Berlin: Personal Aside

Sitting on the hostel steps, I was playing guitar waiting for the group to form to catch the train home. Our landlady's daughter came down the steps and Iasked her if she'd be returning soon to her Malta home.

"Yes, soon. Thank heavens! Did you have a good weekend?"

I had gone to visit a famous Berlin biergarten in Victoria Park located on one of two hills in the former swamp that is Berlin. I had a nice hike up the hill through hardwoods trees past a small waterfall and came out at the top of a long grassy sloap.

Musicians from Portugual, Poland, Germany, England and I-don't-know-where were playing. The music organized itself around Paul, a 60-something Portuguese fado singer some 20 years in Berlin who runs a sort of booking and advice service for musicians. He was playing a guitar made for him by a serious young guy with dark hair in a pony-tail. It was his first guitar; before he had made violins! Languages were mixed, but that doesn't matter when you speak music. Michael, a Pole, played guitar, harmonica, sung English lyrics but spoke no English. His real instrument's the accordion, said Paul. He's a virtuoso. I asked Paul if he had heard the Russian accordianist who played on the U-bahn. Yes he replied said the Russian's name to Michael who smiled and nodded: "really good."

I played and sang and drank a little beer with an ever-changing group of amazing and inventive musicians. About 8:00 a metor crossed the sky, so large and low and coming straight on, I thought it was a plane landing at nearby Templehof. By 9:30, I was cold and hadn't eaten; my legs were so cramped I didn't know if I'd be able to walk down the hill to the U-bahn. I didn't want to go: I had to go and limped away as another muscian arrived. Let's see--did I have a good time?


"Yes, I love Berlin. It's a great city; unique."
"Can't stand Berlin anymore. I want to get back to Malta! I liked Berlin when it was divided. Then it was special; the out-post of democracy. It made us creative; speacial. That's gone now, and I don't like Osties."
"Sometimes I miss the Cold War too," I said. "It was so.....predictable."
She gave me a funny look and smiled goodbye.