BYE BYE BERLIN!

.........at least that was the plan.

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BYE BYE BERLIN! 

I set the alarm on my iPhone for 5:45am. I have full faith in this device since it has always gone off when it’s supposed to. My Honda CRV always starts. Marjorie Taylor Green always threatens to fire the speaker of the House. These are the things I have faith will happen. This level of belief is almost religious and I never question it. 

5:45am is groaningly early but I have a 10:20am flight from Berlin to New York City and serious motivation to be on this flight. It flies only once a day, it’s always full, I’ve been gone a long time and Delta Airlines has upgraded me to Delta One, their version of long distance super first class. I booked in Comfort Plus, a tiny step above Economy. Comfort Plus has 1/4 inch more legroom than Economy and you get to board earlier than the public school teachers, peasants and lepers, folks I fit in with more easily than the Wall Street bunch up front. Delta One has those isolated pods where you can recline to a full flat bed while the flight attendant peels you a grape. I don’t know why I’ve been upgraded but I don’t quibble. On this 9 hour flight, at least I won’t be knee-capped when the guy ahead of me reclines his seat. With all this incentive, a 5:45am alarm seems reasonable. 

In my hotel room I plug in the phone and open the clock app, find the alarm settings and scroll the numbers to 5:45, taking care to change the PM to AM. I look at it three or four times to make sure it’s correct. Then I set my Apple Watch to 5:39am so it will pre alarm the alarm. I check this also three or four times. I look again at the phone. Being anally retentive is one of my better qualities. 

It’s midnight when I do these maneuvers so I will not get much sleep but I think the late night has been worth it. I’ve spent the evening in Berlin and I could not be happier about it. The flight from Tallinn, Estonia, to Berlin landed at 6pm, not late, but it takes a while to get into the city and back since my hotel is at the airport. I do the timetable in my head. I weigh the geekiness of going into the city against getting more work done and going to bed early. The geekiness wins and I’m on the next train into Berlin. 

We pull into the Friedrichstrasse Bahnhof, the Fredrick Street Station, a late 19th century iron and glass affair that, during the Cold War, was half in and half out of the Communist Zone. Its history is a tragicomedy play of the silliness of the communist state. Frederick Street runs right out of the station down through old East Berlin. A couple blocks south, it crosses the boulevard, “Unter den Linden Strasse,” Under the Linden Trees Street. At the far west end, Unter den Linden stops at the Greco-Roman 250 year old icon of Berlin, the Brandenburg Gate, where the Berlin Wall ran separating the two Berlins until 1989. The boulevard is enticing but I stay on Frederick Street. I stroll past the shops and cafes, down through the lovely leafy plazas to a good restaurant I know, Maximilian’s. It’s rowdy, packed and alive with music and a crowd young enough to be my grandkids but I feel at home here. The food is good, the beer excellent, and the service frenetic. 

I sit outside and sip my beer as young couples stroll by with baby carriages, grannies on canes hobble home from shopping, and office workers crowd the Stehtische, the outdoor tables you stand at for just the amount of time it takes to swig a fast beer before you grab the subway home. 

Berlin has all the vigor and mix of New York City. At one restaurant you can order a salmon stuffed with caviar, and, around the corner, Eisbein mit Pommes, pig knuckle with French fries. Mercedes Maybachs park next to VW Beetles. At the Hackesche Hoefe you can see a trans show and in the next block Mozart’s “Magic Flute” is playing at the Berlin Opera House. The town has enough energy to light up the night. 

I finish my dinner of Wiener Schnitzel (Maximilian’s has the best), potato salad and my second beer and head for the station. The next train back to the airport is in 25 minutes so I wander a bit. Every street and plaza is lined with cafe after restaurant after club, each with little round sidewalk tables, ringed with diners and drinkers on this fine May evening. It’s Thursday but the Berliners are out in a street rendition of CABARET.  At any moment someone will break into song with “Willkommen, Bienvenue, Welcome!” 1940s American jazz drifts out of one club, Beyonce from another. Maybe I should have had a hotel in the city. Reality kicks in and I get on the train to the airport. 

The alarm is set for 5:45am which I check and re-check. This will give me plenty of time to run, eat breakfast and walk across the plaza to the terminal. Nothing can go wrong. The alarm is as reliable as the North Star or Marjorie’s complaints. With this confidence, I sleep like the dead.