Schloss Charlottenburg

Two days ago, galvanized by 60-degree weather and a day off, I rode my bike to the Schloss Charlottenburg. There is a way to get there following the Spree and its canals much of the way, which are, I've felt for a long time, among the nicest and most underused parts of Berlin. This landlocked city has at least a lot of water running through it, but unlike in, say, Paris, the water is often not obvious: the paths along it have a discontinuous character, relating sometimes to the old partition of Berlin, or new construction, or some other quirk of planning. On one of the Spree's larger branches in Mitte, the path along the water passes right through the old Invaliden cemetery (where the Red Baron, the World War I pilot, was originally buried, along with many eminent Prussians), which in turn contains segments of the Wall itself and the second, East German wall. You pass through the death strip in the middle of a cemetery. 

It took several trips to the Schloss Charlottenburg to arrive at an attractive and not-too circuitous bike route. I went through a similar process to find a running route to Kreuzberg from here, which if you follow Google Maps means traversing a 20th-century hellscape, but which can instead be reached by following a car-inaccessible, almost 18th-century route along canals, past the Nikolaiviertel, across the Fischerinsel, and on uncrowded roads by the Märkisches Museum and the Michaelskirche, with its vanished roof. It feels like a small victory over Berlin's disjunct history to thread one's way elegantly to a destination, especially when the destination is something so peaceable and un-modern as the Schloss Charlottenburg. 

I rode there a few times last year during the first lockdown, once on my own, once on Mother's Day with the whole household, J. surveying the canals from his seat on my bike. But the very first time I went there was in September 2019, only a month or two after getting here. That time, I went by subway with J., then 16 months old, in the stroller. In that period, now legendary in my mind, probably lost to J.'s memory, C. was (to her regret) working every day, Kita hadn't yet started, and I had J. every day from nine to five. A saner parent might have stayed in our neighborhood and tried to institute a regular nap schedule, but in my newness to Berlin, I was determined to use those intensive Dad days to explore all of it. In beautiful weather we spent whole days going to museums, to coffee shops where I would buy him croissants (known ever since as "sants" and still a dietary staple on weekends), to lunch (where I would sit him on my lap and feed us both spätzle and cut-up bratwurst with the same fork, or sit in the dappled light at the Chipperfield Kantine among young and glamorous architects), and on walks in faraway parts of Schöneberg, Kreuzberg, Charlottenburg. He would eventually sleep in the stroller, and if at some point I gave him an apple or a banana I could reassure C. that he had a very healthy day filled with playgrounds, fruits, vegetables, and a solid nap.  

That first visit to the Schloss Charlottenburg was unplanned; after going to the Berggruen Museum, where we saw a rather sparsely hung and boring selection of Paul Klees, we needed some fresh air. And there it was, this yellow rococo Schloss across the street. J. seemed relieved, as was I, to walk on gravel paths under ancient trees. He tried to water some topiaries with his monkey-patterned plastic water bottle, and, in a buoyant and hilarious mood, wanted to keep walking for some time in the gardens behind the Schloss. In that deeply French atmosphere, where Friedrich the Great would retreat with his flute, I was brought back to a day six months earlier, on a mini-trip to Paris, when J. was ten months old and already walking. In the splendor of a spring day in the Tuileries, he took his walking to a new level, traversing a whole segment of lawn before tumbling on the grass. Even teenagers nearby, smoking and listening to a Bluetooth speaker, seemed mildly impressed. 

To someone who has to admit to a more natural Francophilia than Germanophilia (a word whose existence seems questionable), the gardens at the Schloss Charlottenburg–with their many perfect tulips, benches planted a just-so shade of green, even a little hameau in the back with a quaint pale-blue belvedere overlooking a fold of fluffy, taxpayer-funded sheep–felt like a refreshing dose of normal European tourism in a city whose draw is stimulation and interest rather than the comforts of age and polish.   

But I guess my real point, in embedding these memories within memories of J., is about how places are colored by going to them with your child. I will admit that the other day, at the Schloss Charlottenburg, in what should have felt like a peaceful solitude, I took out my phone to find the old photos and videos of him from September 2019, tiny in retrospect, walking erratically, laughing a laugh that was still recognizable but also different, the voice of a younger child, and got a little bit choked up. It is strange that, though growth and development should seem like an unequivocally positive process, a victory of nature and the future, a child's growth also marks time in a new way, creates the sense of time vanishing at a new rate, of something–your child's earlier self–being constantly lost. If I look at pictures of myself from that month, they inspire no particular feeling: it's the same me, or a me so subtly different as not to be interesting. But against pictures of J., the expanse of time feels palpable and vast.

Photographs and videos of course play a great part in all this. I used to think, in some pre-Dad period when I was subject to having deep thoughts about art, that there was an interesting discrepancy between people who prefer paintings with people in them, or without. I was always a no-people person, not minding a little human figure dwarfed by nature (in the way of the German Romantics) but generally feeling a strong preference for the Kirchners of Davos than the Kirchners of Berlin, the landscapes of Koninck and Hobbema to the profound character studies of Rembrandt (call me insane), and would take the Impressionists any day over some Madonna by the greatest Italian master.

I always supposed this was a symptom of a mildly asocial nature, which could also explain why, for the longest time, my Instagram feed consisted of pictures of places, signs, landscapes, little urban tableaux, but never people. Even in periods when I had a significant other, even for a while after meeting C., the personal side of my life existed only invisibly in these pictures, a context only I was aware of. Yet when J. appeared, suddenly he was in every picture. I don't mean to mythify a very ordinary process–people post pictures of their kids–but I can't help seeing in this transformation a symptom of a changed way of thinking. It's as if, in all those earlier years, a scene was being set, observed impartially, noted, in wait for its central actor to appear. 

I've noticed that some writers and directors follow that very procedure: in "Before Sunset," Richard Linklater's camera takes a little neighborhood walk in Paris, just filming the streets, which appear again a short while later, now with Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke walking through them. The Austrian writer Adalbert Stifter, in the magical book "Bergkristall," patiently traces the layout of a mountain village, valley, and mountain range, devoid of people, before locating his characters, little Conrad and Susanne, in that setting. There is atmosphere, a certain beauty, but it's waiting for someone to enter the scene, give it meaning and a story. 

That is, anyway, one way of looking at being a parent.