The Short Line

Der Bahnhof vom Stadtpark aus gesehen by Axel Mauruszat is licensed under CC BY 3.0 DE

By Alexander Daily:

In the southeast of Berlin’s inner ring there is a gentle ravine that stretches between the hearts of two of the city’s more bourgeoisie quarters. This depression, carved out by long gone glaciers, is of considerable length but not very wide. Its ground being too soft to build on, the decision was made at the turn of the last century to cultivate it into the People’s Park. Trees line the edges of the ravine and further seclude the sloping lawns and playgrounds nestled between them. A curious feature, for a park, is the Berlin subway station Rathaus Schöneberg. This teutonically neoclassical station is truly in the park. The tracks of the subway exit one side of the ravine and delve into the other, sheltered by the stone structure of the station, forming a bridge under which one cannot cross.

As a non-native transplant from the US, I first experienced this curious edifice running at night along a path that follows the curve of the ravine. I became aware of a long, squat cathedral with the gleaming windows of a glass palace. It seemed to mark the end of the valley and I could not guess its purpose. As I drew closer, behind the bright panes the unmistakable mustard-yellow form of a Berlin subway train rolled into view. I chose to continue my run, but I was excited at the prospect of experiencing the station from the inside.

This was a familiar pattern of my early time in Berlin, for there was much to see that divulges the unique character of the city, and making plans comes easy to lonely new arrivals. For a person with no business at or around the Rathaus, however, the chances of riding through the station are slim. The line that services it, the U4, is curiously short. The primary function of its 2.86km and five stations is to connect the quarter of Schöneberg to the wider Berlin network. The days passed, I traveled other routes; moved to a different part of the city. Schöneberg became the only word I had to go on, a clue that stymied me, as another station carries this name. Passing through the busier, almost homonymous station one day, I noticed it is nowhere near as nice from the inside, nor located in a park. Time continued to elapse, but this trip allowed me to eliminate one of two potential candidates from the subway map.

Having narrowed things down, I headed to Innsbrücker Platz, the southern terminus of the U4. Consistent with the diminutive nature of the line, the trains that service it are only ever composed of two cars and depart every twenty minutes. One waited at the platform, the color and length reminiscent of the school buses of my home country. I boarded, and a few minutes later the train lurched and stuttered out of the station. As we rolled into Rathaus Schöneberg I was able to finally experience, with a certain sense of triumph, the low-key sublimity of sitting simultaneously in a Berlin park while in the Berlin underground.

The many parks of Berlin are dependable places to find natural recuperation. It is an understated quality of this city that most every flat has some bit of communal green near it, or a subway station within reach to get there. In their number and variety, the parks of Berlin are also sources of great adventure and mystery. Each has its own quirks for connoisseurs to discover. A sunny day poses a hard question: stick with a reliable known quantity or venture to some new verdant expanse.

***

For the past decade, Alexander has been exploring the more curious corners of Berlin. In addition to trains and parks, the part he likes most about the city is stumbling upon something previously unknown to him.

Trans-Mongolian

By Kenn Taylor:

Lying on my back on a bunk bed, on a very long, very bare train. Going a very long way through a very bare landscape a long way from anywhere.

At this point, I’d been travelling on it for so many days, that whenever the train stopped and I briefly stepped onto the terra firma of a platform to buy food, I had sea legs. Well, train legs. So used to the constant shaking and rhythm of the railway journey that, removed from it, everything seemed unbalanced and off kilter.

Being on a train for so long, there is nothing but time. To be filled in many ways. Looking out for the arresting moments between endless tress and endless desert. Games. Chat. Drinking. Lots of drinking. Someone brought a laptop with downloaded films and music, which in back then seemed over the top and now seems like common sense.

With me always being a late adopter, I’d brought books. Although like everyone else I’d been very affected, if not traumatised, by the animated film, I’d never actually read Watership Down. She had recommended it in her usual passionate way, so I thought, why not get a copy for my travels. In what was no doubt another daft attempt at maintaining a connection.

So, with an incongruity recognised by myself and others, I found myself reading a novel about anthropomorphic rabbits filled with descriptions of the lush, green and wet English countryside, whilst sat on a train going through the depths of dry, summer, eastern Siberia. With this being August, Siberia of course was nothing like the snow covered images of popular culture. A week earlier we had sunbathed near the Kremlin. As you do. It was odd but all the more vivid to be down the, er, rabbit hole, of this book about the loss of an arcadian England, whilst being on the other side of the world in a moving metal box going through a striking but unforgiving landscape.

Of course, wherever you go though, you are still you. I dived into the depths of this book and this journey, trying to concentrate on reading whilst also sucking in the vast stream of everyone and everything going past. On this bunk in the quiet afternoon though, in the world of rabbits as the eternal human struggle, I still found myself thinking of her and the chest pressing gulp of the pain swept back in.

Back then though, the wider world seemed brighter. This journey just another example of it opening up ever further, ever faster. Here we were crossing continents, a multiplicity of backgrounds filled with camaraderie, in a world of expanding global interconnection, dialogue and understanding.

Yet the warnings of how thin a veneer this all was were already on display here. A guide telling us of the racism he experienced all the time. Russians more than happy with Putin telling us ‘we need a strong leader’. The call to Free Pussy Riot provoking indifference, ‘they shouldn’t have behaved like that in a church.’ No one likes us, we don’t care. What now stares us in the face as the growing threat to democracy in the 21st century was all there lurking in the background. We had thought then perhaps that this was just the leftovers of an old world that was dying. Really though, the post 2008 trauma was still just sinking in. The thwarted ambitions and dreams of millions, many struggling now even for a basic standard of living. Their sense of injustice ruthlessly diverted to other targets by those in power, so they could maintain the status quo, despite its diminishing returns for the majority.

The world has turned darker in the last decade. So many of the places we visited then, even if it still possible, we might not choose to now. Borders going back up. Minorities oppressed. Rights shredded. History coming roaring back to bite. Wherever you go, you are still you and you take your experience and culture with you. Sometimes though, what you see when you go elsewhere follows you back home much later.

***

Kenn Taylor is a writer and arts producer. He was born in Birkenhead and has lived and worked in Liverpool, London, Bradford, Hull and Leeds. His work has appeared in a range of outlets from The Guardian and CityMetric to The Crazy Oik and Liverpool University Press. www.kenn-taylor.com

Sleepers, a poem by Stewart Carswell

A curtain of ferns
spreads at eye height
to a child, and parts
from the push of a hand

to expose
the shrinking clearing
and the treasure at its centre:
an ancient sleeper

laying like a sunken casket
and shrouded by a puzzle
of oak leaves. The specimen
ornamented with metalware:

rusted plates and bolts,
brooches carried by the dead
to the next station of life.
Close the curtains. Change the scene.

A figure stands at the end
of the platform, his face masked
by a flag. Steam
spirals around him,

a spire above rows of sleepers.
There is one line
drawn from childhood
through junctions to connections,

and the destination close
to definition.
I feel the platform vibrate
from something about to begin.

The figure sounds his whistle.
His flag drops
and it is my face unmasked
and time to leave this dream

and I see it now. The trackbed
has lost its track and I have lost
track of time. I get up
to check my phone

but there’s no signal
and my daughter is asleep,
habitually dreaming
of a better life to travel in

and I see it now.
The ancient sleeper
is a relic, an inherited burden,
second-hand history.

I step outside
and the first engine of the day
sets out light and I see it now:
I know what to do.

***

Stewart Carswell grew up in the Forest of Dean. He studied Physics at Southampton University, and has a PhD from the University of Bristol. He currently lives and works and writes in Cambridgeshire. His poems have recently been published in Envoi, The Lighthouse, The Poetry Shed, and Ink Sweat & Tears. His debut pamphlet, Knots and branches, is published by Eyewear Publishing (2016). Find out more on his website or on Twitter.