It was my fourth morning in Berlin, the morning when all the German I studied in high school and college finally started coming back to me. The language of Rilke and Schopenhauer floated to the surface of my brain in soupy chunks that I had to fish for and prod with the help of the Google Translate app. A German alphabet soup. Umlaut, spazieren, zum Geburgstag viel Gluck, displacing the few Danish words I had learned the week before.
Berliner Dom
Berlin was a stop on my journey from Copenhagen to Khmelnytskiy, and a part of me carefully closing chapter after chapter of my life. I needed closure. I pretended like I wasn’t in Berlin for my ex, but I was.
I didn’t like Berlin. Too big, too similar to the Soviet vibe of eastern Ukraine. Too-wide roads with too-fast cars. An odd amalgamation of Soviet concrete and American car-centrism.
I stayed at the hotel recommended by my ex, a nice enough mid-range outfit with a Spanish theme. I suppose all this “ethnic” flavor was a way to differentiate yourself in the big city, but to me, as a tourist, it seemed silly. German was ethnic enough.
From my room on an upper floor, I could see the empty street below. My main memories of that room are associated with dating-app chats, conveniently updated to my new, albeit very temporary, location.
There was a very bearded, very serious guy, very much into Iron & Wine.
There was a guy with a shaved head and a writing style that put me on edge. I did not want him to show me around at all.
There was a guy who volunteered to bring me some drinks from a nearby bodega. I declined, but only after I satisfied my polyglot curiosity about what Berliners call a small convenience store that is open late into the night. Späti. A cute, endearing name pronounced as “sh-patty.”
There was, still, the guy I met in Copenhagen. We kept the casual connection up, I don’t know why. I think I have a hard time letting go.
And in the upside-down world of the U.S., there was, asleep during most of my waking hours in Europe, a good-looking American I knew I’d have to see again at least once.
I found the little breakfast place on Google, a bit of a hike from the hotel, but the glowing reviews of what one could get for €4 made it seem worth it. Besides, did I have anywhere else to be?
I checked out of the hotel, put my backpack on my shoulders, and followed the directions along the wide stretch of the road which made me feel very small. A tiny, insignificant, uprooted divorcee, lightheaded from all of this newfound space.
My route was all but deserted on this weekday April morning. I found the cafe, no longer deserted, and started deciphering the menu board.
Here it was, the 4-Euro breakfast celebrated in the internet reviews. I read it off the board to the woman behind the counter. She asked something to confirm, probably how do I like my eggs, and I said “ja” and smiled. Good enough.
I took the table marker and found a spot at an empty table outside.
I sipped my coffee and surveyed the wide-open street. Maybe it’s the lack of foliage in this early spring period that made it look so big and barren. Maybe it’s the master planning philosophy, visible only in plan, of concentrating the greenery in the shared yards of the apartment buildings, instead of in front of them. The cafe was on the ground floor of such an apartment building.
Anchored behind the bistro table and very quickly full, I didn’t mind this openness. I felt safe, watching people wander in and out of the cafe, talking, shuffling chairs. This was my last morning in Berlin. Today, I planned on boarding the train to my next stop: Prague.
Breakfast in Mitte
An older man came out of the cafe with a coffee in his hands and looked around for a place to sit. He came up to my table and motioned at the seat across from me: “Okay?”
I smiled and nodded. We spent the next few minutes aware of each other’s existence, once in a while manifested in a small smile when our eyes met. If we spoke the same language, this would have been a short but pleasant small talk about where I’m from, where I’m going and what he is up to today. He looked like a man who had a family, probably somewhere up in those apartment buildings. He would have told me he had two children and the younger one was a girl. I would have said I have three back home in California.
It felt like we said all of this, but telepathically. With eye contact and limited range of facial expressions.
He finished his coffee, got up, and with a nod, departed to cross the street.
I went back to looking up information about the museums I was about to visit in Berlin, before my train to Prague. I was going to Museum Island.
I was pulled out of my deep dive into the internet by the same man. He was standing in front of the table with a bundle of pink long-stem roses. He took one of them and offered it to me, saying in English, which he probably practiced all of the time between leaving the cafe and coming back,
“Have a great day!”
Surprised, I said “thank you” and smiled as he walked away.
I watched him cross the street again, the rest of the roses gripped in his right hand. What was the occasion?
Was it a random act of kindness? European hospitality? A flirtation from a middle-aged German? The universe trying to tell me…what?
I finished my breakfast with plenty left on my plate (that 4-Euro breakfast is the bomb). And now, I needed to do something with this long-stemmed rose. Sure, I could trek through Berlin with my backpack, a canvas tote full of books in one hand, and a meter-long rose in the other.
That wouldn’t do.
I opened my translator app and looked up how to say “Can you please make it shorter?” Then, I walked back into the cafe and addressed the woman behind the counter again, with the most German I’ve said thus far the entire trip. Miraculously, she understood, took the rose, and, snip-snip, handed it back to me shorter.
I felt such tremendous success, like I just had a 15-minute conversation with her about politics or contemporary art. All of my years studying German culminated in:
“Können Sie es bitte kürzer machen?”
Elated, I walked out of the cafe, put the rose in my canvas tote, and headed for Museum Island.
Museum Island
What about the ex?
We met up for lunch a few days earlier. It was the first time since I left for the U.S. many years ago, the first time since we’ve “gone our separate ways.”
I’m pretty sure all our ways are separate. But that’s another topic.
We haven’t seen each other for 16 years, the number of years we both were when we met for the first time. Something about the rhyming of history.
I spent a lot of those years thinking about the alternate reality in which we did not break up. They say losing a long-term relationship brings on full-blown grief, and the stages of grief are cyclical. It’s less of an orderly procession from the first stage to the last and more of a chaotic bouncing between all of them. I was forever stuck in the denial gear.
Our Berlin lunch was pleasant. We assessed each other, comparing the real-life people whose lives kept going to the preserved specimens of each other we carried as souvenirs.
Did you get taller?
I guess so.
I also got a whole lot less shy. He wasn’t used to me looking at him with such intense directness, as if he was a sculpture I was examining at a museum.
We spent some time catching up. He had gotten married, I beat him to it, and then also got divorced. I had three kids, he had not had any yet. We were each living strange immigrant lives. He spoke way more German.
And when the lunch was over, so was the angst. Cycle complete.
Chapter closed.
Thanks to the random German man and his pink rose, I did have a good day. At the end of that day, I felt ready to leave Berlin, with its wide boulevards and miniature spatis. It was time to move on, accept untethered gifts from strangers, and go have more adventures.
I held that rose with a smile on my face, and as I boarded the departing train, I felt even taller.
Berlin Central Station panorama