Carnival à la Berlin...

Surprising the things you may encounter by following your nose around your vibrant Berlin neighbourhood. The Raphy and I stumbled upon a carnival (!!) and a beautiful one at that. 

This gorgeous event, took place over three days of a searingly hot weekend in the capital. We took to it day and night, naturlich. Where else can one enjoy a cocktail, nyam some jerk chicken and buy a djembe drum, all in the same evening?

I confess I had a few misgivings about what might unfold at an international carnival in a country that betrays dubious notions of what is known as 'integration'. Would this be the sort of one-sided integration I'd seen elsewhere? With all the emphasis on 'foreigners' to integrate and none on the Germans themselves? Would this world carnival be all exotic spectacle and gawping onlookers?

Well, no actually. Here was an event of genuine multicultural intermingling. We saw more brown faces amongst the revelers at Carnival than I have in the streets of Berlin for a long time. And amongst my favourite bands of the Sunday street parade were those with Germans playing Brazilian drums that move you down to your core. 

I was recently in London to interview a lovely elderly gentlemen for the final chapter of my book. He'd been a friend of pioneering feminist leader Claudia Jones, one of the originators of the first Caribbean carnival celebrations in London (the crucial forerunner to the Notting Hill Carnival). Berlin's Karneval der Kulteren resonates deeply with the original motivations of Jones and her collaborators as they weaved new dreams in smoggy, wintry, un-integrated London all those decades ago.

Stepping out in Berlin...

Settling into life last summer in Berlin I began a enduring love affair with...sensible, yet bodacious, shoes. I remember musing with a friend on how well-shod German women were. How you could spot a German woman in a queue at the airport for her lime-green rubber-soled flats, or her wool-lined, sturdy-heeled purple boots. I pressed my face to the window panes of quaint little shops elegantly stocked with artisanal mary-janes, vintage courts and proper riding boots. I indulged one too many times in ‘essential’ purchases of suede lace-ups and platform slip-ons.

Then I discovered that opinion is divided on the German proclivity for sturdy, well-made footwear. “Uh, I hate shoes here, it’s hardly Italy!” an American friend with dainty feet and expensive tastes, complained. “Uh, they look like orthopaedic shoes!” lamented a fellow Brit expat. 

Hmm... 

I appreciate the elegance of classic high-heels as much as the next woman, but it has never been a love-relationship, and that’s mostly due to the behaviour of those shoes towards me and not the other way around. For my money, I’d take playful, bouncy shoes over towering spindly-heeled stilettos that pinch and rub and cause backpain any day of the week. As you’ve probably detected, I’m over 30 and firmly in the camp that thinks shoes should be comfortable, not punishing. But I say this as a lover of style, not as someone who completely abstains altogether.

The flowering of the trend for happy feet in Berlin has surely to do with the eco-culture that the city embraces sincerely, if somewhat smugly (bespoke organic leather booties for toddlers, anyone?). It reflects the, very welcome, in my view, preference for well-made, lasting, and ethical fashion, over disposable, impossibly cheap fashion. Even amongst the super trendy folks in head to toe vintage (of which, more will follow) I note a tendency towards comfortable, sensible (and what dirty words these are in fashionable circles) sturdy shoes. Long may it continue… 

Coming soon: the vagaries of vintage; the war between afro and cycle helmet and what it means to be ‘multi-kulti’ in Germany