This eighth morning in Berlin was a bonus. We’d intended to leave for Prague bright and early; but last night, when we went to purchase the tickets, we learned that seats on the morning trains were sold out. So here we were, with time to spare.

We returned to our usual coffee shop, with its delicious chocolate croissants. Café Tekla was owned by the same stern woman who hosted our Airbnb. Sofia wasn’t stern the way you’d think, if you are picturing a heavyset fraulein with a grimace. She was young, stylish, and friendly at first (“Come: I vill show you yur rhoom”), but her smile was mechanical, and when we raved about the apartment she gave us a quizzical look, as if to say, “Where did all this emotion come from, and what do you expect me to do with it?”

Giving and receiving emotion was our problem in Berlin. England had been different: people in Devon were agreeable, and Cornwall was like a bear-hug. We’d had lively conversations with strangers, swapping travel tips and work woes. With one couple, we’d shared the coming-out stories of our respective queer adult children. Then we flew to Berlin, and it was as if someone dumped us onto the sidewalk and placed us in a bubble where no one could see us.

We sought connection—hoping for a genial look or a hello—and got nothing. Again and again. The futility of these efforts dumbfounded us, then irritated us, and ultimately made us feel empty and invisible.

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You can’t blame them. They lived through Hitler. Sixty years ago they or their forebears were almost all Nazis, because you had to be a Nazi back then. (Unless you were Jewish like us, or you resisted; in either case you’d be dead within a few years.)

Then they were bombed and shot by the Allies. On almost every block in the hip and leafy neighborhood of Prenzlauer Berg, there is a small park. We marveled at these on the day we arrived: there’s playground equipment, water fountains, and permanent ping pong tables, and each park is landscaped with trees and shrubs. But the next day, while on a guided bicycle tour of the city, we were told why the parks are there. The apartments, which were built in the mid-1800s, filled entire blocks and had interior courtyards. Jews and non-Jews lived in these buildings for almost a century.

Toward the end of the War—years after the Jewish occupants had been deported to the camps—the Allies drove tanks into one corner of each building. They knocked down that corner, plowed through the rubble into the courtyard, threw Molotov cocktails into the windows of the surrounding apartments to drive the residents into the streets, and then gunned them down as they fled their burning homes. Today, it’s a law that if I return to Berlin, and can prove that my family had lived in one of those missing apartments, the government will give me back my land. Until that happens—just in case that happens—the land is held in trust. And that’s why there are so many little parks.

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After they were Nazis and after they were killed by the Allies, their city was carved in two. On our tour we learned that the Berlin Wall was more than the 12-foot wall we’d heard of: it was an area called “the death strip,” wider than the length of a football field in some places, and filled with all kinds of awful things to prevent people from crossing it. East Germans who were desperate to escape to the West were shot by guards and attacked by dogs. They were shocked by electric fences. If they tried to shimmy up the slick Wall and fell, they might land in a bed of nails.

And one in fifty people in East Berlin were unofficial collaborators of the Stasi, ratting out their friends and families for not following the party line, or for doing deviant things like playing heavy metal music. Then the Wall came down, which sounds great, but it wasn’t, not for everyone. Many who had adapted to life behind the Iron Curtain found themselves unemployed, impoverished, and obsolete. They didn’t have the skills or the know-how to navigate capitalism or live in a democracy.

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To its credit, Berlin is a city of immigrants now; that’s one of its assets, along with its sophistication, bike-friendliness, cultural institutions, efficient transit system and general livability. It’s a university town, filled with international students. Its diversity makes it interesting and lively. There are many delicious cheap restaurants featuring cuisine from all over the world.

But if you are a Berliner who doesn’t know what country your new neighbor came from, or how long he’ll be living next to you before he leaves again, and you don’t share a common language, well then, it may not be worth the trouble to get to know him. Better to keep to yourself, and to the friends you already have.

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So we hardened. We stopped smiling; stopped greeting. Through the first several summery days in Berlin and then the couple of days of rain, we kept our gaze toward the ground, a few feet ahead of our footsteps. As if the others on the sidewalk simply weren’t there. We fortified our bubble. We talked to each other but were silent with everyone else. As much as I liked hearing German, with its playful mushy sounds so similar to Yiddish, I didn’t dare—or bother—to put my couple of months of Duolingo to the test. Sour grapes: everyone spoke English, anyway.

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Then, on that last Sunday at Cafe Tekla, the rain stopped, the clouds cleared, and the silence broke. For a suspended moment, our bubble expanded.
We had seen her before: the girl who worked in the cafe. Her skin was dark. Her hair, which she pulled into a bun, or let cascade down the sides of her face, was a deep and shiny brown. All week, she’d been making the cappuccino with its pretty little leaf-shape in the foam and setting it on the wooden board next to a miniature spoon, a petite almond encrusted with cinnamon, and a small glass of water. We’d noticed: she had smiled at us each morning.

Today when she brought us our treats, we said, “Thank you so much,” and then, “Sofia is storing our bags, and we have plenty of time before our train.” We added, “We really like this place. Berlin is such an interesting and beautiful city.” Our words spilled out on this last morning, like airplane conversation between passengers when the plane descends to the tarmac.
We were encouraged by the warmth of her smile. We said, complimenting her, “It’s so cool that everyone here speaks German AND English.”

“I also speak Spanish,” she said.

“Oh really? How is that?”

“I came here eleven years ago, from the Canary Islands.”

“Ah!” I said. Spontaneously and courageously: “Podemos hablar español!” You and I, we can speak Spanish together! And so we did.

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The Spanish words rushed out of me like water bursting from a dam. They did not come from my brain, but somewhere deeper: my opening heart. From there they rose up into my throat and larynx, my voice box. Our words, hers and mine, eddied around my ears like a song. They splashed on my face like tropical rain. I could feel them nestling snugly in the nooks under my collar bones. They lay across my shoulders like a shawl. They danced in the air between us as we spoke.

Doug is not a Spanish speaker, but the glow of our conversation enveloped him too, and this young woman and I laughed and smiled and translated for him. I watched in delight as the triangular space, made by our three bodies, began to sparkle. Its light was lifted by the morning breeze, up into the bright wet leaves of the linden trees.

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What did we talk about? It hardly matters. We heard about what it was like to learn German as a 13-year-old, and how it takes a couple of years to make friends, when you come from abroad and are placed in the “8 Klasse” at your new school. She told us how, when she visits Barcelona, the people are so nice and they smile at her and she smiles back. But when she’s back in Berlin and people smile at her, she thinks, “what’s WRONG with you?” because nobody smiles at you on the street in Berlin.

Then she had to go; Sofia and the customers were waiting. Tables needed to be cleared.

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We never learned her name. We spent the rest of the day in the neighborhood, wandering around one of the few remaining Jewish cemeteries. We took pictures of the light filtering through the big trees, and placed stones on the graves of people who had died long before the Holocaust. When we returned to the cafe to pick up our luggage, the girl said to me in Spanish, “It was so good to talk to you. It gave my whole day a special energy.” Energia.
“Igualmente,” I said. The same here. (Colloquially: right back at you.)

She said, “Que tenga buen día.” Have a good day. (Literally: that you should have a good day.)

“Que tenga buena vida,” I said, and we both laughed. That you should have a good life.

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Forty minutes later, we hurried from the M10 tram across the crowded station plaza to catch our train, carried by the momentum of our heavy backpacks. The soaring vocals of a young busker filled the air. I couldn’t identify it, but recognized the tender notes, wistful chord changes, and the tension which built to the release of the chorus. Later, I would go online and look up the song and the artist: it was “Someone Like You,” by Adele. I would read the lyrics—“I wish nothing but the best, for you”—and think of the light on the lindens, the girl, and speaking Spanish in Berlin.

 

Maggie Miller wrote in high school and college, and then the business of everyday life—career, marriage, child-rearing—became her primary focus. During this period she self-published memos, reports, love letters, and lunchbox notes. After 40 years focusing on these genres, she’s back to writing fiction, poetry, and personal narrative.