Vic Socotra

16 May 2010

Dining Turkische

The plan was to dine in the Turkische fashion,but we didn’t.

It was the desire of my guide to have me dine on the most famous Döner in Berlin, which is the Dönerkapital of the known universe.

I was humbled. I had to ask what a “Döner” might be, since everyone except me in this chaotic but well-ordered city seem to know.

The cabbie had raved about it last night. Berliners have been dining on this for over two hundred years, before the Russians and us and all the other ills that have plagued this city.

Apparently a Döner Kebab is something that we would know in America as a Gyros, which is to day thinly sliced lamb cut off a conical roast and placed with sautéed veggies and a yoghurt-based sauce on a pita.

But then again, North America was have been colonized by the Greeks, the unhappy loser in the struggle over Byzantium. I have often been told about the problem with the Greeks and he Turks. It is about the capital of Greece, and it no longer occurs to the Turks that there is a problem with it.

For the Greeks, the problem is that the capital is not Athens, but Constantinople.

No hard feelings on that one, but I can’t get there from here, Empire rise and fall, Ours will, too.. Manhattan used to belong to someone else, sold cheap, and you have to move on. The Germans have a right to a Turkish connection. The old Amber Road ran by river from the Baltic down to Constantinople, and was part of the fuel that drove the Prussians east across the spare forests toward Russia, an eight hundred year march of expansion that ended badly in more than reversal for a lot of people.

I would include Berlin in that one, but I saw a sadder place today that did not get the fiscal shot in the arm that came to the restored capital did.

Bless Potsdam. Poor town of such history. My associate and I tried to tour the San Soucii palace of Great Frederick, and actually got there, but the chill drenching rain sloshed us off. Still, we made at least the nearest cultural relicts, the Nikolai Church (Nicolaikirke) and the former Rathaus.

When you get out of the Potsdam Bahnhof, the first thing you see, besides the rain and wind that folds up the cheap umbrella you bought at Ostbahnhof, is the tower of the

Potsdam died in April of ’45, as most things did hereabouts. It is normally a month of hope. One of the original reports of the late-stage bombing campaign went like this:

Report 218. (Gold Coast) Squadron

(Photo courtesy Her Majesty’s Government)

Bombing - POTSDAM
Summary. 24 aircraft were detailed and briefed for operations tonight, 23 attacked the primary, 1 was abortive owing to Rear Gunners intercomm. being unservicable. No cloud but huge pall of smoke. Intersection of lakes identified visually with red T.I.'s just South of it. P.F.F. marking good although some green T.I.'s fell in the South-Western lake, but were cancelled by the Master Bomber, whose instructions were good but faint at times through interference. Smoke and bombing right on Red T.I.'s, 4 fires spreading later into one conflagration with much smoke. Some cookies seen to burst in the town. 4 explosions including a large orange one with black smoke at approximately 22.57 hrs. Attack considered most successful. Moderate to intense heavy flak in barrage form bursting below aircraft. Numerous searchlights. 5 or 6 fighters seen, no combats.

The non-phlegmatic report from those who lived below was that the explosions could be heard 40 clicks away, if you happened to be living here in Berlin. Everything got blown to shit in town, though thank God the primary mission was not Frederick’s palace at Sans Soucci.

I can’t comment on the beauty of that place, since the bitter cold and rain led in trail of a German group that seemed to know what they were doing. They were being lectured on the pediment of the entrance to the church as we went inside, more to get warm and dry than anything else.

But it wound up like everything else in this part of the world. There is a hell of a story.

The old DDR is still there, no shit.

(Old and New in Potsdam. Photo Socotra)

Walking out of the Potsdam Hofbahnhof, the first thing you see is the awful Intourist-style Mercur Hotel. I have to be careful about expressing my opinions of the building, since the father of a good friend of mine who grew up near hear had a role in its internal construction. It is funny what freedom has done to everyone. I should have visited him at his home in what was denied territory in my life. Or was. Shoot.

IN this morning’s Potsdam we walked against the wind toward the plaza where the reconstructed renaissance gate structure that had been blown to pieces in 1945 is rebuilt. It fronts a magnificent Frederick-era obélisque that the GDR reconstructed in the ‘70s.

Potsdam was cut-off from the West and tourism for more than forty years, and it is still jarring to see what needs to be put right, Adjacent is a holiday-inn-style composite structure common to both East and West that weeps with rust and corrosion.

Reconstruction is coming, now after 20 years of reunion.

The Nikolaikirke looked like this after the raid:

It stayed much like that until 1960. Things are better now, though they still find things like this in the structure:

It is a privilege to walk these streets as a free man. Who were the beasts?

We all were. Did these cities have to die in order for us to do so? Oder genau. But it still gives one significant pause.

But looking on what has been brought back a such cost one cannot help but wonder if braver people could have stopped the madness before it began.

We gave up. I can't travel back in time, but I expect I would have done just what Franklin Roosevelt did. What a frigging waste.

A pal sent me something so poignant that it pierced me to my very soul. It was written by a smart German by the name of Albrecht Haushofer, a figure of the German Resistance we don’t talk about much. He was an awesome intellectual, originally one of the first proponents of the concept of “Geopolitics” that the Nazis seized on to justify the regime.

(Albrecht Haushofer)

My pal encouraged me to go and visit the site of his execution, which is just north of the HauptBahnhoff in the Mitte of town. Albrecht had been used by the Fascists, and he paid for it. His poems waiting for execution were saved. The most poignant is from a couple days before the Reds took the city, and before he was shot by the Gestapo. The original is pretty poignant, but I can’t get the nuance, which is apparently pretty interesting. In English, you could read it like this:

“Guilt”

I am guilty, But not in the way you think. I should have earlier recognized my duty; I should have more sharply called evil evil; I reined in my judgment too long. I did warn, But not enough, and clear; And today I know what I was guilty of….”

I thought about that when we got back to Kreuzberg, thourhgly chilled and busted by wind and rain though two cheap umbrellas.

After the Turkische place was too crowded, we wandered on in search of dinner. My associate had a scheme of finding the right thing through continued wandering. She is right, of course. We found a place called Jolesch, with an Austrian bent, and that is what we wound up doing.

The food was dynamite, and the Merlot recommended with my schnitzel was superb.

Interestingly (or not) we wandered in the search past a church with a tall spire. It was unusual not in proportion, an old tower gathered in the bosom of new brick. What was left was a spire and no church. OK, they fixed it.

Yeah, you know the old story. Before and after.