Ex-pat Newlyweds

I’ve found that there are always a few journeys that will always be close to my heart.

One is the gravel road that took me to the farm. You turn right and it’s straight through, my favourite part coming through the tiny little valley where my brother Andreas once fell out of the truck and we used to run down to catch the tadpoles in the pond. Up and down and you’re home.

I haven’t had that drive in years.

My other favourite little drive is the road between the little train station in Wahn to my Oma’s house in Zündorf on Wahner Strasse. It hasn’t changed in my 26 years of driving down it, at least not in my mind. It always meant the end of a long journey, to a second homecoming guaranteed to be met by a happy Oma with potato salad and würst. It’s tree lined with corn fields and bike paths. Whether it was a ride in my Opa’s old Audi with the sheep skin seat covers, or one of my uncle’s dangerous contraptions, I love the slight back-and-forth curving of the road, and what it does to my heart.

I have a new one. This is a Berlin one and it is not for cars. It’s the bike ride home from the movie theatre, and its incredible. It’s full of history and culture and stories.

The route.

I start at Potsdamer Platz — once the city centre, which made it an obvious target for the bombers and they blasted it flat into the ground. It then became part of no man’s land, with the wall running right through it, even underground on the rails. Trains that once travelled from one side to the other stopped and turned around to stay where they were.

Up the street, we go by a lit-up and eerie looking Memorial for the Murdered Jews of Europe; a solemn enough place by day, certainly haunted at night but it’s beautiful. I take a right at the Brandenburg Gates, making a point to go straight up the middle, once an entry way that was reserved strictly for nobility while the common folk had to go through the sides. I laugh at the lingering tourits, but its only so that I keep myself from yelling: “ISN’T MY CITY BEAUTIFUL! THIS IS JUST A PIECE OF IT! YOU HAVE NO IDEA!”

I peddle up Unter den Linden, with its tree-lined boulevard in place since the 1700s. I take a left just after Babelplatz, where the Nazi book burnings happened in 1933. Behind the palaces built for the crown princes of Prussia and past a wall riddled with Soviet bullets, between museums holding 3,000 years of human history to the foot bridge leading back to the mainland.

I don’t even know why I bother with a photo. Just come visit and see for yourself.

It’s here I like to stop and look at the gilded dome of the Berlin Cathedral in the night sky. Of course, a photo could never do it justice.

I go under the train tracks onto the promenade in front of the Hackeschermarkt, filled with restaurant tables, tourists drinking beer and people with — errrmmm — “special talents” looking for their next job.

Finally, I hit the uphill that takes me home, past the Zionskirche and finally rolling up to our front door.

It is the most surreal experience to come out of an everyday thing like the movie theatre, and transport yourself through so many years of history in this city to get home. If you live here, you should try it sometime. You’ll fall in love all over again, but then again, I don’t really know how you can fall out of love with this place.