Mmm. Another city -after Venice- so very much talked about...But for me Berlin always was special. I guess it all started many many years ago, when still a teenager, I listened, stunned to the Lou Reed eponymous LP 'Berlin'. At first I did not hear anything. Literally. Then...an epiphanic moment. I totally 'lived' in this odd, eerie music. After that , there was only one logical move : to go to the place itself. As everything in my life, it took some years to realise. But I got there. Crazily as an 'au-pair' the worst sort of activity possible. I stayed from November to April, in a city gripped by a fierce winter, covered by snow and ice. I was quite unprepared, in trainers only, and had driven my car all accross France and Germany, through the Eastern part too of course, to get there. I had slept one night in Darmstadt and then got frantically anxious about having to stop along the long motorway across East Germany, as the Military all along were watching the traffic. It was Strictly Verbotten to even stop. The Eastern side made me paranoid. During the 6 months I stayed, I refused to go and visit East Berlin, because of all the Polizei and Military watching constantly from above the Wall, far too threatening and venimous. I thought if I went in I would never come back. And very posibly I would not have... Berlin was then a completely eerie city of new buildings, very few old ones still standing but mostly everywhere, wastelands...It was sad and magic and I fell under an odd influence that was to last a lifetime. Nollendorf Platz Palace was then in full regalia of extravagant characters and costumes at night. It was a grand period for Berlin and caught in the difficulties of my situation, I did not appreciate it enough. I was overwhelmed, as am still, by the language, faintly understanding it but never able to utter a word. No change there. I remember one day walking in a derelict street of Kreutzberg that came to an abrupt end on the Wall. I remember the white crosses spread all along that damned wall, commemorating the lost lives of the people trying to escape. How could I have wished to visit that work-of-evil-regime seeing its results well enough ? I was too young to play tourist, and if I vaguely regret not having witnessed first-hand the communist side of Berlin, I still can understand why I did not. My brief life in Berlin was intense, fascinating and beyond me. Maybe the invisible 'angst' of the past was still very much in the air and affected me unknowingly. After a car crash and quasi-breakdown, putting a sudden end to my torturous situation as an 'au-pair', I fled the poor woman and her two hellish boys. Not very nice but it was a fight or fly case and I could only escape to survive. End of my first time in Berlin, but only the beginning of what is really an odd long love affair with a city. Unrequited love of course as usual.
Now Berlin, as a glorious phoenix, is rising again from its nearly-forgotten ashes. Its hideous history, as the one of all Germany, is, mercifully, starting to really fade away with waves of tremendously lovely new generations. I always feel they have made a pact of all being so extra-lovely to atone for their grand-parents sins...But more likely, they are all genuinely lovely.
Now, I really wish I'd never escaped that time long ago, but braved the odds and had the guts to start a new life, that today I could still enjoy.
Now, I can only go again and again, as a tourist, humiliating, instead of simply being : Ein Berliner.
