I met a lovely young lady on the flight to Berlin. I didn't quite catch her name. It may have been Shonagh. She was about five and spoke German and English with guileless aplomb. She ate strawberries. After eating each strawberry she reached behind her seat and wiped her fingers on my knee. On two occasions she leapt up, spun around and offered me an only partially-eaten strawberry. I refused both times. Her response was to laugh, drop back into her seat, finish her strawberry and then wipe her fingers on my knee. Once all the strawberries were gone she leapt up and accosted me again.
She pointed at my knee and shrieked, "Du hast erdbeerhosen!" Then she disappeared beneath a fit of giggles.
And so I entered Berlin with a baptism of berries and a blessing from a child. Can't do much better than that really.
We stayed in the Alameda Hotel in the area between Kreusberg and the river. The hotel itself was on the top floor of a five story building. I have no idea what was on the other four floors. The hotel itself was clean and cheap and had bright, slightly funky paintings on the wall. They did a great breakfast: buns, cold-cuts, cheeses, slices of tomato with mozzarella and basil, smoked salmon, fresh fruit, etc. We had half of a huge curved window in our room with a view of a couple of giant smoke stacks.
Our nearest U-bahn station also housed a nightclub called SAGE. Every morning as we walked past it I vowed secretly that we would go there that night. Each night, though, I found myself exhausted and in bed before it opened. Most puzzling. I could have sworn I was twenty years old only last week.
But then, it was a fairly arduous four days. We did a lot of walking. I'm not used to that any more. I used to get paid to walk around a lot, and over far more treacherous terrain than the streets of Berlin. Now I get paid to sit. I'm damn good at sitting. You should see me sit. I'm one of the sporting marvels of our time when it comes to sitting. Sadly, the whole walking thing I'm a bit out of practice at.
Thursday we walked around Sans Souci in Potsdam. "Sans Souci", as you bilingual types will know, is French for "careless". It's called that because Frederick the Great scattered palaces all around it without a care in the world.
Friday was waiting-in-line day; Q-day, to use the British term. Waiting-in-line is a bit like walking, only slower. We waited for an hour and a half to get into the Reichstag. It has some great views and a cool double helix walkway, but FREAK! An hour and a half! I haven't waited that long for anythings since the Pepsi Max rollercoaster in Blackpool. That, by the way, was a grave disappointment. If you're keen to wait an hour and half for something, I'd pick the Reichstag over the Pepsi Max.
The wait wasn't too bad, though. We were waiting with Vicki's parents and her uncle and it was a bright fresh day. Damn cold actually, which I rather perversely enjoyed. I'd been having a touch of homesickness for the land of Beavers lately and so the biting sensation in my cheeks and the slurpy head I got once we made it inside gave me a rather sentimental feeling.
Saturday, we went to the Jewish Museum which was amazing. Some absolutely brilliant and very moving architecture architecture.
However, it's late and the Healer has stopped his singing and I'm terrified I won't do it justice so I won't say too much about it except that you should go. Go stand amongst the 49 slightly disorienting concrete towers crowned by willow trees. Very subtle. Very brilliant. And go in the big scary room with the one thin shaft of light at the top for a quick fix of hopelessness and despair. And don't forget to visit the room littered with hundreds of rusty iron metal faces discarded in an enormous, angular, cavernous tower. The building truly is a work of art, and a work of art you have to inhabit in order to get the full effect.
The architect, Daniel Libeskind, has won the commission to build a memorial and other buildings on the site of the destroyed World Trade Center in New York. It has got to be a mind-boggling challenge to come up with a design that will treat the recent history of that area with dignity but somehow bring it back to life. I think Libeskind may be up to the task.
Sunday we dipped into the Pergamon museum to check out some good old-fashioned European looting of the ancient world. Yes, the gates of Babylon are big. Yes, they are blue. Very impressive. We also did a fair amount of visiting the relatives that day and ate a huge pub lunch.
We spent a lot of time eating, actually. Not quite as much time as walking, but it was still up there as a top-ten activity. Oh, and drinking. We did some of that as well. There are some fine and funky bars in Kreusberg.
Oh, and we also spent a fair amount of time marvelling at how clean and easy to use and convenient the S and U Bahns were compared with the tube in London. And there's almost no litter. I think the Germans must secretly dump all their litter on the British. How can Berlin possibly be so clean when London is so dirty?
It's all relative, I suppose. I'm sure Ottawa or Victoria would shame Berlin litter-wise. And probably the Emerald City of Oz or possibly Olympus would make even Ottawa look untidy. And no doubt one of the inner circles of Hell has more kebab wrappers and broken beer bottles than Dalston, but I hope never to find out.
All in all, I approved of Berlin. It's definitely a city worth wearing your best erdbeerhosen for.
