The flight is now a fait accompli thanks to the be-calming charms of my sweet, sweet generic Xanax. This was a rough one…akin to the Cleveland-to-London flight of some years ago that triggered the claustrophobic anxiety I now experience with every flight.
I could rant and rave about the airlines and their inhumanity to man as they wring every last drop of profit out of their passengers at the expense of comfort and service.
“We are not sardines! We are evolved apes! Same as you…you puffy-buttocks’d baboons!”
Steerage! That’s it. Traveling Economy Class on a United flight is the modern equivalent of every horrid steerage trip experienced by Eastern European immigrants at the turn of the 20th century. Of course, they were uprooting their entire lives for the promise of the New World. I’m just on a frivolous pleasure trip to the Old.
One potential nightmarish scenario that did not play out (Thank gods!) involved having the twin to Brienne of Tarth parked in the seat in front of me. (I’m serious! We were chatting in the passport line together for a brief time upon our arrival in Berlin. She had short-cropped blond hair and was equal in height: we were eye-to-eye. All she needed was a polished armor breastplate beneath her frayed-edge rag quilt top and a sheathed Valyrian steel sword at her side. She did smile more than her GOT doppelgänger though!) She proved not to be one of those passengers who throw back their seat at the first available moment, invading what little space the airline affords me.
As it was, there is so little space between seats that even a slight recline of the forward seat is enough to prevent one from standing upright at one’s own seat. If that were not enough, they have positioned a small electronics box beneath each seat that occupies one-third of the space once reserved for your feet (or your carry-on!)
Willkommen! Bienvenue! Welcome!
Our dear friend Doug Kline (formerly of Fairview Park, OH, USA) met us at Tegel Airport, an interesting “fort” of an airport in the former West Berlin that was probably a design choice dictated by the Cold War. A “closed” hexagon, I could not quite discern where exactly vehicular traffic entered and exited the central “courtyard.”
Doug resides with his partner Julien (formerly of Switzerland) in a spacious (Wow!) 4th-floor walk-up (Yikes!) apartment in a pre-war building that they’ve furnished themselves. As Doug explained, they took possession of the apartment besenrein—or “broom-clean”—meaning no appliances, light fixtures, counters, etc.—not even basic Soviet chandeliers (read: exposed light bulbs on a cord.) The shotgun layout, ending abruptly at a large, angular wall that extends into the kitchen, was defined as such by a missing wing of the building—the collapsed victim of Allied bombing.
After trudging up four flights—beautifully-balustraded with a serpentine oak handrail that begins (or ends, depending on whether one is ascending or descending) with a carved lion’s head, we met Ella—their rescued, formerly-Greek, mixed-breed Belgian shepherd.
Dogs are the boyfriends we deserve; cats are the boyfriends we get.
[NOTE: Ella just joined me in the dining room as I continue composing this narrative. As Doug mentioned, she enjoys the company of people. As both he and Rob are in the kitchen at present, she has settled herself comfortably down between me and the doorway: a sentry at her post. Whether she is protecting me…or protecting Doug FROM me, I do not know. In this case, I think ignorance is bliss.]
I took a brief nap while Rob accompanied Doug & Ella to their “Schrebergarten” or “kleingarten” (little garden). Maybe this particular one should be kline-garten, eh? Anyway, upon their return, there was some more napping…for Rob’s sake. Finally, revitalized after our flight, we set off to the ATMs and our first deutscher biergarten.
Our first German meal: wurst und sauerkraut for me; schnitzels for the boys; bier all around…twice. Positioned at the triangular meeting point of two residential straßes, the biergarten was a quiet tree-shaded respite amidst a lively neighborhood of walkers, pram-pushers and bicyclists.
We briefly returned to the apartment to get Ella comfortably situated before we set out for the Potsdamer Platz.
The Wall. [Check]
Once a bloodied no-man’s-land defined and defiled by the cleaving gash of the unforgiving Berlin Wall, it has gone commercial. Now the home of the Sony Centre (meh!), there are a few remnants of the wall lined up along the former position of the original barrier with explanatory “boards” between the concrete “stiles” that detail in words and photographs the story of the Wall.
Today, on the eastern side of the encyclopedic barrier, stood a young, bearded man in a Cold War era guard’s uniform waving the Soviet flag, enlightening the more inquisitive tourists and banishing the more ignorant ones “back to the West!” Best moment: a tall drag princess in a vibrant pink slip posing for photographs with the ersatz Soviet before said daman and her royal entourage moved on.
Hitler highlight
En route to the S-bahn station and Potsdamer Platz, we passed by Albert Speer’s Schwerbelatungskörper (Heavy Load-Bearing Body) — a massive concrete cylinder that was constructed to test the supporting capabilities of the Berlin soil in preparation for the building of Hitler’s world capital, Germania. Too large to be destroyed, it sits — a silent witness to the insane megalomania of the Fürher. Oh, we also walked through a group of Schrebergartens similar to Doug & Julien’s en route to the S-bahn station. Most had gorgeous arrays of blooming flowers—hollyhocks were a frequent sight—and each plot contained a little “shack” of sorts. Or, as I saw them: deutsche dachas.
A Taste of the Soviet Bloc 