ITB Berlin

March 2012: Berlin was a strange assemblage of past and present this time. Germany meanwhile got so far away for me that I associate it with times past long ago. And indeed the clock is ticking fast. A year and 9 months I haven't been to my home country. So much happened in the meantime and still change is not yet enough for me. Still I work in the tourism industry. Still I like it. But still it's all far too ordinary. At least I am also involved in teaching and research activities, and this will led me further towards where I really see myself.

"Could you imagine living in Berlin?" my mom asked on the phone. I do still have the more than 14 or so years old German mobile number that I am using each time when getting back. I haven't even found - or taken - time to visit my home town but instead called home during a subway ride from the trade fare to Dave and Marianne's flat. "No", I said, "Berlin is too fucked-up for me; too many beggars, alcoholics and drug-addicts in the subway stations, too many punks and drunks on the streets". Temperatures were cold. Germany is not the place to live anymore, I often feel. But then again there is this strange connectedness. Or possibly it is more familiarity while being disconnected. It was my second time in German's capital after the last business trip back in 2010 when I had met the people at our German office prior to starting my current job in Ho Chi Minh City.

This time, the purpose was ITB. And the world's biggest and most important tourism trade fair was indeed interesting. I met many of the clients I have been working with via e-mail finally face to face. And I have met old friends from the business and people I used to work with before. Somehow I am very happy working with such nice and easy people in the leisure industries. But then again, as always when it concerns this business, it is not really that interesting what most of the people are doing and often enough the industry is just flat. Also the whole thing is just a job, not my life, even though I am currently investing quite much - and often too much - of my life-time into it.

More important for me was meeting back close friends, Dave and Mash, who had recently moved to Berlin, and with who I share a lot of memories on the past back in high school and home-town. It was by far not enough time that we had together during the trade fair job for me and their jobs for them. But we have spent them as if we had never separated with thousands of kilometers, and many different worlds between East and West. Next meeting might be scheduled for August. Even it is again just a few days it would be worth it. Dave was the one who once mentioned "For what are we doing all the work!" Some of the highlights of (the strictly non-job part of) the stay:

Berlin Messe - a city with still much architecture from the times when we were kids

Me and Dave eating Curry Wurst at the flea market at Mauerpark

 

 Techno, breach-chairs and hot drinks - electric city on a winter afternoon

 

Stairs and sunbathers at Mauerpark

Bernauerstraße in 1961: famous photo of the soldier escaping the east German regime printed on the house today at the original location of the event. The place of the Berlin wall and points of successful and unsuccessful escapes are marked by a line through the whole city.

another wallpaper: "save the sausages" - a 'Dildo King' advertisement

more architecture: antitheses painted on a wall in the courtyard of an office building

Dave, Mash and me in a fancy goggle boutique shopping for new glasses (blurrby because shot without)

more old-school facades: view out of my hotel room

underground clubs somewhere in Berlin

..some of the entrances only indicated through light spots

Sharing a fascination for the socialist architecture Stalinbauten on the Karl-Marx-Allee…

…and the Towerlounge at the Frankfurter Tor

Dong Xuan market - biggest Vietnamese overseas market in Germany, no photos allowed inside, which shows again: no frills making business with the Vietnamese