Kirmizi_ada

Hi friends, and welcome to my blog.

If you are having difficulty believing that an Inscrutable Codger like me is suiting up for this particular dive into the empty swimming pool of twenty-first century culture, please know that I share the concern. On the other hand, there is a shortlist of noteworthy benefits: 1) It's free, 2) It is way more fun than writing my dissertation, and 3) It might turn me into a better storyteller, such that when you and I are reunited, you may no longer have to do all the talking.
KIRMIZI_ADA is the name of my blog. The three i's in "kirmizi" should have no dots above them, but free blogging software can't be expected to honor such diacritical opulence. With the underscore between the two words, Kirmizi_Ada looks kind of like my neighborhood: "Kirmizi" would be the modest skyline of Berlin-Schöneberg around Kleistpark & Hauptstraße (Main Street), and "Ada" would be the narrow triangle of Schöneberg Island, where I live—somewhere in the upper third of the "d" in "Ada."

Many of 19th central Europe's working class neighborhoods were built to the east of middle-class financial centers, because the soot and debris from the train lines would blow eastward. The districts of Friedrichshain, Neukölln, and my little Schöneberg Island are living exemplars of the history of wind. When the Socialist Law (Sozialistengesetz) was lifted in 1890, the Social Democratic Party (SPD) gained a new stronghold among the Schöneberg Islanders. When the Kaiser paraded through Berlin, it was not uncommon for the folks in my neighborhood to hang red flags out their windows, instead of the bourgeois black-red-gold.

Hence, Schöneberg's East End came to be known—with equal dashes of mockery and curiosity—as The Red Island, and it's inhabitants "Rotinsulaner."

But back to the underscore "_" between Kirmizi and Ada. North-south "Stromtäler," or electrical power corridors, used to run on either side of Red Island from the Anhalter Train Station to South Crossing. No longer used for trafficking electricity, those valleys are now the S-bahn trainlines to Wannsee and Marienfelde. On either side of the island, there are train trestle overpasses, where you can gaze down at the underscore "_" until a ten-car northbound train heads up to Potsdamer Platz, like a coral snake on its way to a clogging party.

These days, a fair plurality of my neighbors and fellow Rotinsulaner are Turkish in some way or another. So after 130 years of Kiezgeschichte (neighborhood history) it's about time that the Rote Insel be translated into its turkish "Kirmizi Ada." pronounced "Kuhr-muh-ZUH ah-DAh". I don't think anyone will mind.

My voice is a bit scritch-scratchy today after Madonnamania at the Schwules Zentrum last night, so the audio transcript of this inaugural entry will be read by Arianna Huffington.

I don't know what the procedure is for signing off from a blog. I wish there were some decadent hand gesture, like the pope does. But for now, I hope you pass this day in love and good company. Till soon!