A Tree Grows in the Media Harbour?

Media Harbour at dusk, taken on one of the nights I was able to leave 'early.'

Spring has come to the grey, dark Dorf. The last few days the sun has been staying out most of the day, instead of the few seconds it takes for the sun to jump from behind one cloud before hiding behind another.

If you're like me and have the luck (or lack of it) to be working in an office with windows, it's a great feeling. You look outside, you see the sun, you want to get out for a walk and feed your UV addiction and then sit under a tree.

But in my work neighbourhood, the Media Harbour, that's not really possible. I think we can blame Frank Gehry for that one. Well, no, not really blame blame him, but he started this.

He designed the first set of fancy wavy modern buildings here, which inspired more people to plop more fancy glass buildings here. Frank Gehry knew how to design a building, but you can't apply that design to a whole neighbourhood. 

That is what was done with Dusseldorf's Media Harbour, which is now lined with modern or post-modern or post-post-modern (is that a thing? I think that's a thing!) buildings with wavy lines or glass covered everything or old brick industrial facades or coloured alien people festooned on them. 

The architectural weirdness of the Media Harbour.

These smart designers thought of everything to make the buildings, and the area, look cool – and it all does look very cool – except for adding a few trees for actual, natural coolness.

Picture this. It's a beautiful sunny day out. You walk out of the office and go to the lunch place with the fancy salads. You get those fancy greens to go with the intent to sit beneath a tree or on a park bench and munch on your arugula and goat cheese and read a book. 

But you look around the harbour for a spot.

Where do the media workers eat? On the shadeless wooden bridge thing.

Sorry. Nope! You're going to be enjoying spring's return on Dusseldorf's version of the Concrete Beach. You will be eating on the shadeless wooden bridge thing or on a bench in the cold concrete shade created by one of those po-mo glass slabs.

It wasn't always like this. Two colleagues have pointed out, with sad mopey faces, the spot used to be a great beach bar. Now, it's its place stands the heap of black glass and steel that is the Hyatt. 

A beach bar! That is exactly what this neighbourhood needs. But someone has decided a building should go there and here I am willing to settle for a park. 

On the bright side – I see the bright side because it's spring and I am feeling less pessimistic – there are slivers of green not far from here. 

If you walk for about 10 minutes, you find some park and some benches on the river. If you go 5 minutes more – which requires more time than I have during office hours – you will find a strip of beach along the Rhine. It's no beach bar, but it's a relief to see that the media sprawl has left some nature untouched.

The beach, in not so spring-ish weather.

Dorf Domicile Drama

There are people who love looking at apartments.They look longingly at real estate websites and Craigslist at available apartments. They bookmark their favourites -- or pin them to Pinterest or whatever the kids are doing these days. They click through the photos, pausing to imagine themselves in the apartment, with their furniture, throwing their housewarming.

I am not one of those people. I don’t like shopping, not for shoes, not for pants, not for Ikea furniture, and definitely not for apartments.

This is why, despite very few hiccups, my Budapest apartment search was such a blessing. I talked to a real estate agent, who sent a pdf of available apartments, and then we found one. I paid the rent, some of which likely included a management fee since the landlords lived in Hong Kong, and maybe a commission, and everyone was happy.

In Germany, an apartment hunt feels like a Camus novel. The absurdities that people accept as the norm defies the imagination.

Let's say you find a flat through a real estate agent, you pay a commission up front, which can be several month’s rent. All those appliances that are usually included in a flat? Not in Germany. You buy those up front or bring your own. Throw in the deposit, you’re likely coughing up several thousand euros for the privilege of renting a flat.

If you're a normal person, like me, with a normal job and a normal paycheque, there is cause to pause. If you don't have a briefcase of cash laying about, the recourse is trying to reach normal people renting out their domicile without the aid of a real estate agent.
Also not easy, for several reasons.

For example, let's say you're going on a two-week vacation. You would usually call a friend, ask them to drop by the apartment, feed the fish, and ensure the place doesn't get robbed. In Germany, or at least the Dorf, if you go away on vacation, you try to rent it out to complete strangers for those two weeks.

Now, yes, that clogged up my search results when I was looking online and made it the hunt a little more difficult. I'm not going to dwell on that. But let's think about inviting strangers to your home for two weeks while you're in far away in another country. They're sleeping in your bed, stacking your plates and bowls the wrong freaking way in the cupboards, and clogging your shower drain with their hair.

I'm digressing, but, anyway, this phenomenon seems to be common.

While I attempted to search for a place to live in the Dorf, I landed into the cheapest airbnb I could find and lived with a few foreign students for a month.I wish I had stories to tell about cultures meeting in a faraway place, but it was pretty boring. Everyone came in the front door, went straight into their room, and didn't come out unless they had to eat in the kitchen or clog up the renter's shower drain with their hair.

While Kata was preparing to move to the city from Berlin, I had to waded through the apartment sites. Ignoring countless ultra-short-term leases, avoiding scams on airbnb, and, mostly, sending out a lot of emails and leaving a lot of voicemails with little to show for it.

What I finally ended finding was less than ideal. The girl who showed me the place was hoping to hand off her lease. She didn't say why, and I didn't ask, but I assumed it was because the flat was a renovated office in the Altsadt (the party part of town). I should have asked if the roommate, who I hadn't meet yet, was crazy.

With few other options in such a short period of time, we took. Kata and I moved in and we got to experience the loudness of the Altstadt on our first night there. It was essentially a street party down the street from us. 

We also got to meet our roommate, who was a shut-in that spoke little English and was a little crazy. We found out later, he was a lot crazy. More on that after I describe the apartment a little more.

Like I mentioned, the apartment used to be an office and was renovated to be a flat. Well, kind of renovated. The office/flat was equipped with fluorescent lights, power outlets situated at waist-height, a bathroom with only a sink, another bathroom with only a shower, a living room that was actually a hallway, a kitchen with no windows, a– well, you get the point. It was far from ideal. Luckily, I had only agreed to a three-month term, no Forever Lease.

Back to the crazy roommate. This guy was nice and was more weird than crazy. Kata worked from home, so he would be doing his stuff and humming and singing to himself. When I came into the flat, he would scurry into his room like a squirrel. 
Harmless stuff.

Then, one night, he started drinking and didn't stop drinking in his room. After two days, the kitchen counter was lined with empty wine bottles. Once, in the middle of the night, he went running to his bathroom (this one had a sink and a toilet, no shower) probably wanting to puke and screamed, like blood-curdling. I went running to see if he was alright, but he shut the door.

Oh, yeah, we were sort of spared some of this awkwardness because we lived on one end of the flat with our own bathroom and bedroom and a spare room that served as Kata's office. We also had a French roommate who shared a bathroom with crazy German dude (I always forgot his name, it started with a G). 

On my way to leave for work, I saw him in the kitchen and asked if he was alright. He said he was fine. While I was away that day, he came up behind Kata and said he needed help. Startled, she told him to call someone.

Then the guy disappeared. So did the French girl. Both gone without a word. Did they run away together? Is he dead in a ditch? Is he alive? Is she alive?

Kata messaged the french girl and got proof of life. The guy returned, feeling better, apparently. 

It was time to go.

This time, the search was a little easier. A friend from work was leaving the Dorf and offered his big room to Kata and I. That is where I am writing this now. In a real flat, not a renovated office, with a nice roommate, not a crazy one who sneaks up on my girlfriend, in a neighbourhood that knows few parties (although we are facing a busy street, but I'm not complaining).

It took a lousy living situation to remember that I had a great living situation in Budapest. It was not perfect there, but it isn't perfect anywhere. There are degrees of perfection. Budapest was high up there, but are current living situation is a really good one too. 

Kata mentioned the other day the new place feels like a real home. That's all that you can ask for, and it's all you really need. 

Pretty Ugly Things

A recent visit to the coal mines of Essen have made me pause and think about the great places that don’t seem to get the attention they deserve.

We travel thousands of miles to see palaces, churches, and castles. But what about the mines, the factories, and the bunkers that have been rebuilt into something more beautiful than their original, intended purpose? Can there not be romance or beauty in reinvented function too?

Inspired by a visit to a coal mine in the Ruhr Valley, I present a short list of European sights worthy of some attention.

Essen’s Zollverein 

This was Germany’s ultimate coal mine. Now that it's closed, parts of the industrial sprawl have become event spaces and museums, like the Red Dot Museum. Housed in the Zollverein's deepest mine, the Red Dot is a display of great contemporary design (graphic design, industrial design, product design, you name it).

I’m not sure what the coal miners would make of what became of their workplace, but the juxtaposition is striking.

Off to the coal mine

This part of the Zollverein complex is derelict.

You could get away with calling it Germany's Rust Belt.

Design!

More design! This time rude gloves.

Aliens!

Is she a designer?
Or is she a Bond villain in her lair of design things?

Salt Mines of Wieliczka

The Zollverein wasn't the first mine we visited. The salt mines of Wieliczka, near Krakow, were our first mine. Mined for over 700 hundred years, it has decidedly less Rust Belt ambiance, in part because of the statues and chapels the miners built. These are no doubt are comforting if your job involved long hours working under the threat of noxious fumes, cave-ins, and explosive pockets of methane.

A Polish King.

A church underground. Comforting if you're claustrophobic.

Most of East Berlin

I write a lot about Berlin, but it's been reinvented a few times so it's worth mentioning. Along with erecting a wall in the middle of the city – some sections of which are a gallery – the communists also loved building factories and gas plants in the city centre. Some were torn down to make way for Germany’s ambitious unification building program. Others became electro-dens of sin, with parties going from Friday to Monday morning. Most became a canvas for street art.

Cheerful East Side Gallery.

Dreary East Side Gallery.

The view from Mörchenpark.

Vienna’s Anti-Aircraft Bunker

Believe it or not, it’s pretty hard to demolish a concrete building built to withstand continuous Allied carpet bombing. What’s the alternative? The wily Viennese turned one into an aquarium.

AAA Tower.
Or Awesome Aquarium... something... Tower.

The Tate in London

During my first visit to London I had an afternoon to myself and had dilemma: Do I listen to the history nerd in me and go to the British Museum or do I heed the advice of the art-sy fart-sy nerd in me and hit up the Tate Modern? The Tate won the coin toss.

Can we call people who go to the Tate, Taters?