Taking a break from the studio, I wandered along Danziger Strasse, at the U-Bahn station where it looks rough and run down with graffiti everywhere, glorious freedom after the wall came down, until I came across Dunckerstrasse with little shops of originality. The shop that sold nothing but chocolate probably was my favourite. Called ‘int't veld schokolade,' the owner who obviously loved chocolate, very thin he was too, took me around the shelves delicately pointing out the rarest of the rare, explaining and describing the various categories, eruditely like a botanist. I browsed, enthused and bought blocks of trinka chocolate on sticks to stir into hot milk, also white chocolate flavoured with liquorice, and chocolate with salt. Now that we avoid salt in everything else for healthy living, it has become a desired thrilling vice, like absinthe almost.
Not far away was a toyshop filled to overflowing with second-hand children's sleds, toys and books. Having been his toy shop when it was Eastern Berlin, the slight, dark haired, intense, again thin, proprietor, another huge enthusiast took me around and showed me how it was in those days. In the back was a narrow space, his living/ bed/ kitchen, now his tiny office, and next to this the little shop he had then with the old East Berlin toys set out, not for sale but as a museum of that time. The rest was a bursting labyrinth of library shelves of ‘almost new' books, toys and dolls all in good, clean condition and an enchanted atmosphere. Like a fairy tale, one could imagine the toys coming to life at night and telling their stories of where they have been. Curiously, with the exception of the handsome wooden sleds, a few velvety dark red foxes, and eccentric little wood figures, mostly these Eastern Berlin toys were badly made cheap plastic. But then things don't have to be beautiful to be imbued with sentimental emotion. In fact too beautiful rather precludes that. Like the scruffy, teddy bears, we all had, the things we were allowed to play with, not the special ones. I still remember how upsetting it was the day my mother decided mine simply could not continue in that filthy state, so she laundered it vigorously and that finished poor teddy off.
A bit further along Chlorinerstrasse, there was another extraordinary shop, this one of heimat goods. Heimat is one of those untranslatable German words; it means something like ‘where the heart feels at home', ‘where one is safe'. There were hand-stitched dresses with pockets, table runners with cut out and sewn decorations, aprons and head kerchiefs. Actually two woman were sitting right there sewing up these delightful, homey items. To me this was amazing as it was all within a very few streets of the main ex-squats and communes of Kastanienallee, the hippest part of Berlin.
