Back in Berlin, January 2026 [draft, in progress]
15 January, Thursday.
We had returned to Berlin on 15th January, the date of my Jill's birthday, as we were under the impression that we were invited to a wedding in Berlin on the 16th, but we had not received any confirmation of this. Our suspicions were confirmed when the bride thanked us for Sieglinde's good wishes, said that the wedding would be a quiet family affair and they warmly invited us to a celebration event some time in the summer. It seems her mother had been so delighted at the announcement by her daughter that she had gone and invited half Berlin to the wedding without consulting. At least we will be able to see the baby, already on its way, if we are able to be there.
16 January, Friday.
To celebrate our return Sieglinde had laid out a special breakfast table in the living room instead of the kitchen. With no wedding of Alexa & Marc to dress up for, we could draw breath and get more practical things sorted. We caught the 186 bus from the Schillerplatz to Steglitz.
The power supply, which was cut to 20,000 households as well as businesses and hospitals in parts of Steglitz and Zehlendorf by an arson attack on 3 January 2026, had by now been fully restored. The perpetrators were apparently a far left group who had targeted that area because the people there were posh but the people looked ordinary enough to me as we made our way to the EWG transport customer service centre to buy my Deutschland tickets for January and February. The woman who served us seemed delighted at two old biddies seeing the sites of Berlin and Brandenburg together and tried to get a cheaper deal but, although I only benefitted from 15 of the days in each month, it was still much cheaper than daily or weekly tickets.
We had a coffee in the Schwartzsche Villa arts centre, which Sieglinde liked because it provided employment for young people with special needs. This gave me strength to face one of Sieglinde's marathon shopping events. There were three main ports of call, firstly Wurst Haase, a delicatessen with a bewildering display of sausages, patés, smoked or salted meats as well as prepared dishes and vegetable salads, next the Rossmann chemist shop for supplies of lotions and potions, serviettes, tissues and toilet paper, herbal teas and dark dark chocolate, and finally the supermarket Edeke for everything else: fruit, vegetables, brown rolls, brown eggs (white wouldn't do) and of course wine (red, mulled or Primitivo). I was allowed to wait at the entrance with the bags from the previous shops with several other men who exhibited increasing signs of impatience until one sighed and ventured into the store to forcibly drag his wife out. I waited until Sieglinde emerged at the checkout and darted forward to help to load a third bag and equalise the weights. Fortunately the return stop for the 186 bus was just outside Edeka and delivered us almost to the front door just by the Schillerplatz.
17 January, Saturday.
One of the problems of visiting Berlin (or anywhere for that matter) in winter is the cold, wet and gloomy weather does not necessarily entice one out, so we remained indoors all day catching up on blogs and correspondence.
18 January, Sunday.
We were up and out early today for the 10:00 Baptist service where we were both welcomed back as she had not been seen for a couple of months. The service had added solemnity from the announcement at the start of the death of Leo, one of the congregation early that morning at the young age of 59. A moving tribute was paid to him by a friend who had been there at the end. The happy-clappy music resumed with the little band, complete with drummer, and the words, often in English as well as German, beamed onto a screen. I noticed that a couple of the hymns (really a sort of rhythmic unrhyming recitative) had a copyright date of 2024, so they were clearly bang up-to-date and "with it". It did not appeal to Sieglinde who often resorted to more traditional services in other churches or the Cathedral with Lutheran hymns by Praetorius, Bach and others, but it clearly appealed to some in the congregation who swayed and waved their arms. We stayed for coffee and biscuits and were touched when the young female pastor presented Sieglinde with a bouquet made up of the flowers that had decorated the service table.
We had lunch in Italian restaurant nearby and, as the weather was tolerable, we walked around a nearby park, making sure that we had returned home and eaten in time for the 21:00 (20:00 in Exeter) WhatsApp call with Neil and sister Jill.
19 January, Monday.
There was more work on blogs and correspondence indoors on a cold day, and in the evening Sieglinde had a rehearsal for the Jewish choir from 18:30 to 20:00. I accompanied her to the Messe Nord/ZOB S-Bahn station in Charlottenburg and left her at the door of the Jewish old people's home where the rehearsals took place. We had hoped that I could find a seat in the Pianocafé near the Lietzensee park where Sieglinde would find me, but it proved to be closed and I wandered toward the Messegelände in case there was some activity around one of the trade fairs, but it was deserted. It was between fairs and although I was told that Fruit Logistica would be "MEGA" but that was no help to me. I noticed the Ibis Hotel and thought it might offer a warm bar so set out across the four lane Masurenallee and discovered what the ZOB part of the metro station name meant: Zentraler Omnibusbahnhof Berlin the City's main coach station. I took a little time to look at the destinations to which the Flixbus and other services were departing and noticed that Paris was among them - how long would that take? About 18 hours at a cost of around £70.00. That, I later discovered compares with a train on 15 February 08:31–16:52 (8 hours 21 minutes with one change for from 104,99 €. I eventually booked Easyjet flight EZY2934 on 16 February at 11:25 from Berlin Airport, getting me to Bristol at 12:30 local time with the Falcon Bus getting me to Exeter in daylight. Despite my reservations about flying, it really was a no-brainer. Anyway I went upstairs into the main bus station cafe, open until midnight where I was the only customer and settled with cappiccini and iPhone until I decided to go back to where the choir was rehearsing and collect her. I was shocked to be charged 2.00 € to decaffeinate - shows how inflation has impacted the term "spend a penny".
20 January, Tuesday.
In the morning I posted up Sieglinde’s third blog which took the account of her visit up to Christmas.
In the afternoon we visited the Deutsches Historisches Museum to see special exhibition in the basement, with the English title “Roads not taken” and a German subtitle meaning that things could have turned out differently. It was designed to be inclusive with texts in German, English, Leichte Sprache (simplified German), German sign language Braille and large print, with English subtitles to video presentations and a range of “interactive and multisensorial interventions”. Audio tours were available in “German, Chinese, English, French, Spanish” – an interesting order and a range of linked activities and publications were on offer. We decided just to look round, which was perhaps a mistake.
The exhibition set out to examine fourteen turning-points in German history, presenting a diachronic account of the trials and tribulations of democracy over the previous two centuries. Two things stood out. Firstly seven of the fourteen turning-points had occurred within our lifetimes. Secondly there was no mention on the Burschenstaft movement of liberal-minded students and teachers in the years of absolutist rule after the overthrow of Napoleon which culminated in the Wartburgfest of 1817. The choice of a retrochronic arrangement within which each event is treated prochronically is a gimmick which adds yet further confusion to a display which has converted what is essentially a large square room into an intricate maze which is difficult to navigate despite the trail with colour-coordinated viewpoints marked out on the floor. The large dates which could serve as a guide through are wrapped round the partitions and so only half visible meaning that it was easy to end up in the wrong section once we had deciphered them.
The dates selected were:
- 1989 The “Wende” when the Berlin wall came down after the Perestroika policies of Gorbachev.
- 1972 Willi Brandt’s Ostpolitik which rolled back on German claims to the eastern territories.
- 1961 The construction of the Berlin wall.
- 1952 Stalin’s note offering the reunification of Germany.
- 1948 The establishment of the two German states.
- 1945 The failure to blow up bridge at Remagen.
- 1944 Claus von Stauffenberg’s attempt to assassinate Hitler.
- 1936 Hitler occupied the demilitarised Rheinland.
- 1933 Paul von Hindenberg appoints Adolf Hitler as Reichskanzler.
- 1929 Reichskanzler Heinrich Brüning’s austerity programme.
- 1918 Weimar Republic established after Kaiser Wilhelm deposed.
- 1914 Second International meeting of Socialist leaders in Brussels opposes war.
- 1866 North German Confederation founded.
- 1848 Democratic constitution for the German Nation State approved in Frankfurt.
We ended our visit enlightened over several things, for example Stalin’s note proposing a united but neutral Germany and the importance of the destruction of the bridge at Remagen in preventing the advance of the Allies on Berlin. We were however frustrated at how difficult it was to pick our way through the display. In some ways there was too much information and in other respects not enough. Many of the posters for example did little more than repeat the main heading in the caption and gave no background. The captions in any case were often remotely located from the items displayed.
We made our way along Unter den Linden with the setting sun a red glow behind the silhouette of the Brandenburg Gate and took refuge in the Cafe Einstein behind cups of coffee and two very rich Sachertorten. We had noticed groups of police outside and a peaceful demonstration passed by outside. From the banners being carried home on the bus later it would seem that it was something to do with the Roma.
21 January, Wednesday.
In the middle of the day Sieglinde had an appointment with the dental hygienist in a clinic of the Charité University Hospital in the Aßmannhauser Straße near the Rüdesheimer Platz. This is one of the grandest squares in Berlin with imposing statuary round the fountain basin, drained during the winter, majestic old trees and a wonderful cast iron pissoir, beautifully maintained and with facilities for both men and women. I waited for Sieglinde in the Kaffeehaus am Platz, working on my account of yesterday’s exhibition.
It was another beautifully sunny but cold day. Like so many other children in Berlin, including Sieglinde, I had been fascinated by the quaint name of Krumme Lanke, especially as the name of the station just before the terminus at Krumme Lanke is Onkel Toms Hütte (Uncle Tom’s Cabin).
So we set off on a voyage of discovery, emerging into a pleasant suburb, its wide streets lined with spacious villas. We selected a road named Fischerhütte Strasse (Fishermen’s Huts Street) as being likely to lead to a lake (Krumme Lanke means Crooked Lake – Lanke being adopted in the local dialect from the Polabic (West Slavonic) language word "luka", a lake or pond. A friendly woman reassured us that we were on the right track and added that on the other side of the road a driveway led to the Fischerhütte restaurant on the Schlachtensee, and another nearby lake.
Krumme Lanke
After we had glimpsed ice-covered Krumme Lanke through the trees, we crossed the road and walked carefully through the woods on a path still partly covered in a dusting of snow until after a few hundred meters we caught sight of the Schlachtensee and on its banks the warm embrace of the Fischerhütte restaurant. We settled for glasses of muled wine and two bowls of potato soup, warming and comforting on a cold day as we watched the sun go down over the Schlachtensee.
22
January, Thursday.
I posted up Sieglinde’s fourth blog on our day out on Dartmoor with Neil and Indie. In the afternoon we were once more in Drake Strasse in Lichterfelde for Sieglinde’s regular appointment with Smile Eyes while I had a seat in Al Salvatore for a coffee while working on the blog. Sieglinde joined me afterwards for a cake and I caused great merriment among the staff by drawing a face in the jam that was drizzled over it.
23 January, Friday.
I am getting my very own table in Al Salvatore. I was there again today for 12:30 Sieglinde's physio appointment in Lichterfelde. Today I wrote "Danke" in the jam left after I had finished the cake, to the amusement of the chef. After Sieglinde returned and joined me with a coffee, we took the bus to Tempelhof for an Italian meal in Nuova Mirabella with Michaela, Sieglinde's niece, who is suffering from chronic fatigue after Covid. She managed wery well and it was a lively and enjoyable early evening and she knew she would pay the price for it the next day.
24 January, Saturday.
These days are cold with temperatures hovering two or three degrees either side of zero. I was sent out to do some local food shopping and adjourned to the Wild Caffè which I had discovered on my last visit. Sieglinde did not know of it, although it is probably her nearest café. It is tucked away round a corner, small but well frequented, almost a community café with a "green" feel about it, a little like the Common Beaver in Magdalen Road.
25 January, Sunday.
Sieglinde’s Jewish choir Lekulam's rehearsal for a major concert in late February had been moved from Monday evening to Sunday afternoon as the choirmaster was singing Papageno in the Magic Flute in the Opera so I was able to work on our blogs and correspondence over two cappuccini in the Pianocafé. Sieglinde said she would meet me there afterwards, but I went back to the old people’s home where the rehearsals were held to collect her and we returned together for coffee and cakes as it was such a welcoming place with musical instruments including Scottish bagpipes with a tartan bag. We made our way back on the S- and U-Bahn in time for the usual Sunday WhatsApp call with Neil and Jill.
26 January, Monday.
The promised sleet and snow came overnight making everywhere slippery although buses still ran down Wiesbadener Strasse and people walked their dogs. A frighteningly tall crane had been erected last week just outside our apartment but no work seems to have been done with it since and certainly not today.
There are regular moans in England about the collapse of transport services at the first sign of snow but the same is true of Berlin as well. Although there was little snow in Friedenau, most of Brandenburg was at a standstill and the surgeries were apparently packed with people who had fallen over. We stayed indoors doing washing, writing blogs and I made a new cover for Sieglinde’s Bible and repaired a few of its pages. Sieglinde had developed a nasty cough and that was another reason for staying indoors
I have actually now posted up the last of Sieglinde's blogs, so here are links to them all:
- Eine kleine Berlinerin entdeckt Exeter, 1-9 Dezember 2025
- St Leonard's und Exeter's Hafengebiet mit Kanal und Fluss, 10 Dezember 2025
- Weihnachten in Exeter 11-26 Dezember 2025
- Ein Tag auf Dartmoor, 27 Dezember 2025
- Ins neuen Jahr in Exeter, 28 Dezember 2025 - 15 Januar 2026
I may put up an English version to show how Exeter struck a German visitor.
27 January, Tuesday.
Temperatures are dropping, now more below zero than above, not enough to melt the snow and ice. Sieglinde's chiropodist visted us at home at 14:00 and we decided to risk the slippy weather so that Sieglinde could get to the 16:00 physio appointment in Steglitz. Arrived there, we noticed a group of people standing around a monument in the snow, presumably because it is Holocaust Day. That morning to commemorate the Holocaust, Tinho da Cruz, Map Curator at the University of Liverpool who had sat with me on BRICMICS, a national map advisory panel, had posted on LinkedIn an extract of an ethnicity map made by the Austrian academic and senior SS officer Wilfried Krallert showing Bratislava, now the capital of Slovakia.
I was deposited in the Confiserie Reichert, where I was instructed to purchase rolls and stay for a coffee until she picked me up after the appointment. We had really arrived too late in the day and I cleared the shop of the remaining rolls before I reached the fifteen required. The café is quite a select place, largely occupied by elderly ladies, either alone or meeting up with other elderly ladies. Sieglinde joined me for a coffee and we shared a gateau before setting out on another of her marathon shopping sprees in Rossmann and Edeka. We picked our way carefully through the snow, glad that the bus stops were so conveniently located, but Sieglinde was worn out when we returned. She has developed a nasty cough and is definitely under the weather.
28 January, Wednesday.
It was still cold with snow and ice underfoot, though gradually clearing so in the afternoon I introduced Sieglinde to the Wild Caffè, a walk we accomplished with never a slip, though we took it very carefully. She was delighted at the atmosphere there, and that it was so near. Otherwise we stayed snug indoors, listening to music, working on blogs and bibliographical pojects and lingering over meals.
29 January, Thursday.
We had a dinner date with sisters Ingie and Sylvie, the two neighbours who had looked after the apartment and given us a voucher for a meal in the Aperitivo when we returned. We felt they needed to be thanked, so we had picked up some Scottish shortbread biscuits at the London City Airport and invited them to a meal at the Ristorante Barolo, their favourite restaurant, in Rheinstrasse, not too far away in Friedenau. We caught the U-Bahn out and, on our way to the station, thought we were passed by the pair on their bikes as the roads were by now clear of snow. The retaurant was cheap and amazingly empty, although it soon filled up while we were there, most of the customers seemed to be regulars. The food was excellent with ample portions, and we ended up with three digestifs on the house, Sieglind and I chose Limoncello. The two are real Berlin characters, very direct and open, full of humour and the evening was great fun. We managed to catch the M246 bus back as it happened to arrive just as we were passing the bus stop. We promised to let them know we had got home safely but they heard us and came down with a jar of plum jam, made from plums supplied from their brother's garden. It has since served us well to flavour yoghurts as an evening dessert.
30 January, Friday
Sieglinde' 12:30 physiotheray appintment in Lichterfelde was cancelled because she was poorly although her cough had much improved. In the morning I reported my library diatribe to Exeter observer, Exeter daily and Devon Live for the Express and Echo.
We had tickets for the Philharmonie that evening and wondered whether we should cancel, but decided to risk it and to have a meal at the Aperitivo before. Sieglinde put on her long dark blue dress, a birthday present from me, for the first time, and I assembled a grey suit, blue shirt and tie from the wardrobe I had built up in Berlin.
The meal was excellent and we were both embraced by the staff on arrival but after a while we realised with alarm that we were cutting it a bit fine. We had to wait for a U-Bahn train to the bus exchange at Zoologischer Garten where we saw we had another wait for the 200 bus to the Philharmonie, so we caught a taxi that got us there with ten minutes to spare and find our way to the seats high up behind the orchestra. The concert hall was packed for the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra with its Russian Conductor Kirill Petrenko and the Artist in Residence Janine Jansen.
In the first half Janine Jansen, the Dutch violoinist played the violin concerto of Brahms with the same verve as she had played Prokofiev's first violin concerto on 16 October. She played the extended solo cadenza written by Joseph Joachim. One advantage of our position behind the orchestra was that we could watch mesmerised the counducting style Petrenko ranging from the statuesque with the slightest movement of the hands in the quiet passages to a furious dance during the dramatic crescendos. A disadvantage was that we were closest to the percussion and the brass which sometimes drowned out the soloist.
We almost decided to leave for the second half, in part because of Sieglinde's cough - which failed to materialise - but also because the Philharmonie is intent on educating its audiences by inserting a "modern" piece into each programme and we had had a bad experience with John Adams Harmonielehre on 16 October. Neither of us knew anything about Scriabin and I had been put off by his name which had resonance with screeching, scratchy, generally dissonant music. However we were intrigued by the desription of his third symphony which had the title Le divin poème. It had three continuous movements:
1. Luttes: Allegro mysterieux, tragique, sombre, haletant, précipité.
2. Voluptés: Lento sublime, voluptueux. Vivo divin essor.
3. Jeu divin: Allegro avec une joie éclatante.
The work had been written from 1902 to 1904 when Scriabin (1872-1915) left his native Moscow with his first wife and four children for Switzerland from whom he separated for his second wife Tatiana de Schloezer with whom he was to father three further children. The symphony seems to show him working his way through the conflicting emotions of this period in his life and emerging triumphant, and this comes out in the music which reflects the different moods in a late romantic rather than a "modern" dissonant style. He was certainly an interesting man, a poet and philosopher as well as a musician and a firm adherent to socialist principles, returning to Moscow in 1909, but I get the impression that, like so many intellectuals, he was hard to get on with. His music was neglected during the Soviet era but has more recently been rediscovered.
A visit to the Philharmonie is always a special occasion, not just the performance but the scramble to deposit and collect coats, the programme seller who did not give me the change for the 4 € programme which I had intended for the collecting box for UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, and the interval where people in all types of attire queued for drinks or paraded around, including a man with make-up wearing a skin-tight gleaming silver woman's dress.
We looked for a taxi to return, but there were crowds and the 200 bus came in five minutes so we made our way safely back by bus U-Bahn and along the slippery pavements of the Wiesbadener Strasse.
31 January, Saturday.
This morning I sent my library diatribe to Exeter Today and also posted about it on LinkedIn and Facebook.
While Sieglinde's cough had much improved, she still felt weary. In the afternoon I tried to persuade her that some fresh air and a walk to the Wild Caffè would do us both good but she demurred so I went on my own and started a loyalty card as it was such a gemütlicher place.
1 February, Sunday.
Still freezing weather and we had a lunch appointment in a remote part of Zehlendorf, invited by Lissy, a friend of Sieglinde who had recently lost her husband and wanted to celebrate her birthday with friends. Sieglinde rang up to confirm that it would be okay for us to come as she still had a cough and knew that Eckhard, one of the others invited was very poorly. Lissy said she thought Sieglinde would no longer be infectious and she had decorated the table in red, white and blue in my honour.
So, 13:30 saw us staning under the appointed tree just outside Zehlendorf S-Bahn station where we were joined by Eckhard and and Bӓrbel who was related to him in some way. Georg was to join us later and had his own transport. Lissy arrived and took us to where she had parked her car and we drove carefully along roads that were increasingly snow-covered to her stunning modern house, furnished in a minimalist style but warm and welcoming in the snow.
3 February, Tuesday.
