WILLKOMMEN, BIENVENUE, WELCOME

 

Brussels' Christmas market was losing its sparkle after nine years of chocolate gin and Chinese woolly hats, and despite the added attraction of soldiers with guns and tanks this year, I decided a change was in order. As luck would have it, the KNOB* were performing a few Christmas concerts in Berlin, on their own turf, so I decided to head for the Vaterland with Gorbals in tow to carry my Christmas shopping (Easyjet don't allow any free luggage any more and for the price of booking in a suitcase I can take someone to carry one).

Our hotel was just off the Kurfurstenstrasse, within sight of KaDeWe, the Harrods of the East. Just across the street was a nice little bar, the Berlinchen City, where the barmaids were motherly and friendly. We discovered that smoking is allowed in most Berlin bars! I broke out the black Sobranies immediately. Also across the street from the hotel was a bakery-coffee shop, and a Kaiser supermarket open until midnight. What a civilized country!


We soon got to grips with the transport system. We came in from Schonefeld airport by U-Bahn, but once in the city we used double-decker buses, which are great for sightseeing. The 100 bus went from outside KaDeWe to Alexanderplatz via the Tiergarten, Brandenburg Gate, Unter den Linden, and Museum Island.


Gorbals, who is a big fan of street art - or vandalism, as I call it - was enchanted by the old district of Kreuzberg, with its kebab shops and refugees. After lunch as Kaiser Kuchen, a charming olde-worlde restaurant where I had traditional Berlin potato soup and Gorbals had blood sausage with sauerkraut, we went on a walking tour with Refugee Voices, led by a couple of amiable guys from Somalia and Sudan respectively who had been refused refugee status but could not work or claim benefits and could not be sent back and were therefore caught in a kind of administrative limbo. The highlight of the tour from Gorbals' point of view was Gorlitzer Park, where the refugees showed us where they had been obliged to sell drugs to make a living. I noticed Gorbals bookmarking the location. He pointed out to me street art by 'famous' artists. I pretended my sniffing was due to a cold.


Personally I am more of an Unter den Linden kinda gal. While Gorbals went to do some botanical research in Gorlitzer Park, I took myself off for lunch at a delightful old-style Berliner restaurant called Nante Eck, where I sat in the window sporting a monocle and smoked a Sobranie, to get myself in the right frame of mind to visit my old friend Dr Von Klampwangler.



Brussels' Christmas market was losing its sparkle after nine years of chocolate gin and Chinese woolly hats, and despite the added attraction of soldiers with guns and tanks this year, I decided a change was in order. As luck would have it, the KNOB* were performing a few Christmas concerts in Berlin, on their own turf, so I decided to head for the Vaterland with Gorbals in tow to carry my Christmas shopping (Easyjet don't allow any free luggage any more and for the price of booking in a suitcase I can take someone to carry one).


Our hotel was just off the Kurfurstenstrasse, within sight of KaDeWe, the Harrods of the East. Just across the street was a nice little bar, the Berlinchen City, where the barmaids were motherly and friendly. We discovered that smoking is allowed in most Berlin bars! I broke out the black Sobranies immediately. Also across the street from the hotel was a bakery-coffee shop, and a Kaiser supermarket open until midnight. What a civilized country!


We soon got to grips with the transport system. We came in from Schonefeld airport by U-Bahn, but once in the city we used double-decker buses, which are great for sightseeing. The 100 bus went from outside KaDeWe to Alexanderplatz via the Tiergarten, Brandenburg Gate, Unter den Linden, and Museum Island.


Gorbals, who is a big fan of street art - or vandalism, as I call it - was enchanted by the old district of Kreuzberg, with its kebab shops and refugees. After lunch as Kaiser Kuchen, a charming olde-worlde restaurant where I had traditional Berlin potato soup and Gorbals had blood sausage with sauerkraut, we went on a walking tour with Refugee Voices, led by a couple of amiable guys from Somalia and Sudan respectively who had been refused refugee status but could not work or claim benefits and could not be sent back and were therefore caught in a kind of administrative limbo. The highlight of the tour from Gorbals' point of view was Gorlitzer Park, where the refugees showed us where they had been obliged to sell drugs to make a living. I noticed Gorbals bookmarking the location. He pointed out to me street art by 'famous' artists. I pretended my sniffing was due to a cold.


Personally I am more of an Unter den Linden kinda gal. While Gorbals went to do some botanical research in Gorlitzer Park, I took myself off for lunch at a delightful old-style Berliner restaurant called Nante Eck, where I sat in the window sporting a monocle and smoked a Sobranie, to get myself in the right frame of mind to visit my old friend Dr Von Klampwangler.







Frau Doktor Von Klampwangler was our neighbour in Warsaw many years ago. She has traded in the Norton 750 for a mobility scooter, but still keeps the Panzer in a lock-up just outside Potsdam. She is now married to a nice lady gestalt therapist and they may be seen promenading in the vicinity of Charlottenburg with their pair of matching dachshunds Siegfried and Brunnhilde. Despite the German talent for engineering, neither Doktor Von Klampwangler nor anyone else I know in Berlin has a smartphone or a television. Whatever happened to Vorsprung durch Technik? I was quite shocked to see they still have 'dark rooms' in Berlin, honestly! They haven't even discovered Vistaprint!


The gay district around Nollendorfplatz was a little disappointing. Where were the men in basques and Nazi helmets? I know it was the Monday before Christmas but one wonders what David Bowie found to do here. There was a plaque to Christopher Isherwood but no cabaret to speak of.


In nearby Alexanderplatz I paid my respects to Marx and Engels, who provided the inspiration for one of my most popular blog posts. I noticed that their statue had been turned around to face towards Brussels rather than Moscow and a guerrilla knitter had irreverently dressed Marx in Charlie Brown's sweater.






The Christmas markets were stunning - every district had one. The one nearest our hotel was the City Weihnachtsmarkt, where we had our first libation in Berlin in a winter beer garden. At Alexanderplatz I drank Banjo** out of a half-pint glass mug by a roaring log fire. Gendarmenmarkt, the posh Christmas market, was mobbed and they wanted a euro to get in, so we passed by and walked to Potsdamer Platz where revellers hurtled down an ice slide at speed in inner tubes, and 1950s jive was being demonstrated with flair in a log cabin dancehall. Everywhere was Bratwurst, gingerbread and Christmas music and not a policeman or a soldier in sight. Ich bin Berlin, hear me roar!


Sadly the baggage restrictions on Easyjet (oh! I thought back with longing to my days travelling Club Class on British Airways when Harold was alive) meant that I could purchase nothing more bulky than a tiny handbag, a pair of Polish slippers and a chocolate bust of Karl Marx. My German came back to me quickly, and I found myself arguing quite fluently with a stallholder about the veracity of the "echt leder" label in his handbags.





The concert with the KNOB* was to be held near the Brandenburg gate. Ulli and Gerhardt greeted me effusively. This was a key gig, in the land of James Last, and we wanted to make sure we got it right. Christmassy enough, yet not too traditional, this being Berlin after all.

German Christmas carols are almost the same as British ones, with different words, obviously, so I had no trouble putting my 'ting' in the right place even without a rehearsal. Gorbals came along to watch, although singing 'The People's Flag is Deepest Red' to 'O Tannenbaum' did not constitute moral support in my book. We exceptionally allowed him to do lead vocals on 'Fairytale of New York' which had the locals waltzing in a gluhwein-induced haze.

Our last day in Berlin dawned, and after a last banjo on the Christmas market we decided to have lunch on the 7th floor of KaDeWe, where one may sit in the vast half-moon window and look out over the city. It's a self-service restaurant, very democratic. We met a nice Dutch lady who sat down to chat while her wife went to fetch the food. They came every year at Christmas. Down by the U-Bahn station a quartet of boy choristers were singing canticles in perfect four-part harmony.

In the words of two famous Austrians***: "I'll be back".





* Kurt Nachtnebel Oompah Band

** Vin Chaud, as misheard by Deaf Cyril - see earlier posts

*** Adolf Hitler and Arnold Schwarzenegger