Flying into a Triceratops (or, "Nothing´s Gone Wrong Yet")

I don´t know how many people ended up hearing these stories, but I was hit by a car when I was in Paris a little over a year ago, and six months back someone slashed open my handbag on a Metro in Mexico City. I bring it up now because neither of these things discouraged me from traveling and now I´m on my second day in Berlin and wondering why nothing exactly has gone wrong yet.

Paris was a pioneer in Europe´s urban biking phenomenon -- or maybe they weren´t, I don´t really know, but at any rate Paris was the first place I rented a bike for next to nothing. You do need a credit card that they can take €300 from if you fail to reappear with their bike, but apart from that you can tear around the city for €1-7 a day, and return the bike almost anywhere. I had just left the Louvre on mine, and if I remember right I´d come to one of a million side streets off Rue de Rivoli and failed to predict where the hypothetical on-coming traffic (which ended up as real on-coming traffic, which is why there´s a story here) would stop. It did not turn out to be where an American understands the pedestrian cross walk to be located even when it´s not drawn onto the road between the corners. A SmartCar barreled right through to where the driver could see cars (that was his concern, see) were or might be coming. But he knocked me off my bike in the process. In Paris, buildings come right up to the corners of the sidewalks, so neither of us stood a chance. I was fine; a little achy, but none the worse for wear. I ditched the bike off the Champs Elysees and wandered into a theatre to watch the new Indiana Jones movie (it was out at the time) in the shadow of the Arc de Triomphe. Equilibrium slowly restored.

Before I went to Mexico City, I read a lot of the tourist rag, and as a result fully anticipated being robbed at least once. I just wore a leather jacket every day with inside pockets barely big enough for my camera and cash. Not a big deal. I also carried around the handbag I made on the looms at Holden the June that Soul Purpose toured there. It served to carry a journal, a book of Garcia Marquez´short stories, a first aid kit and some ball point pens and granola bars -- and also to keep pickpockets from wondering where else my cash might be. It got promptly slashed on a subway car, my first full day in the city. I felt it happen, pulled my bag away, nothing was taken. Relief and equilibrium flowed in when I found the first aid kit still there in particular, since that´s where I keep the sewing kit and the resolution to the only thing that actually went wrong that trip.

Now I´ve just spent two days in Switzerland, trying to figure out why the McDonald´s advertisements had the outline of a triceratops in french fries or sesame seeds, before I realized it was a rendering of the Swiss borders. With at least three official languages and way-too-clean streets, the country´s like Canada but with a German dismissiveness of America that rivals and compounds the French. I went to the giant toy store off the Banhofstrasse, toured the churches where the Limmatt meets Lake Zurich -- including the Großmünster -- and not a single altar. The chancels sported large and central baptismal fonts (although it took a few for me to figure that out, since they were hiding under huge sprays of flowers (cut for Sunday, brownish now)), and often an ornate lectern or table with an open Bible under pope-mobile plexiglass. Crow´s nest style pulpits. But no altars. When Luther chalked "est" out on the table at Marburg and said a lot was going to ride on how each of them understood that word -- he was right.

A night train took me north to Berlin, and I´m on my second day there. Hiding in a Dunkin´Donuts from the rain at the moment, but nobody´s perfect. Yesterday was the big day of the rent-a-bike, all-Cold War, all-nerd, all-day tour: past Communist monuments and Check Point Charlie and the double rows of cobblestones that mark the old site of the wall down certain streets today. Fat Tire Bike Tours. It´s the way to go, kids.

The only slight oops so far was booking a hostel right over an "Erotik Museum". But the location´s still a good one: I´m right across the road from the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, which is where I spent my morning. Bombed out in World War II and left pretty much as is, in testimony to the horrors of war. The bells are ringing right now, and will be for the next five minutes if my German was worth anything against that sign, as a call to remembrance and reconciliation. (They´ve got a Nagelkreuz, a cross of nails from coventry.) All that´s left of the bombed out church is now a little memorial hall; they talked about restoring it and raising the ruins around it to look, well, like the church always used to look. But that plan got ditched, even though Jacobi (the church´s pastor through the Second World War, and the guy that basically started the emergency German clergy alliance against the German Christianity the Nazis were bringing in with them) was the one behind it. Instead they raised a church next to the ruins that´s like a net of cinderblocks, with tens of thousands of deep blue stained glass panes filling in the gaps all over it, roof to floor. It´s a round nave, with a surprisingly contemporary feel, in contrast to the vaulted arches of the ruins just beyond it.

Rain´s cleared. Good; I have a bit more exploring to do. This time tomorrow, I´ll be in Denmark.