August 13, 2011. Berlin -- The gravity of Berlin's tragic history belies the creative pulse of the modern culture factory new place. It's possible to visit Berlin and completely immerse oneself in galleries, cabarets, and discos and miss the scars completely. It's possible to live here and ignore the sacrifices and triumphs of your neighbors.
If you clicked Google's scrumptious sundae-themed logo today, then you learned that it's the 119th anniversary of the first ice cream sundae in recorded history. But even if you didn't, you were subjected to Google's compulsory mandate to eat ice cream today.
The streets of Neukölln are a battlefield. Berlin's most diverse, most rapidly gentrifying neighborhood is at war. A lot of newspapers are sold with the story that it's us immigrants at odds with our German host or that we're fighting unemployment, but it's not: its the dog shit. And my neighborhood, the Körnerkiez, is ground zero. Today the children took to the streets to fight a seemingly insurmountable foe, hundekacke.
