19 August. Wednesday.
Today I travelled from Exeter to Berlin. The Falcon Megabus arrived at the park and ride early but it was the earlier one than I was booked on, running 50 minutes late, so I boarded because a fellow passenger said the one I was booked on was 30 minutes late. I arrived in Bristol Airport in good time and had a coffee before going through security with only hand luggage. The plane left and arrived on time in Berlin with clear views over the woods and lakes as we descended to the airport. There was the usual confusion over where exactly Sieglinde and I should meet but after a coffee we caught the bus to Rudow and the U-Bahn to Friedrich-Wilhelmplatz and were welcomed into the Aperitivo for an excellent shared starter, pasta main courses and cakes, washed down by Aperolspritz and cappuccini before crossing the Schillerplatz to Sieglinde’s apartment. I had returned to Berlin.
20 August. Thursday.
Sieglinde had a physiotherapy session in Steglitz and I used the time to look for a security key in Media Markt which I found with great difficulty in a massive shopping complex. They said that they did not stock such things which could only be purchased online. I had more success in extracting Euros from the cash machine in the bank and then visited the local bookshop with the delightful name of Hugendubel where we arranged to meet. There I noticed the German version of a book I am currently working my way through: Weimar: life on the edge of catastrophe by Katja Hoyer. The author is a historian who was born in Germany but is now based in London, being a visiting Research Fellow in King's College London. I was surprised to see that the book was written in English and first published in England
We went on to the Botanical Gardens which are part of the Freie Universität and are spread across an extensive site to the south of Berlin. Some of the glass houses were being repaired so the café was not open and we had to content ourselves with a coffee in the blazing sun next to a catering van. It was cooler when we went into the tropical greenhouse where Sieglinde camouflaged herself in her green dress among the massive plants, many of them with aerial roots.
22 August. Saturday.
Today we went into town, hoping to visit a museum to make the most of my annual Museumskarte, due to expire early in October.
I had obtained details of sites where it was possible to obtain security keys in Berlin and we thought we would pass by on the way. The first location had the rather ungrammatical name of King's of Surprise in Kurfurstendamm. see the street number led us to a grand building with keypad entrance and a list of names that didn't seem to bear any relationship to King's of Surprise but we managed to get in when somebody else came out and we asked one or two people inside, none of whom had heard of King's of Surprise - maybe that was the surprise. So, we cut our losses and went on to Cyberport in Friedrichsstraβe. The fact that it took up five properties - numbers 50-55 gave us some confidence, but even they did not sell security keys, although they could order them. So we placed an order, marvelled at the array of arcane gizmos that were on offer, and made our way on past a rather rather more traditional shop that retailed cuckoo clocks and other artisanal bits and pieces in wood, metal and pottery, including an array of Christmas pyramids, one of which we had been given by Hubert. I had great fun getting them all spinning by blowing on them and Sieglinde discovered some of the little wooden figures that decorate her table at Christmas time.
By now we realised that it would be too late to visit a museum so we wandered towards Unter den Linden in search of Café Einstein. We passed through the Gendarmenmarkt which, besides the Berlin Concert Hall and a grand statue of the poet Schiller, contains the French and German cathedrals. We discovered that the German cathedral was no longer used as a church but had an exhibition tracing the history of German democracy from 1848 to the present day. It was quite appropriate really for the exhibition to be there because it was on the steps of the cathedral that the bodies of those killed during the 1848 revolution were laid out and a service was held in their memory.
We discussed churches that had been damaged or destroyed in the War, including the Frauenkirche in Dresden which survived the carpet bombing of February 1945, only to collapse two days later. What I was saying was overheard by somebody on duty who immediately said "What he's saying is completely wrong! The reason that the Frauenkirche collapsed was because an archive of celluloid films which were stored in the crypt caught fire and exploded. When we got home I checked this out but could find no evidence that this was true.
23 August. Sunday.
Today we attended a gathering of the Kretschmar family to celebrate the 95th birthday of Sieglinde's cousin Uschi. We had attended the funeral of her other cousin Illa on a previous visit. She was the materfamilias of the family and the only other person of that first generation was her sister-in-law. She was somewhat overwhelmed at the sixty children, grandchildren and great grandchildren that had been assembled. "Was that really all my doing?" she wondered to Sieglinde. It took place in Grünheide, a community on the river Löcknitz, a tributary of the Spree which runs through Berlin and is located on the north side of the Werlsee lake about 30 kilometres east of central Berlin and outside the Berlin jurisdiction of the capital, so firmly inside the former GDR. We had to take the S-Bahn from Zoologischer Garten to Erkner, a nostalgic journey for Sieglinde who pointed out en route where she was born and several places where she had lived.
She had telephoned Grünheide once we had safely boarded the train to alert them of our time of arrival at the terminus station in Erkner. This prompted a flurry of messages and it was finally one of Uschi's sons, Harald, who picked us up. Harald and his wife Cornelia are a remarkable couple, parents of seven children, four of their own and three adopted. They are closely involved with the International Christian Fellowship, a protestant charismatic association of churches with links to the Baptist church, and the celebration was held in the meeting room of the church.
The extended family were all very friendly, cheerful and welcoming, and Sieglinde and I were placed next to Uschi and her sister-in-law Adele, the only representatives of the first generation. The family were mostly very pious and the four generations present for the meal all joined in the grace in the form of a sung canon. Later a favourite Psalm was projected on a screen a verse at a time displayed in German with music. It was obviously taken from an English Youtube video and the subtitles displayed were [music], [applause - there was none] and [foreign]. Guests took it in turn to read the verses and I was relieved that the final verse was reached before it was my turn. Later there was a dance by the younger girls who tried to follow the steps of the dance teacher who demonstrated them, some more successfully than others.
But most of the time was spent in animated reminiscing and catching up by the second and third generations and rumbustious careering around by the fourth generation interspersed with food, on arrival cakes and drinks and later a choice of traditional sausage or schnitzel with potato salad or oriental dishes with sushi.
Toward the end, there was an attempt to round up all those present for a photograph of all sixty or so guests. I tried to make myself inconspicuous but was more or less dragged in to take my place in the family. Marit, one of the third generation. gave us a lift home after an exhilarating but confusing day. Sieglinde has promised to draw up a family tree, some of whose twigs we will be meeting up with over the coming weeks.
24 August. Monday.
Another Steglitz day. Sieglinde had a physio session in her Rehalife torture chamber, filled with menacing machinery, bristling with treadmills, belts, springs, weights, punchbags and whatever mankind had over the centuries devised to punish the human body. I had to accompany her as the lifts were difficult to manage, After problems desending in the lifts, I discovered I had her towel and went back but found session already under way, so returned to Hugendubel for a coffee. After she found me there we went on to Schwartzsche Villa for a coffee on the terrace and retuned home to prepare for our visit to Bad Belzig the following day.
