SPREEPARK

 

VIVA LA DYSTOPIA

My heart was in my mouth. Scratch that, my heart was almost in my eyeballs, and it was thumping behind them in a kind of sheer terror. Was I going to prison? Maybe we would get deported. I contemplated lying about my name, while trying my best to duck and run at the same time.

..TWO HOURS EARLIER..

We exited the subway with two dead phones, and no clue which direction to take. After walking around for a while, thinking hopeful thoughts, I was struck by a genius idea: I stopped by a bus shelter, and scanned the small map on the wall for any promising areas. Any large area of woodland would do. The map revealed a large green space, a bit behind us; we backtracked a little and found ourselves on the edge of an endless forest.

In the forest, things were looking up. I only stepped in poison ivy twice, and we managed to make our way to a small bench on the edge of a river, where we cooked lunch and thought about giving up. Until I spied something a little odd... a young girl, looking a little shifty, as she poked at a nearby fence. Aha! Jackpot. She had inadvertently led us to our journey's destination: Spreepark, that wonderful dystopia of broken carrousels and old swan boats. 

We joined forces for a few minutes, the young girl following us past the fence, until we heard the sound of loud voices and dogs barking - then we ran for it. Prudence and patience was needed here. So, we walked the borders, hearing voices near and then far, as people roamed the park, till I couldn't wait any longer, and we hopped the fence into another world.

It was eery in there. Shifting leaves, the grating noise of the old ferris wheel turning in the wind, and rows of old clowns combined to make this one of the creepiest atmospheres. We explored for fifteen glorious minutes before being caught. 

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Nothing will ever beat that feeling of discovery and trepidation, when one sneaks into a place that is off-limits,
and just a little dangerous. 

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POSTSCRIPT

Spreepark's future is uncertain, and the park is being slowly dismantled, with talks of a refurbishment. The security at this place evolves all the time, sometimes there are guards, sometimes dogs, sometimes it is open to all picnickers and daytrippers. I suggest you do a bit of research before climbing that fence, and please make sure to respect the park - look-y but no touch-y. 

BERLIN

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“You are crazy, my child. You must go to Berlin.”

— FRANZ VON SUPPE - 1800'S

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My French next-door-apartment-neighbor was a wild kinda guy. He had long grey dreads that always were lifted off the ground by one of their own, and a pair of vivid blue eyes in a dark face. He played electronic music in the middle of the day, the sounds reverberated around the building and in the walls. He told me on no uncertain terms, that I absolutely must visit Berlin.

So, of course I had to visit Berlin.

Berlin was cool. The kinda cool that seems effortless, that doesn't give a rat's ass about anything. In the U-bahn, a young man took his shoes off and reclined along the seats with a book over his face. On the streets, we found a multitude of art forms, expressions, posters screaming 'revolution,' stickers, times and dates of small indie gigs, graffitied scrawls of space-exploring penguins. There were recycling bins everywhere! It was also a raw place - the past cannot hide in Berlin. It is written on the walls in bullet-holes, and the new city has made its home in the shells of the old, like a hermit crab. And the sunsets were always gorgeous: a dark red sun that drifts past an orange horizon into the florescent night. Berlin was so darn cool.

KARLOVY VARY

TAKING THE WATERS

“One of the deepest and most enduring preoccupations, from the baths of antiquity through to the Victorian deluge of “hydros,” has been water... the pernicious potential of standing waters, humid vapors, excessive rainfall, pestilential miasmatic fogs, and subterranean aqueous abysses... but also the curative powers of water.

In Homeric times, baths were used primarily to cleanse and refresh. By the time of Hippocrates, however, baths had acquired both general and specific healthful healing properties. The bodily humors could be heated, cooled, moistened, or dried by a combination of hot and cold baths; thermal baths soothed chest and back pains in pneumonia; cold baths relieved swellings and painful joints; and aromatic vapor baths were advised for female disorders. The waters were also drunk...”

— R. PORTER - THE MEDICAL HISTORY OF WATERS AND SPAS

Karlovy Vary is a town of faded glories. Paint peeled from the walls, and from the curls of the old iron art nouveau gates.

The town seemed to come straight from the pages of Anna Karenina, reminding me of the passages about popular curative spa towns. The grand esplanades, white pagodas, and old hotels with velvet curtains all hinted at a once grand, if temporary, populace. At one point, this spa town was so renowned that it had attracted the likes of Beethoven, Mozart and Freud. Yet, much like the Tolstoy's book, the town has been touched by time, and is now covered in a scattering of dust.

We had come to take the waters. 

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HEALING WATERS

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