The family car

Zoom, zoom, zoom

I'd like to tell you all how grateful we are for this little car. It's an Opel Astra with snazzy Swiss plates that show all the Berliners we're foreigners, a handy identification in city traffic when we need an excuse for being erratic or a little slow on the uptake. The car belongs to Mom and Dad, who have graciously allowed us to use it for our time here. It has given us a level of freedom and mobility that we have loved—with it we've explored all the corners of Germany, transported heavy cases of fizzy mineral water from the beverage mart, and made day trips around the outlying regions of Berlin.

However, the other thing that I love about this car is that it stays parked most of the time. There are long spans of days during which it's not driven at all, when we have to sit down and ponder when we last drove it and where on earth it's parked. That's when I begin to realize the beauty of self-sustaining neighborhoods in a city of this size, and the high quality of life that's imparted when I can walk or ride my bike to find nearly anything my heart desires.

Yesterday Lara and I rode our bikes the three minutes to Wilmersdorfer Straße, our main pedestrian shopping street, to look for presents for Jost's birthday. We found many, many possibilities, but I didn't need to buy anything—I knew I could drop back in tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day before I actually needed to buy anything. For Reedsportians, that's unthinkable!

There's also something so sensory about riding a bike through a city—you can smell the foods being cooked in the restaurants, there's fresh air in your face, you hear snatches of conversations in many languages, and you're a part of the life around you in a way that a car completely seals out. Of course, the other nice thing about riding in Berlin is that it's completely flat, with nary a hill in the city—my kind of bike riding!

My recurring thought right now is how I can recreate some of this car-independence in my life back in Reedsport. The lack of infrastructure, of course, is the biggest problem. We simply are not a self-sustaining community. And Hannes’s suggestion to build a subway may not be completely realistic. But maybe we could build a grocery store somewhere in the uptown area near the hospital—anyone want to donate some land? And then if we could do something about the rain and those hills. . . .