Postcards From Berlin #7:  The Gamer’s Home

By Jeff Allers

German Word of the Month:  Wohngemeinschaft (shared apartment)

A home is a person’s castle, or so the saying goes, and this is most definitely true for a gamer.  I’m not implying that gamers don’t get out much, mind you, but we certainly do enjoy hosting social events around a nice table in a comfortable room (with the exception being a game of Railroad Tycoon where several tables and a banquet hall are required). All it takes for an evening of fun with friends is a sheet of printed cardboard with a few bits of colored wood and assorted cards, and good food and drink nearby (but not necessarily on the same table—see Postcards from Berlin #2: Confessions of a Gaming Clutz or How I Acquired my Copy of Dolmengoetter for the explanation, in all its gory details).

Aside from that, a gamer needs space for his or her collection of games. Ikea shelves seem to be the international storage facility of choice, but the boxes can often be scattered among several different closets, coffee tables, bookcases and chests throughout the home.

Up until last month, my 400-plus were in just about every room in our small Berlin apartment.  The “games of the monthâ€? were under the coffee table with the art books for easy access and a bit of subliminal advertising when guests dropped in for the German tradition of coffee and cake.  In the hall, under the lid of an antique chest, were umbrellas, things people left at our place that need to be returned, and games.  In my office were files and shelves full of games—you get the idea.

This month, however, I’ve had to reorganize the entire apartment.  Just a few short weeks ago, my first children, twin sons, were born.  I am still in amazement, and resisting the temptation to write a few pages here to describe the incredible feeling of holding their tiny bodies.  It is probably a good thing, though, that they need to remain in the hospital for a few weeks, because there is still much work to be done to prepare our home for them.

All the work aside, I am very much looking forward to having a full house.  Up until our marriage, I had become accustomed to living with lots of different people.  In German, it’s called a Wohngemeinschaft, a shared apartment in which usually 3-5 people each have a room but share the living room, kitchen and bath.

I once counted the number of different roommates I’d had from college to the time I got married, and came up with over 35 names, from at least 8 different countries.  I have many fond memories of going to salsa parties with my Puerto Rican college roommate (who, by the way, has never played the game Puerto Rico), and enjoying spontaneous pasta parties with one of my Italian roommates in Berlin (who could never seem to keep my name to just one syllable, insisting on always calling me “Jeffaâ€?).  Unlike many young married couples we know, who have difficulties adjusting to sharing their living space with each other, my wife and I both had more difficulties adjusting to living with only one other person.

A Wohngemeinschaft, or WG for short, is an excellent opportunity for community, if you’re living with people you really enjoy.  It’s a pity that I was not familiar with German board games in my WG-days, as I would have always had enough opponents nearby.  After all, 3-5 seems to be the magic number for both board games and WG’s.  There was, of course, an occasional game of Risk or some other classic, and my grad school roommates and I did learn how to play chess together, but I still feel I missed a golden opportunity.

Now I often try to gather together some of the people in my neighborhood for game nights, but I mostly meet with gamers who live quite a distance away. Swiss game designer Sebastien Pauchon, however, has a great set-up in Vivey.  His apartment is on a courtyard where he and his neighbors built a stage for live music performances during the summer, and his game room—complete with a billiards table—is just across the courtyard from his place, where he can host game nights for his neighbors and friends.  The whole building is like one big WG for young couples and families.

Our building is not quite that community-oriented, but it’s slowly getting there.  As foreigners in a part of Berlin that is not very multicultural, I’m sure many of our neighbors think of us as “typical Americansâ€? and I often feel self-conscience any time I think I could be reinforcing their stereotypes.  It’s an odd feeling to be under the microscope. I once forgot something in the apartment just after I had closed the door, and had to unlock it and go back in. A friend laughed and said that I was being a typical American.  Apparently, there is a German TV show with an American family and one of the gags is that they are always forgetting something and have to go back in the house to get it.

So it seems ironic that I am the one to introduce many of my neighbors to German board games.  If they claim that my interest in games is somehow typically American, I can point to the very German name on the box.  It doesn’t take much, though, to peak their interest.  The aforementioned games under the coffee table usually do the trick, although an occasional game in progress left on the table is even more enticing.  A weekly game group with some boys in my neighborhood owes its existence to my War of the Ring game, which happened to be set up when fans of the films were visiting. 

Several months ago, we had actually contemplated moving, especially after the news that our family was soon to double in size. Moving in Berlin, however is quite an ordeal.

When leaving an apartment, the renters are required to leave everything exactly as it was when they arrived.  This means that, when we last moved, we were painting in two apartments simultaneously:  adding color to the walls of our new place and covering over everything in the old one with “arctic white.â€?  I can’t tell you how frustratingly meaningless it feels to repaint a home you are about to leave forever.

In addition, absolutely everything must be packed and transported—even the kitchen sink.  Berlin apartments usually don’t have built-in kitchens.  In fact, all they usually include are the walls, windows, floor and toilets.  Wires hang from the ceilings and pipes stick out of the kitchen wall.  There are also no built-in or walk-in closets or pantries.  My wife has used this as an excuse to go shopping for antiques, and we now have some wardrobes and buffets that are so big and beautiful that I’m convinced one of them leads to Narnia.

Someone among our acquaintances always seems to be moving, and it’s quite often made into a big community event. It reminds me of an Amish barn-raising, the way everyone arrives with tools and vans, brings food and drink, loads and transports everything, then eats and celebrates in the family’s new place when the work is done. 

We spared our friends the sore backs and just had the party, hiring a company to do all the heavy lifting.  Several days before the move, however, they set up signs on our small, café-lined street, announcing that there would be no parking on our moving day so that the big trucks would have a place to be loaded.  When the trucks arrived, however, the entire street was still full of cars.  One by one, the police towed them away until there was space enough.  The drama increased when angry neighbors blamed us for the sudden disappearance of their automobiles.  We could only shrug and point to the signs.

We were prepared to go through it all again, but as summer sped by and my wife felt the ticking of two tiny clocks, we finally gave up and decided to make our current apartment work. This meant an organizing effort that rivaled one of those reality-TV clean-up shows I saw last time I was in the U.S. 

As I wrote earlier, Berlin flats don’t come with much in the way of built-in storage, and residents must usually create their own. There are, however, small cubicles of basement space in which each renter can store things, sectioned off with metal fences and doors for which you must provide your own padlock. 

The way the basement is sectioned off actually mirrors the typical Berlin apartment floor plan.  As opposed to a typical American home where the kitchen, dining and living rooms all flow together, Berlin flats usually have doors separating each room and hallway. In fact, a very small apartment can have so many doors spaced so close together, that moving from one room to another can take on a sort of rhythm, not unlike hurdling in a track and field event (take two steps, open door, take two steps, close door, take two steps, open next door, etc.).  I suppose this is mostly because each room is usually kept at a different temperature during the winter months.  But in the heat of summer, Berliners also keep the doors closed, due to the culturally pervasive fear of getting sick from a draft.  For an American used to ceiling fans or air conditioning, however, it can be suffocating.

One of the first things I did when we moved into our new place was to remove the doors to the kitchen and the living room.  Although I normally take a “when in Romeâ€? approach to cultural adaptation, I had no use for them and they would only get in the way.  Instead, they lean against the metal fence of our basement cubical where my game collection now resides, stacked neatly on Ikea shelves.  Now everyone is happy—my boys will have a room all to themselves, my wife has a bit more breathing room in the rest of the flat, and I have my own private game room in the basement.  If every man’s home is his castle, this is my Carcassonne.

© 2006 Jeff Allers

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