kreuzberg 36

Gorlitzer Park is pure Kreuzberg, really the very best part of Berlin that I want for myself. See, Kreuzberg is not really all of Berlin and it certainly doesn't represent Germany itself, but it is the part that I take a real liking to and makes up for all the other unpleasantness I have to deal with every day. I want to have my cake and eat it too; and if I can't do that, I want to at least eat the yummy parts first.

I have to climb up a steep trashy wooded path to the top of a hill, not knowing what is where and where is what. I can't see anything, so it is a pleasure to take friends here for their first time and lead them up through the weeds and thickets until we are suddenly at the top of the highest point. and we see everything and it takes their breath away.

In the distance is the twisted wrought iron M probably 4 or 5 stories high, insanely ugly and rusted and pointless. It's the gateway to the deep crater. On the closest two sides is the Greek hippie stage and the remains of Gorlitzer train station, or rather, the last 2 buildings left standing. They are both dirty and covered with graffiti and on the aluminum roof is spray painted something. "Anti facism" in German. or "Free Mumia"

The park is not a beautiful park; There are no grand monuments, no statues of powerful dead German men, at Gorlitzer Park. Well, there is a ruined hippie playground and something that could be some kind of greek stage, with terraced white steppes and sixties style hippie figures carved into white rock. But it's so falling apart that most of it is fenced off to protect people from hurting themselves. Lanky boys try their hardest to hurt themselves anyway; they hang off the sculptures by the skin of their teeth to show off to their friends and dangle the dance of death.

In the crater, which was a huge bomb from World War II, and this is a city littered with ruinations of bombs and new shiny buildings filling in spaces where bombs have fallen, there are people on blankets and the people with the most attention are usually young and attractive and lay in the center of the crater, the deepest tip of the pit. The girls wear g strings and are shiny and red on their towels, while a boy does cartwheels. or what is the beginnings of capoeira. He's cocky, laying by two pretty half-naked girls, and he urges one of them to do a cartwheel for him. She self consciously puts on her running bottoms so that she's not cartwheeling in a thong through the park (she is more modest than she thought) and makes attempts at it, but is too unconfident and shy to go through a full turn. This only encourages the boy to try to help her. He becomes reckless, crashes and collapses on the ground. Her friend watches them both with a smile. Do they share him? Which one's head was he stroking?

A veiled Turkish girl in long sleeves and long pants does a cartwheel perfectly across the hill. Her little brothers and children she is watching do perfect cartwheels also, staring at the teenagers in deep fascination. She demonstrates for the children, doing a long handstand, her scarf dangling onto the ground.