Ich bin ein Berliner

My hopes of a thoroughly modern travel experience evaporated almost as soon as I reached the airport last Friday.  On the spur of the moment, I had decided to spend the weekend in Berlin – several friends of mine were headed there, and I had never been there before, and that seemed enough of a reason.  I was particularly proud of myself for having successfully bought airline tickets in Copenhagen for the first time without having to go across town to the SAS airline office.  This is because I managed to convince SAS that joining the 21^st century was in their interest, and that I really did want an e-ticket, despite their doubts about this newfangled technology.    So, I arrived at the airport ready to be a traveler of the internet generation – and found myself in the 1960s.  The nifty-looking self-service check-in machine didn’t find my reservation, I stood in a long line, and the ticket agent was so flummoxed by my e-ticket that she had to call for assistance.  And I had not yet even seen the plane.

My plane flight from Copenhagen to Berlin would have been eerily familiar to those of you who have seen the 1966 Hitchcock film ‘Torn Curtain.’  In the film, Paul Newman plays a scientist at a conference in Copenhagen, who travels to East Berlin, allegedly to defect, and in search of missile secrets.  His fiancée, played by Julie Andrews, follows him on the plane, and when they exit down the stairs to the tarmac on arrival, they are greeted by a throng of reporters publicizing the defection of such a famed scientist.   While there was no throng of reporters greeting me on my arrival in Berlin, disembarking from the eleven-row propeller plane onto the tarmac of an airport which appeared to have a grand total of four gates was strangely reminiscent of the film.  Even Hitchcock, however, could not get away with naming an airline “Cimber Air.”  (I do not think this translates very well.)

Despite a day of rain and a day of snow, I had a wonderful weekend in Berlin, and I am happy to report that I am finally cured of my irrational fear of the German language.  (As many of you know, this fear stemmed from being yelled at in German a few too many times, the majority of instances occurring while flying Lufthansa. )  As more than one German speaker has informed me, German and written Danish are quite close – and my limited Danish served me well in minor tourist communication.  (This was a big difference from Copenhagen, where people start talking to you in English if they hear any hint of an accent in Danish, and automatically repeat their sentences in English if you look even slightly confused.  This is one of the things that makes learning the Danish language difficult!) So, in several situations, when an English word didn’t seem to be getting anywhere, I took a blind stab at communication in German by trying the word in Danish – which seemed to work quite well.  (In fact, my American companions were initially quite surprised that I seemed to know and/or understand quite a few German words – while all the while I was actually hearing and speaking what sounded like Danish.)  Among those words that I found particular success with were kartoffel (potato), svinekød (pork), and kuglepen (ballpoint pen).  I cannot claim this was all truly voluntary, however; in some circumstances, I was merely aware that I should be saying something in a language other than English, and Danish just came out.  And this worked better in Germany than it did in Brussels, for obvious reasons.

I cannot comment, however, on the burning issue of whether, in his famous speech in Berlin, John F. Kennedy actually said “I am a Berliner” or, as rumor has it, “I am a jelly donut.”  I can say that I was thrilled to have found a Dunkin’ Donuts in Berlin, and I brought back a box of Munchkins to share with the office, where many people had never even heard of Dunkin’ Donuts, never mind Munchkins.  Needless to say, there is no Dunkin’ Donuts in Copenhagen.  The donut shop in Berlin only had three kinds of Munchkins – jelly, cream-filled, and chocolate (none of my favorite, toasted coconut) – but I am not complaining.

I did some sightseeing in Berlin – among other things, I saw the remains of the Berlin Wall; Potsdamer Platz (the biggest construction site this side of the Big Dig); and Checkpoint Charlie.  I also spent some time with Americans again.  I managed to have an hour-long conversation with Fulbright students studying in Sweden, with them speaking Swedish and me speaking Danish.  (It was actually more like Swenglish/Denglish).  The most telling moment of our internationalism, however, came when I was giving one of my friends my mobile phone number.  One of the other students leaned over, and whispered, in a hushed and conspiratorial tone, “We’re all Americans here.  You can say ‘cell phone.’”