Berlin
The news covered current events in Germany. I shouted at Sari asking
her to come to the living room. "There's TV footage about Berlin."
Two
months earlier we had spent a great vacation at my friend Tadeusz's,
so it was interesting to see familiar locations on TV: the Brandenburg
gate, Alexanderplatz, the DDR parliament house.
The
picture showed an amusement park. I wondered whether Tadeusz had ever
been there, when I noticed that there he was! Looking thoughtful,
he sat in a machine that whirled quietly from left to right, up and
down. The picture quality was poor, it was a black-and-white film,
but clearly this was Tadeusz. Undoubtedly he had gone to the amusement
park to search for inspiration to his projects.
In
the same instant Sari and I were walking along the old streets. "Many
people come here for the sake of history. They expect to see things
dating back to the Keiser's time, but I'm more interested in the interplay
between the past and the present," I said, "Look at these
cafés and buildings, for instance. They are completely modern
but you can see the accumulation of tradition going back many generations."
At
the next bus stop we went to a double-decker bus and climbed upstairs.
There was no roof, so in the open air we had an unlimited view to
each direction. Our attention was directed to a fire engine going
to the same direction just before us. In the ladders there sat a number
of people who obviously had not paid for their ride. Some were comfortably
seated in the ladders, some had difficulties staying aboard. In any
case it looked like all of them had done the free ride before.
I
was in a daring mood, so I threw my backbag towards the fire engine.
One of the passengers there caught the bag. This was a young lady,
sitting on the ladders. As the traffic came to a halt, she threw the
bag back to me. But instantly I returned it.
The
traffic lights turned green. As the cars moved on I had my eyes fixed
on the bag, since it contained all my luggage, including my camera.
In
the next traffic lights I got my bag back. The unknown passenger waved
for goodbye, as the fire engine went to a different direction at the
next crossing.
Sari pointed out that the girl smiled curiously at me.
We
stepped out and walked along the streets of Berlin. Familiar stores
and restaurants were on both sides of the streets. We had been here
just recently.
We
popped into a bar where we hadn't been before. The stairs led us down
to a basement, which seemed like a real labyrinth of corridors with
doors at each end. One of the doors was wooden. Behind it we found
a public sauna.
In
the sauna dressing room an artist was drawing a poster. The poster
was unfinished, showing only the legs of a character. I paid attention
to the fact that there were no knees. Instead of these, there were
only straight lines. "What have I told you," Sari said,
"There's no reason to draw the knees when portraying a human
figure."
I
disagreed saying that the picture didn't look very realistic. Still
the image kept changing as the artist continued working on it. In
the end the picture was nicely finished, but in the place of the knees
there were metallic covers. Thus it was impossible to say whether
the knees were drawn with straight lines or not.
The
artist left the poster on the floor as he went out. All this time
he hadn't noticed us.
We
looked at the picture for a while. The lines were carefully drawn,
and I knew I wouldn't be able to draw that skillfully. I tried adding
some shading with a pen, until Sari suggested that we should go back
to Tadeusz's flat. "We have to call him first," I replied.
"It could well be that Tadeusz is not there or is otherwise engaged.
We can't just pop in unannounced saying we came for a visit."
Sari
had a different opinion. She said she wanted to go to Schönhauser
Allee right away. The issue being unresolved, she sat where she was
and didn't move. "We have to get out of here," I said, "The
sauna is not open, so were not supposed to be here."
Sari
protested and banged her head against the wall. She was almost hysterical
as she shouted that she didn't want to get out of Berlin. This was
her home and she didn't want to go back to Helsinki.
I
said I can't watch her behaving like that. I exited to another room
and started writing a text message to Tadeusz. I was a bit worried
about Sari, however, so I didn't send the SMS yet. Instead I went
back to the dressing room to see how Sari was doing. She had calmed
down.
We
got out of the sauna premises and climbed the stairs up. We were out
in the streets again in the grey decayed city of Berlin.
