Berlin, Germany
Latitude 52˚52 N
December 4, 2017
For years I’ve been hearing Berlin stories: Alexanderplatz,
Brandenburg Gate, Potstam, Checkpoint Charlie…
It was finally time for me to take the plunge and see the place for
myself. And what better time, in my
limited world view, than Christmas.
Christmas. “Be
careful, Dan.” I heard that a lot. And I know people are well-meaning. A year ago some lunatic drove a vehicle into
a Christmas market and killed who knows how many people. But I refuse, absolutely refuse, to give in
to fears. Maybe it will happen again. Maybe it will happen in Nuremburg. Maybe in Mexico City. I could get killed on the way home from the
airport when I return home. No. I won’t give in.
From all I’d read about Berlin in the 1930’s, I expected
some wild town, with crazy things happening all around me. What I found, instead, was a sedate city,
brand new since the 1960’s and rather, well…boring. I should not be harsh. The city was essentially a pile of rubble at
the end of WW 2. What it was, however,
was a very walkable city. Once I
oriented myself I realized that just about everything was on a straight-line
axis. Fortunately, the weather was fine
and not as cold as Riga or Vilnius, so my feet brought me just about
everywhere. One day I clocked 27,000
steps on my pedometer and the next day I just could not replicate the march
from the day before. I’d walked from
Alexanderplatz to Charlottenburg—a distance of maybe 6 or 7 miles. My quest for hitting every Christmas market
in the city knew no bounds. But my
exhaustion did, and on day three I just collapsed and was back in my room by
5:00 pm. There are limits to what the
tourist body can do.
On my last day there I headed to Potstam. It was time to the leave the city and this
seemed a good destination. It was also
personal, as my sister lives in Potstam, NY, not that the two have anything in
common. Oh, such perfection. I found my way to the first Christmas market,
a much tamer affair than those in Berlin, and just as I began walking it
started to snow—Light, mysterious, and delicate. A cool, dry fragrance was released into the
air. It snowed just enough to say it was
snowing. Snowing! At a German Christmas market. I was ecstatic. My secondary goal in Potstam was San Soucci
gardens, a massive park very close to the center. That strange chemistry of snow and nostalgia
took possession. For a time, I was on
Rand Hill, more than forty years ago, on the first full day of winter—a days of
cold and dark and snow—cross country skiing into the darkening woods. It was twilight and it snowed the entire time
I was walking in this park, which felt more like a forest than anything else.
When I
returned to the Christmas market I’d been at a few hours earlier I walked
through the cold, snow-filled street. An
hour later I was back on the train to Berlin.
It was an absolutely perfect day.
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