian supermarket my sister suggested I visit.

The minute I stepped out of the underground station, I could feel so many differences between this neighborhood and many others in Berlin. My first impression was that it felt more bustling and condensed than most parts of the city I had been. The street was packed with cars in all directions, and the sidewalks were nearly full as well, with everyone walking at what seemed to be a faster pace. The buildings were much older here than in our neighborhood, and all of them tightly hugged the wide sidewalks with no small greenspace in between. Advertising also seemed to be more prominent here, including an enormous movie poster that took up the facade of a large glass building kitty-corner from the station.

I decided to buy a small meal at the chinese fast food place the sat on the street directly in front of the station. Its walls were made completely of glass and there was a small two person table right against one of the windows that would be perfect for observing life on the street as I sat. Sitting in the warm building away from the cold wind that blew outside, I thought back to the reading that described sitting in an outdoor cafe and taking in the city. After seeing the doorway directly next to me, though, I realized that I was almost taking part in a very common ritual for this block. It was a joint doorway that featured a hall leading to four different stores, so it was a perfect place for people to take a break from cold if they needed to stop for any reason. I witnessed multiple people step inside to take phone calls or adjust their scarves or coats, and yet another man spend several minutes waiting in the doorway as he passed the time to meet a friend outside, who eventually came. Near the end of my visit, there was another girl who simply stood in the doorway for 20 minutes, but her patience for whatever she was waiting for outlasted my curiosity about why she was there so long. It was clear however that this common hallway, with no store clerks or anyone else telling people to move along was utilized to the fullest. It did not, however, drain street life or create unwanted loitering, at least not while I was observing.

Overall, I left the Seestrasse area of Wedding feeling like the neighborhood had a much more American out-of-downtown-big-city feel too it, with its taller older buildings, prominent advertisements, fast pace, and small gridded blocks filled with cars. There were no Bauhaus or communist apartment buildings here, and even the TV Tower was not visible from this block.