Berlin, or 'I am a jam donut'*

Never has a city been so highly anticipated. When we tout it as a destination, people sort of melt, smokily. They go all Marlene Dietrich on us: Oh, you’ll luuuuhhhve Berliiiiinn. There are promises of fingers on the pulse, of finding ourselves at the centre of something. Can mere molecules live up to such expectations?

On the 11am intercity, she commences introductions. On one side of the train carriage, the girls in the booth across from us have popped a bottle of sparkling, opened a picnic of cheese, crackers and grapes, and appear to be watching porn on their laptop. Or maybe it’s a tribute to Patrick Swayze? Later I realise it’s Dirty Dancing, dubbed in German. They smile conspiratorially at me - Es ist das Szene, in der Wasser! (or something) I stretch my hands above my head, hoisting an imaginary Jennifer Grey into the air, and ask for confirmation with my eyebrows. Ja! They cry, and high five each other. Fair enough. So would I.

On the same train is the lady we come to dub the Earnest German.

Mid afternoon, we share our booth with some teenage funky young things. The Earnest German – let’s call her EG - and her two skivvy clad offspring join us later. She claims a right to their (currently our) seats, and is brutally rebuffed. The kohl eyed teens mouth off, cock a fringe toward her reasoning, snigger loudly as she and the cubs skulk away. There is a hint of what’s to come though when EG turns on a euro, sprints back up the central carriageway and brings that unadorned face just centimeters away from her dewy nemesis. Her violent torrent of enunciation leaves Blondie momentarily alert, but the teen recovers, blows a puff of peppermint gum and resumes task: blank indifference.

All seems settled, the mother retreats. The teens chat and gossip with the Dirty Dancing girls. They have misjudged the EG though, and her desire to teach young skivvy a lesson in ‘what’s right’. She returns, with back up: the impossibly large inspector comes to evict us. There is no negotiation for the teens, but being of class foreign white female, I can stay.

EG is smug: ‘See kids?’ (I mistranslate what she tells her sticky, forehead-heavy brood) ‘Never back down when you are right. We could have sat somewhere else, but it’s the principle of the thing.’ She doles out life advice along with tupperwares of such earnest snacks –organic rice cakes, apple quarters, turdlike dates. The skivvies avoid it all and go for the Prince creams. Chocolaty rivers wind from the corners of their mouths. They stare at me wetly over picture books, playing cards, a knock off walkman. ‘See kids?’ she repeats.  They pick their noses, go for another biscuit. ‘It’s the principle.’ I reach for the pod.

There are other things that happen: a Michelin star for my birthday, via Tony and Vau. A pale green apartment on the top floor of The Circus. A fridge overflowing with condiments, most of which we’ll throw out three days later. Karaoke in an amphitheatre. She’s got the look. Losing my religion. Wonderwall.  A night in bed with Good Bye Lenin! Twin baby boomers talking us through the laundromat. Sunday brunch, soy lattes in the park. Americans at the fleamarkets – Can I gedda hotdawg? – No hotdog, this is Bratwurst. Say for me: BRAT. WURST.

We are open to it, all of it, meet every corner eagerly. But mainly we are circling.

I can’t shake the feeling that I should have been here earlier. Not earlier in the year – I mean earlier in life. Accents wander the hostel halls, searching out a matching lilt. Tone is full of ‘last time’ gap year stories. The crowd is young and fashion forward and we are the marrieds on the top floor.

We leave on a Monday. Another AM intercity, another booth.

A few days later, this hits the streets.

Now that’s what I call the centre of things.

Photos

*See JFK’s infamous speech and an urban legend.