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Day 08 - A moment, in great detail
1996. Berlin. A fine art faculty trip, lodging in the building-site jungle in the East. We'd been told not to worry, that everyone in Germany spoke English as a second language, but this part of the city preferred Russian. We braved the local supermarket armed with only a mixture of broken phrases and hopeful mime, negotiating for strange bread and meats and boxes of rough wed wine. (The wine had eaten through the cardboard by the following morning.)
There were only a handful of first years on the trip, and a few of us were adopted by a group of second year girls. I was still coming out of my shy phase at this point, but had already learned the art of staying up way beyond the point where sensible people gave up and passed out. Eventually there only two of us left, mixing cheap and nasty airport vodka with the even cheaper and nastier cardboard wine. She was punky-angry, and had so many stories, and I was envious and awed. Back then I never thought of girls that way, so it never occurred to me that this was a massive girl-crush; I just sat up listening to her adventures (and occasionally fabricating my own) until dawn.
And of course, when the coach arrived next morning to take everyone on a tour of Berlin galleries, we were both dead to the world.
When we realised we'd been left behind, there were two choices. One was to accept that we'd messed up and missed out, and hang around the hostel until the early risers returned triumphant, overflowing with art and culture and success. The other was to arm ourselves with the day's itinerary, a simple tourist map of Berlin, and our limited knowledge of the public transit system (there was a tram, and it headed west) and set out in pursuit.
And of course there were navigational mistakes and mis-steps, and wrong buses and right buses that went to the wrong places, and being told off in German for jaywalking, and the closest we got to the coach was possibly seeing it disappear round a corner. Or maybe not. There are a lot of coaches in Berlin.
(And yes, we could have just picked one gallery off the list and gone there. But that would have been missing the point.)
We made it to the final gallery, right on the outskirts of the city, just as the sun was setting. It was long since closed, but by now we were running on sheer stubbornness and why-stop-now? And that may explain why, when we saw the treeline up ahead, we walked straight past the gallery, and kept on walking until the road was lost to sight.
The world was caught in a low purple twilight, and the silence felt alive. The trees formed caverns, and pathways, and whispered secrets overhead. The forest (and it was definitely a forest, not a wood) felt huge, and old, and watchful, but also peaceful. It's tempting now to describe it as something out of a fairy story, but that would be underselling it: it was simply itself.
Then all of a sudden a lumbering figure appeared, and we became suddenly aware of the more human dangers of being all alone in strange and dimly lit woodlands. It was only an old man walking his dog, but the spell had been broken. We climbed over a couple of fences, peered in the darkened windows of the gallery (it was a matter of principle), then set about getting ourselves back to the hostel.
And now, I too had a story. '1996. Berlin...'
Topic list is here
(And I found out later that the forest was the 3000 hectare Grunewald Forest, large enough to conceal all kinds of gingerbread cottages and wolves and bears and small girls skipping merrily in bright red cloaks. I always forget that Germany still has its deep old forests. I need to go back there some time soon, and hunt for fairytales...)
1996. Berlin. A fine art faculty trip, lodging in the building-site jungle in the East. We'd been told not to worry, that everyone in Germany spoke English as a second language, but this part of the city preferred Russian. We braved the local supermarket armed with only a mixture of broken phrases and hopeful mime, negotiating for strange bread and meats and boxes of rough wed wine. (The wine had eaten through the cardboard by the following morning.)
There were only a handful of first years on the trip, and a few of us were adopted by a group of second year girls. I was still coming out of my shy phase at this point, but had already learned the art of staying up way beyond the point where sensible people gave up and passed out. Eventually there only two of us left, mixing cheap and nasty airport vodka with the even cheaper and nastier cardboard wine. She was punky-angry, and had so many stories, and I was envious and awed. Back then I never thought of girls that way, so it never occurred to me that this was a massive girl-crush; I just sat up listening to her adventures (and occasionally fabricating my own) until dawn.
And of course, when the coach arrived next morning to take everyone on a tour of Berlin galleries, we were both dead to the world.
When we realised we'd been left behind, there were two choices. One was to accept that we'd messed up and missed out, and hang around the hostel until the early risers returned triumphant, overflowing with art and culture and success. The other was to arm ourselves with the day's itinerary, a simple tourist map of Berlin, and our limited knowledge of the public transit system (there was a tram, and it headed west) and set out in pursuit.
And of course there were navigational mistakes and mis-steps, and wrong buses and right buses that went to the wrong places, and being told off in German for jaywalking, and the closest we got to the coach was possibly seeing it disappear round a corner. Or maybe not. There are a lot of coaches in Berlin.
(And yes, we could have just picked one gallery off the list and gone there. But that would have been missing the point.)
We made it to the final gallery, right on the outskirts of the city, just as the sun was setting. It was long since closed, but by now we were running on sheer stubbornness and why-stop-now? And that may explain why, when we saw the treeline up ahead, we walked straight past the gallery, and kept on walking until the road was lost to sight.
The world was caught in a low purple twilight, and the silence felt alive. The trees formed caverns, and pathways, and whispered secrets overhead. The forest (and it was definitely a forest, not a wood) felt huge, and old, and watchful, but also peaceful. It's tempting now to describe it as something out of a fairy story, but that would be underselling it: it was simply itself.
Then all of a sudden a lumbering figure appeared, and we became suddenly aware of the more human dangers of being all alone in strange and dimly lit woodlands. It was only an old man walking his dog, but the spell had been broken. We climbed over a couple of fences, peered in the darkened windows of the gallery (it was a matter of principle), then set about getting ourselves back to the hostel.
And now, I too had a story. '1996. Berlin...'
Topic list is here
(And I found out later that the forest was the 3000 hectare Grunewald Forest, large enough to conceal all kinds of gingerbread cottages and wolves and bears and small girls skipping merrily in bright red cloaks. I always forget that Germany still has its deep old forests. I need to go back there some time soon, and hunt for fairytales...)
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