Why Dessau isn't a Disneyland

Why doesn't Dessau push its Bauhaus heritage a little more?

For a few glorious years in the 1920s, it was here that some of the most influential work was done at the famed Bauhaus school. Its workshops pushed out texile, interior, and industrial design brilliance. Artists like Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, and László Moholy-Nagy were lured into teaching positions. Even the city joined the Bauhaus-ing craze and commissioned a work office and a housing estate.

Yet, they only finished a museum to Bauhaus' influentia output last year. The Masters' Houses are five homes inspired by Bauhaus' design concepts. They look lovely on the outside -- gleaming white concrete blocks in a stand of pine ona quiet residential street -- but, they're underfurnished on the inside. They designed furniture, after all!

The exception to this underappreciation is the original Bauhaus building. Long since re-purposed for tourists, it houses contemporary art exhibition spaces, a Bauhaus store, and a canteen in the basement. You can even spend the night in one of the old student dorm rooms.

Why isn't more of the city optimized for taking toursitic advantage of its Bauhaus awesome-ness?

First, it might only be design and architecrure nerds interested in making the pilgrimage to Dessau. That's not a big demographic, so the town might be as optimized for Bauhaus tourism as it can get.

That reality check aside, let's remember Bauhaus was a design school at the local university, and Dessau is still a university town. In fact, it feels like a calm, rich university town that's comfortably cashing in on some of its Bauhaus fame.

But, that's not the only side of Dessau.

The city is modernizing its old, dreary East Bloc pre-fabricated apartment buildings, or Plattenbau's, but the DDR's clumsy fingerprints are all over this town, from the ramshackle sidewalks to questionable city planning that puts a playground beside a highway.

This is a blue-collared town, and it feels like it. Just a few blocks down from the Bauhaus building is a magnesium smelter. The folks you meet here aren't just university professors and design nerds. They're workers and 9-to5-ers. Guys in coveralls drinking a beer at their local kiosks or taking their kids to a playground beside the highway before supper. Or both. My kind of people.

A good Discovery Walk reveals a lot more of Dessau. The beautiful nature parks. The winding bike paths along the Elbe river. The old, princely palaces. The friendly folks. The tasty local beers. Bauhaus isn't the only star in town.

And some Bauhaus architectural landmarks aren't treated like fancy architectural landmarks. They're still used for their original purpose. The work office is still a work office. I was chased out by a security guard when I poked my head inside. The Kornhaus is still a lovely restaurant on the banks of the Elbe, perfect for a lunch and a cold Weizenbier. 

Wasn't that the spirit of Bauhaus? Architecture and design made for the people. Accessible for everyone.

It's refreshing that Dessau hasn't Disney-nified its Bauhaus heritage or put tourism before its own residents. It's a better place to visit when Dessau itself is able to shine. 

One of Dessau's many beautiful nature parks.

A Crazy Little Thing Called Hope

Spring is feeling a little more… springier in Berlin.

The patios at bars and restaurants have re-opened. People are lining up outside recently opened stores cluthching negative Corona test results. Hipsters and not so hip old guys like me are drifting into the public parks.

The weather has been sunny, warm, and perfectly timed with Berlin's loosening restrictions.

Normally at this time of year, the people of this outdoor-drinking-loving city emerge gradually from their indoor-drinking hibernation. But, in case you haven’t heard, and you're not as sick of this phrase as I am, this is the "New Normal," so this spring’s awakening feels less like coming out of hibernation and more like awaking from a coma and sprinting madly outdoors.

And the whole city is outside. We’re walking around, sucking in the semi-fresh air and soaking up our Vitamin D the natural way. Some of us are walking about with beer in hand. Others are trying to keep their toddler out of the traffic. We're all quietly wondering, “What is this feeling?”

It’s hope.

And it’s probably too early to admit to feeling that feeling. At the time of this writing, Berlin's infection rate is dropping and 2,391,749 vaccinations have been given. But, with variants lurking around out there and a Merkel-less federal election this fall, we're all senstive to the tooth-grindingly awful fact that our fortunes can shift at any time.

So, we won’t bask too long in this sunny sensation of hope. Instead, we’ll crack open another cold beer and cautiously enjoy what we have right now: sun, a little more freedom, and a mad desire to just get out there.

Escaping Social Media

The year was 2013,
and I had an awesome company phone.
photo by Kata Varga

As an old millennial, that “digital native” label just doesn’t apply to those of us who grew up in the age of dial-up internet.

We lived without smartphones. Although, I did use a pager before trading it in for a flip phone in 2006. 

Social media was our neighbourhood Robin's Donuts where we all hung out.  

And we got bored. All the time. We couldn’t whip out a phone and check the ‘Gram while we waited for a bus. If we were smart, we brought a book. But mostly, we just waited and did nothing…

I’m not like every old millennial. I was a slow adopter. Some of my peers jumped onto new tech as soon as they could. I still remember a media-information-techno-culture friend patiently explaining the difference between MySpace and Facebook in 2006 -- the year of my flip phone.

As time wore on, I slowly started adopting these technologies and social media (a word that wasn’t even used then). It began with that MSN instant messenger. Then creeped into Facebook. Twitter. And so on.

Older millennials like me weren’t entirely prepared for it, because we didn't grew up with it. People made jokes about their "CrackBerry." MSN chat interrupted our essay writing time. You checked your Facebook daily for updates. Twitter was firehose of realtime... "content."

At some point, social media and its ilk stopped being a novelty and become a compulsive thing you did when you opened a tab on your brower, looked at your phone, or when you were bored. And most of the stuff didn't matter much.

By 2012, I had enough. I was going to quit it all. Which would not have been hard. I had email. I had a flip phone. I could call my small circles of friends. Send a terse SMS to my mom. Mostly, I met friends and family face-to-face.

Then I moved to Budapest. Suddenly, these social media traps became more difficult to escape. Without face-to-face interactions, Facebook felt like a legitimate way to keep in touch. I wasn’t seeing family and friends every few days, so at least I had a witty update or a nice looking photo to share. I clicked "Like" to tell them I liked something and let them know I'm there.

And so social media remained in my life, becoming a lifeline back home. To quit Facebook or Instagram or any of that would sever that lifeline.

Since then, I've tried to achieve balance with social media. Its utility is hard to dismiss, but its compulsive nature is easy to resent. Remember that old saying? "If you're not paying for it, you're the product." I wanted to use social media without being used. 

But that’s next to impossible. These things are cleverly designed to hijack our attention. We upload photos and check for the ‘Likes,’ again and again. Every new feature, newsfeed tweak, smartphone notification is an underhanded way to get us to log on and get sucked in.

It feels like the only way to stop being used by social media is to stop using social media.

I'm not quite there, yet. With family and friends far away, I can't deny that social media does have its uses. So, I've been experimenting with quitting without quitting.

I tried no social media first thing in the morning. Then most of the day. I deleted most social media apps from my phone. Shut off most notifications. I check my accounts weekly, if that. 

The change has been incredible. A background anxiety that I didn’t know existed has evaporated.

When I see an amazing thing, my first impulse isn't always to whip out my phone to snap an Instragram-worthy photo. It can be an amazing thing that I can experience, without thinking about the little ripples it will make in my tiny social media following.

It's actually nice to be bored sometimes, alone with my own thoughts, without inputs screaming into my skull. 

I feel better. 

And it’s not a new feeling.  As an older millennial, I remember life without constant connection. Sure, we still had to go to Blockbuster to rent a movie, get our party photos professionally developed, and ask someone about their relationship status. But there was a stillness in our lives back then. 

Drastically cutting my social media use has shown that stillness wasn't a young-person-with-nothing-better-to-do thing. It was a social media thing.

There are drawbacks to my quitting social media without quitting it. Long-distance relationships maintained by these social media channels aren’t being as well maintained. Getting acccustomed to simply posting and liking "content" on my social account has made me lazy.

So, I’m recommitting to chat groups, emails, and video calls. I'm also recommitting to this blog and its comments section (so write back, if you feel like it!). 

This new habit is not a final solution to our social media problem. There are engineers and scientists constantly tweaking and optimizing their social media platforms to hook us, so I'll have to keep tweaking my habits to stay ahead of them. I might even write another update here.