Thursday, October 31, 2002

my friend and her chocolate purchases

who are these people? and why do they talk funny? or should that be 'Wie ist diese volke? Was Sprechen?' if you will pardon my (lack of) German

"Seldom any splendid story is wholy true."
Dr. Samuel Johnson

Our first thing to do this morning is...go right back to KaDeWe. First we eat a big breakfast at the hotel. There are cold meats...sausage or salami or whatever...every day. My friends don't eat much of this and marvel that I do.

My friends have calls to make after that and then there is a walk to Zoo Station to get the three day passes they want to buy. Finally, we are back at the department store and we agree to split up for an hour. I look at the food hall, at toys, at calendars, at beautiful glassware, at holiday things. I don't buy anything. We regroup. My friend has collected a score of chocolate bars. We go to the cafeteria on the seventh floor and I hold a table and watch their things while they go through the line. They just pick something for me and they choose a plate with salmon and a couple of slices of terrines. LG has gotten a beer to share with me. Hey...my first beer this trip. It's KaDeWe beer...who knows who makes it for them.

We are not moving very fast. We have to return to the chocolate department for a couple more things. Then the gals want to go look for a bank to cash their old Deutche Marks. I don't have any so I go to the Internet Cafe. When I'm walking back down the street to our hotel, my friend Pam is waiting outside the market while LG buys water.

We go off on the U-bahn to...a chocolate shop. I'm not kidding. After that stash at KaDeWe. I just go along to be going. It's in a neighborhood I doubt that I would otherwise seek out.

We rush off to another neighborhood to the apartment of a relative of LG's. We are there to have drinks and snacks and ooh and aaah over a one-year-old. He is cute and he stares in puzzled amazement at us. We theorize that it isn't just that we are strangers but that we are babbling in a strange language...and making his Mom and Oma (German for grandmother) do it, too.

After a couple of bottles of Sekt and snacks and baby playing, the Oma's boyfriend comes over. More baby kisses. The dad comes home, too. We leave the young family and us oldsters go for a German meal over on Meinekestrasse around the corner from the EasyEverything Internet cafe. It is smoky and old inside. Either this interior survived the war or they redid it from something that did. We have beer and several of us have calves liver with pureé potatoes and red cabbage.

After the meal we walk through an entirely new area with stores, an aviary with sleeping parrots and some decorated plastic bears and catch the bus to get to a brew pub my friend LG likes. (Luisenbraü near Charlottenburg Castle). A couple of .2 liter strong beers later we head back on the U-bahn, say goodbye to LG's cousin and go back to the hotel.

It's been a pleasant day of just absorbing life in Berlin, the things that are changing, the things that aren't. I love cities.

JUST TYPING
Anticipating.
Anything.
Nerve-wracking.
Comforting to settle in.
Start the trip.
Start the task.
Start the life.