Berlin, A Second Home

In 1999 Ann and I were in Northern Germany for the last time. It was close to Berlin, so we made the trip to see old friends--Tom, Wolfgang and Giesela. Ann and I stayed at Tom with Tom Still while we exchanged with Gustav Heinemann Gesammtschule. Tom and Giesela were the first teachers from the school who stayed with us while I was a German teacher in Malad. Giesela only came one time, but that exchange that Tom and Giesela supervised was one of the magical ones. It was a time when German students thanked us for what we tried to do for them, and as long as Tom did the exchanges, that attitude continued. When I visited Berlin a few times with student groups long after we stayed in other cities, it always felt like home when I arrived there. It was like home. Only two cities in Germany were like that for me, Berlin and Dillingen, a little city in Southern Germany.

The picture at the left was a piece of modern art, but what they named it shows the Berlin sense of humor. They called it the Wasserklops or water dumpling. The way they used language to express something funny is something I will always miss. A Molle is a slang term for a beer, and Mollenfriedhof or beer cemetery is what they called a beer belly. I find that funny. The people of Berlin were outspoken. Their city showed a tendency for creativity. There were music clubs that offered everything from Elvis impersonators to incredible jazz music, and art museums there were incredible.

Travel was also easy. They had city trains, subways, bus lines. It was not difficult to travel from one part of the city to the next.

That final trip to Berlin was a sad one. All of us had aged. Ann and I hoped to see Giesela, but she suffered from MS at the time, and she died a few years later. She told us that she wanted us to remember her like she was. Ann and I never understood that until after I fought cancer.

It would be the last time we would visit Tom and Wolfgang. By the time we returned to Germany, the exchange site was in Stuttgart. But I will always remember the friendships we made there.