I was distracted by the wall.
About the time we passed the Brandenburg Gate, my head wad turned the wrong way, staring at a short strip of concrete wall, freestanding, supporting nothing but graffiti, thinking to myself, Oh shit, that’s what’s left of the wall.
The Berlin Wall featured prominently in the most dire of my childhood nightmare scenarios of a nuclear WWIII. When the shit came down, we were often assured, it would fall most heavily and immediately on Germany, both East and West.
The Soviet hammer would strike the American anvil at that point and the shock waves would blow everything else to shreds. Certain to happen before the end of the century. Count on it.
That pretty much sums up my sixteen-year-old vision of the future.
I really didn’t imagine that we had one. Which probably serves as some kind of indicator that I may be a glass-half-empty kind of guy.
And also generally wrong.
Which it’s nice to be upon occasion.
Indeed, if the world were not here, I’d have missed the surreality of walking into a hotel along Berlin Alexanderplatz in the former East Germany and into the shadow of a looming five-story tall fish tank hovering over the front desk in the middle of the atrium.
Someone with an expertise in designing Vegas attraction had obviously been consulted. How else to explain the elevator rising through the center of the aquarium?
Hallo, Berlin.
Markus and Bernd displayed singular enthusiasm for the hotel and aquarium, insisting that I get a room with an interior view. I preferred a room with an exterior view where I might see, I don’t know, Berlin perhaps. Sadly, there was nothing available. Interior view.
I’d become aware on the flight from Munich that jet lag had not been entirely washed away. Latent waves were still pounding the shore. Hit by one of these waves as I entered my room, I was not reassured by the aquarium dominated view out the floor to ceiling windows. I was certain I saw divers in there. I approached the window to dispel the mild hallucination, but it was not to be. For there were indeed divers in there. Cleaning the interior? Feeding the fish? Enjoying a swim? Big ticket tourists on a special dive pack vacation?
I closed the drapes.
I was mildly restored by the presence of hard liquor in the mini bar. My two previous hotels has featured only beer and wine. All very good, but where the rubber hits the road you feel a bit more secure where you know there is a solid drink near at hand.
I teased at the cap of the tiny bottle of Jack Daniels, whispered to it, “I’ll be seeing you later.”
Gabi and Markus were waiting in the lobby. Lunch was on deck. Bernd had mysteriously decided to stay in. “Mysterious” in the sense that Bernd is aggressively social and loves good food. Nonetheless, we embarked without him.
We ate Japanese/Korean. When in Berlin, do as the Berliners.
The old neighborhood seemed very much untouched by reunification. GDR apartment blocks and eroded infrastructure were in great evidence. Berlin is a dead broke city. So broke that economic apocalypse in the rest of the world is greeted by a nonchalant shrug of the shoulders. Been there, done that.
Still, broke cities have low rents, and that usually brings in the artists. Berlin has a bit of the edge of civilized New York feel to it. Whichever neighborhood gentrification has pushed the artists to in NYC, there’s some of that in the air of Berlin. Especially in the border of old West and East.
Rag tag commerce and art mixed with sex, drugs and alcohol.
I needed a nap before interviews. I’d have liked to have joined Markus on a river tour of the city, but a wave had knocked my feet out and I knew coherence would be hard to muster without sleep.
I slept, blacked out really, dreamt, I think, of fish.
There were interviews, mated with coffee, I ate something in my room. Caressed the JD. And it was time to read.
Bernd appeared in the lobby with feminine company. Thus solving the mystery of why he didn’t want to go out during the afternoon.
And we began our brief stroll to Kaffe Burger. A brief stroll that was extended by the fact that none of us really knew where we were going, and Mukus’ sudden need for a slice of pizza.
We arrived late. I hate being late. But I had people from my publisher with me, so I could comfortably blame them.
Kaffe Burger, a holdover from the good old days of East German artist hangouts that evoked the Weimar. At least they did in James Bond movies.
Anyway, it’d the kind of place that looks vulnerable to a sudden foreboding chill when a dark man in a leather trench coat comes in and asks for your papers.
The only foreboding chill I experienced was the one that came when Gabi told me they wanted to wait for an hour or so and see if more people showed up.
An hour, a vast chasm of time to cross on jet lag seas.
I understood her point. A small venue, there was still more than ample elbow room. Still, I was dismayed. I’d already started my up-for-the-game whiskey. With an extra hour of pre-game to get through, I’d surely need another. At which point my judgement would become unsound. In strange city, perilously exhausted, facing an “intimate” audience, it would take very little for me to misstep.
Fortunately I had Bernd, a man who, by his own admission, did not drink very much. He would anchor me.
How sad to learn that the the pint glass in his hand was fill with vodka and Red Bull.
Bernd, oh Bernd, still I am disappointed.
Initially it was just flat and mistimed. We were off, pushing our jokes, sloppy in the readings. The audience was self conscious. Awry. It didn’t get really interesting until I tried to include one of Markus’ translators in the proceedings. She’d been introduced to me earlier in the evening, at which time Markus had informed me that she translated “porn” for him. He was being funny, she actually translated a few naughty books along with many other titles. Still, it was too good not to use. And had I not been in the midst of my second one too many drink, I might have swung it.
Instead, in the midst of discussing the chapter titled “Regarding Your Mother’s Pussy,” I improvized.
“Wait, we have a porn editor here we can consult with. Connie? Hey, where’s Connie? Connie edits porn.”
Evoking a weak titter or two, cut off by a voice from the audience.
“Be careful. I am Connie’s husband.”
Not said in play, I assure you.
It wasn’t the implied threat that dismayed me so much, nor the scale of the man (borderline huge), in fact, a little inside voice piped up and muttered, “Cool, a bar fight in East Berlin, let’s do it!” What really bothered me was the idea that I’d suddenly become the Ugly American. Drunken unknown writer, high on his own ego, traveling on his German publisher’s dime, making vulgar wise cracks at the expense of one of his hosts.
The act of apologizing from stage is awkward.
What air there was in the event went out.
Bernd reinflated things a bit with a strong rally, I kicked in some dead relative humor that seemed to help, and we managed to get through a short program without having any bottles thrown at us.
I opted not to join Bernd and his friend at a local music club, or Markus and his friends at another bar. Gabi found me a can and sent me to the hotel.
Where, with curtains still drawn tight against the fish, I ordered a hamburger from room service, and kept my promise to that bottle of JD.
Berlin, I’ll do better next time.
Next Stop: HAMBURG
-c
