I couldn't wait to get back to Berlin to see how much it had changed since 1963 when we drove there through East Germany from Heidelberg where my father was stationed. It only took a photo op at Checkpoint Charlie to realize that I had been a witness to history, probably the first time I had been privy to such a feeling.
Dan and I flew into Tegel airport, where the Berlin airlift had taken place. Chris was coming from Moscow once again for our second annual ABC trip. The three of us shared a room for the last time, in a hotel not far from KaDeWe, which instantly became my favorite department store for its incredible array of men's wear.
Berlin Buddy Bears had just been introduced to symbolize German friendliness and optimism.
We hit the Pergamon, a showcase for classical art plundered from German archaeological digs, right away. I wore a pair of Army fatigues because I figured they would butch me up in the bars along with a skinhead haircut.
Chris and Dan stood at mock attention in front of the Reichstag, wrapped by Christo and Jeanne-Claude in 1995. Chris does a killer German accent.
This time he didn't need to suggest going to the Jewish Museum, which had just opened. Daniel Libeskind's architecture--which included the Holocaust Tower, a structural element that made me feel as if I had stepped into a boxcar en route to a concentration camp, albeit a nearly empty one--had been acclaimed worldwide. I reacted with a cold shiver unlike a small group of Germans . . . who laughed as they entered. An extensive exhibit documenting bourgeois Jewish life in Germany prior to World War II informed and saddened in nearly equal measure. Imagine if white supremacists in America managed to erase Black culture and you'll get an idea of the scale of the loss.
The Garden of Exile, designed by Libeskind to evoke the unsteadiness and disorientation of Germans being forced to emigrate, is behind me.
The Berlin Cathedral--Germany's largest Protestant church--looms behind an enormous statue of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, the authors of The Communist Manifesto, in the former German Democratic Republic. It became a popular tourist attraction after the re-unification of Germany in 1989.
Alexanderplatz was just a short walk away in the Mitte district. The famous square is the setting for a classic German novel brilliantly adapted for German television by Rainier Werner Fassbinder in 1980. After catching all 15 hours at the Museum of Modern Art, I wanted to experience in person what had been off-limits for much of my lifetime.
Chris returned to Moscow early. After visiting the Deutsche Kinemathek, the incredible film museum, Dan and I headed to the Tor, a bathhouse near the Brandenberg Gate where I met Nanno. When we asked him where to eat, he accompanied us to a local Turkish restaurant and invited us to his place in Schöneberg for brunch the next morning. Nanno turned me on to Robbie Williams, for which I am forever grateful. At the time, he clerked in a bookstore but eventually rose to the rank of publisher.
Nanno also called his sister, who worked at the Reichstag, to ensure us morning admission before our return flight the next day. Set afire by the Nazis a month after Hitler won election (at least you-know-who has thus far spared the Capitol), its destruction represented the end of the Weimar Republic. It's unclear if this engraved "W" refers to the German emperor at the time the building was constructed in the late 19th century, or the name of the republic.
Little did Nanno know his kindness could have gotten us arrested when he insisted we couldn't leave Berlin without seeing the historic government building from the inside. British starchitect Norman Foster (with a nudge) had added a glorious glass dome in the wake of re-unification just two years earlier, symbolizing a new era of transparency in German politics.
Ascending the spiraled walkway, from which the beautifully upholstered purple seats of the German parliament can be seen, gave me a juvenile idea (even at 38!). I told Dan to remain on the middle level while I went below. When I gave the signal, he held up his hand in a Nazi salute. The result of the offensive photo op does not survive. Three years later, when I recounted our hijinks to Florian, another native German friend, he was appalled. "Are you crazy?" he shrieked. "That's illegal!"
Need I add how much times have changed with the AfD poised to play a significant role in the German parliamentary system and at least two of the three most powerful people in American politics embracing the neo-Nazi party's right-wing agenda?
More Berlin:
Berlin (2015)
Morning Walk Central Berlin (2015)
East Side Gallery (2015)
Last Night on the Town (2015)
More ABC Thanksgiving Travel:
*exceptions make the rule
