Nexus New York - Berlin
On the two great cities and their memories
What I love about Berlin is the true diversity here. All the world’s countries have contributed to the variety of creative and flourishing cultural life in this city. I live in the African quarter, and around the corner is a Bulgarian grocer, a Turkish bakery, and around the other corner is Lebanon Falafel. And that’s just the food. Though not exactly known as a foodie place but improving, there is still something for everyone here, from food to film to literature.1
But what stands out to me are the New Yorkers. Seemingly everywhere here in Berlin. In a way, I am one myself, having been born in New York City. And this year I have lived in Berlin as long as I lived in New York: more than eight years.
These photos advertising Berlin and New York were sent from a friend in NYC who snapped a few pics, as she thought of me. Sister cities. What’s odd about all of this is that there aren’t very many direct flights between cities, so just hopping over the pond isn’t an option. But it’s the cultural affinity that is the point.
Many New Yorkers are making Berlin their home. 20,000 according to this DW article from 2019. I’m sure it’s even higher now. Whether they call it economic exile or cultural emigration, Berlin has been experiencing an influx of Americans over the past five years, especially from New York City. Although Brooklyn is rumored to have the most writers per square mile, Berlin is known for at least hosting many well-known writers at some point in their lives (from Mark Twain, Susan Sontag to Vladimir Nabokov).
I’ve met New Yorkers at various events in the expat scene, and they tell me about how they can’t afford life in the US, given student loan debt and the high cost of living in New York City, so Berlin is a great place to get a better quality of life.
Being an American veteran writer myself, who joked enough times about being in political exile that I began to wonder if it wasn’t actually true,2 I have noticed how many successful American writers, and many at the beginning of their careers, come to Berlin, or spend some of their time here. What is the literary magic of this city?
Some New York-originating writers do return to the US after their “Berlin phase” and I’d like to research more about this phenomenon. If you are a New Yorker/Berliner writer or know of one, let me know!
I am still connected with my childhood au pair. She was twenty, and a single mom, when she came to help take care of my siblings and me when we lived on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. She stayed with us for four years, and those experiences still reverberate. We now exchange voice notes and chats, and she shares her memories of over forty years ago, like when she would take us on walks down to the 79th Street boat basin, or the 86th St. community garden with its wide sidewalks on the upper level where there was a playground for us kids to frolic. She has many celebrity sighting stories from that time in the early 1980s.
Before she arrived, we had a German au pair who had rescued a baby squirrel, resulting in a flea infestation. I don’t remember that or the first au pair, but another student who stayed with us as a nanny for a year later when I was in Kindergarten recently found me on Facebook and made contact. We all wonder, “Whatever happened to so-and-so?” but social media can only tell you so much about a person’s journey.
My old au pair recalls how my older sister could name the plants in the nearby Riverside Park already at the age of five. This is interesting because my sister indeed has an astounding green thumb and spends many hours planning her urban garden. Her interest in botany began early, but the Yarrow and Shepherd’s Purse she could point out to her nanny never stuck in my mind. As far as plants go, I recall the horse chestnut trees that lined the park paths, and remember collecting the shiny chestnuts, but also, getting pooped on by pigeons roosting in the trees. My childhood impressions were different despite the same setting.
My memories of Riverside Park are of our Easter Egg hunts that my parents and au pair staged for us, hiding little chocolate eggs in the park grass that seemed like an endless field from my child’s eyes. Going back many years later, I don’t know how they created such an environment of beauty given the trash and cigarette butts everywhere, on the tiny scruffs of turf.
I remember finding a porn magazine in the bushes by the fence to the Hudson River Parkway—I must have been five or so—and a woman sunbathing took it away from me. I very much recall getting hit in the head with an errant softball (or was it a baseball?). “Heads Up!” I heard being shouted out too late. Pain is usually a good way to solidify a memory or life lesson.
I still dream about Riverside Park, and the path down to the Rotunda and the boat basin. Sometimes I’m flying like a drone even, other times I’m being chased.
I remember public transport in New York, and the buses and subways hold a redolent glow in my childhood cloud of how good life was. Or the time I was standing on the front seat of our little blue Chevy Nova car, leaning on the dashboard as we were stuck in traffic. I was probably only four, and my mom reached out to hold me back as she had to brake when a city bus stopped abruptly in front of us. Years later, I asked her about this incident, and she said she actually did hit the bus— lightly—but enough to put a lot of money’s worth of damage to the car. But I didn’t go flying through the windshield. Ah, the days before child-safety regulations became widely accepted.
As I pick up work on my memoir again, I am thinking about the nature of memories. They are so fallible, as we know, but where they differ and what parts we embellish for the sake of our need for narrative never ceases to amaze me. I remember someone walking their cat on a leash in Riverside Park and not the flowers. Now that was a memorable sight!
Berlin is similar to New York in many ways and I do spend a lot of time in public transport. Formative hours even, so much that one of my first published pieces was about Tales from Unterwegs—on the go.
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And now it really is true.