Berlin Calling

Hi, I’m new around here. Let me introduce myself: First of all I was raised as a boy, tried to become a man (impossible as it may be) and I was for plenty of reasons doomed to fail. Now I try to fail more each day, failing gladly.

An important step in really acknowledging who I am (becoming) was moving to Berlin about 9 months ago to study at Potsdam University. The “Queer Capital of Europe” really deserves that soubriquet for a huge number of reasons: Thriving LGBT-scenes – although I have to say, there are a lot of L’s and G’s having Problems with the B’s and T’s and people of colour, queer or otherwise, so go figure – and the general gender-deconstructive madness when people from all over the world with almost every (sub-)cultural background imaginable meet, mingle and just do stuff together, not necessarily in the queer squat or the posh gay club and afterwards...

Nevertheless Berlin is, and has been for quite some time a place ridden with conflicts and contradictions of one kind or another where these political and societal conflicts and contradictions became and are becoming highly visible and, especially in the past, culminated in sometimes disastrous ways. Just for the sake of the argument: Take a walk on the squeaky clean Kurfürstendamm for example - passing by Gucci, Cartier, Hermes you name it (or rather, don’t), then hop onto the next U-Bahn and chances are you’ll see a homeless person timidly asking for money or food, or if she or he is lucky, selling a homeless magazine. Chances are he or she has an open leg. Chances are one or both legs are gone. There’s probably even a German flag on the wheelchair. Mind you, I don’t mean to be funny here. Get off the train again, and you just might run into a huge anti-capitalist, anti-nationalist, anti-fascist demonstration. Or the TCSD for that matter. Same difference, politically. All the while less than a half-hour drive outside Berlin will probably take you to a town completely dominated by neo-nazis. Hell, the place I study at used to be a Konzentrationslager once. It’s quite true, but also cynical when Klaus Wowereit (the openly gay mayor of Berlin) said: “Berlin’s poor, but sexy”. Granted: He addressed Berlin’s precarious budget and tried to stress its creative and therefore economical potential, after all we live in an age when the cultural is one of the most profitable industries. However, in a city where precarity is distributed so unequally along the lines of *drumroll* race, class, gender, sexual orientation and religion that’s a terrible statement.

As much as I hate to cut this ongoing story short: Berlin can be a quite an overwhelming place and I’d like to share a bit of what is going on in this truly queer, beautifully diverse and often downright heartbreaking, infuriating place, aside from the big tourist attractions; the small everyday struggles, the big “important” ones and everything in-between in Berlin and elsewhere: Potsdam University has a lot to offer in terms of queer feminist academia. Potsdam in general has a lot to offer in terms of political activism and otherwise. Oh, and I’ll try to update you on what is going on in Poland where my mum was born. Here, Homophobia is a much larger problem than in Germany. I’ll stop ranting now and close with a short scene from a street café somewhere in the posher parts of Berlin Kreuzberg:



A Woman on a bike approaches the scene. There are two children, a boy aged three or maybe four, definitely a pre-kindergartner, blabbering permanently, and a girl, a year younger maybe just looking at the scenery that must pass by in the trailer attached to the bike. They pass by a café. MARY – not even dressed very girly this day - is drinking a coffee with her/his friends and some acquaintances. It’s somebody’s birthday. Always is.


BOY IN THE TRAILER (to MARY): Are you a man or a woman?

MARY (enthusiastically, bordering on joyful): I don’t really know, exactly! (It sounded catchier in German.)

Meanwhile, the group of three approaches the distance where you can only make out certain words. It doesn’t help that the boy still has the manner of speaking of a, well, pre-kindergartner.


BOY IN THE TRAILER: But…But…But?! Mom!?! …asked…man…woman…has to…


Everybody at the table laughs, some more heartily than others. The acquaintances seem a bit confused when they notice MARY is dead serious.

Meanwhile the woman on the bike and the two children in the trailer go on going down the street. The woman listens to what the confounded boy asks. She looks back at me and smiles knowingly. I hope. In Berlin that’s possible, at least.