Berliner Luft is a popular peppermint-flavoured shot downed in the city’s bars. It also means Berlin Air and is a colloquialism for the city’s spirit of unfettered freedom and rebellious abandon. Given what this city went through, reduced to rubble by the furious Russians at the end of world war two, and then rent in two for more than 40 years during the Cold War, it’s not surprising that after the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, the populace needed to let off steam.
As friends who grew up in army families have also noted, it’s sobering to reflect that the way of life enjoyed by our parents’ generation now appears largely out of reach to their children
The city became Germany’s pressure release valve, famed for its annual techno Love Parade, weekend-long raves – starting at 7 a.m. on a Sunday morning is a particularly popular slot, apparently – relaxed alcohol laws and open drinking on the streets, kinky parties, and more. A unified Berlin in party mode became the template.
During my most recent visit, though, I’ve been struck by how the city remains divided. Not between West and East, clearly, but between gentrified global Berlin and traditional Germanic Berlin. I got a taste of this as soon as I got off my flight with RyanAir (one of the unsung heroes of getting us free of lockdown culture). Gone are the three cosy old airports – where you could get a nice pilsner beer and currywurst mit pommes straight outside the terminal door – replaced by a huge soulless monstrosity of an airport. You feel like you could be anywhere in the world (and hence nowhere).
Deep in the city, you encounter a similar thing. Innumerable burger joints, Asian restaurants, card-only-payment Portuguese cafés, wine bars – then more wine bars. You can have to work hard to find a bar selling German beer and traditional fare. But when you do, you are rewarded. It’s like going right back to the 1990s (I spent much of my childhood in Germany, when the British Army of the Rhine, or BAOR, was here, crashing out of barracks on massive mobilisation exercises; a time when, somewhat ironically given the threat of Russian invasion, the world was generally all right and men and women flirted).
People are smoking inside. Bar staff tally each of your beers on a piece of paper. You don’t have to pay after each is served as if you are going to do a runner (nor are you expected to tip with each drink, as in the US and which still drives me nuts after years of trying to get used to and justify it). The pad and pen is a small detail but feels more convivial. You can still spot a mullet. There are even phones mounted on walls! The heart warms.
In one such bar, over our glasses of Schultheiss Pilsner, I got talking to a guy who had grown up in East Berlin around the same time I was growing up in West Germany. His family’s apartment was close enough to the wall that he could see over it and watch West Berlin life go by and the customers entering the shops that didn’t exist where he lived. But when the wall came down and he scampered over for a look, his first reaction was that beyond the abundance of merchandise, West Berlin didn’t seem that different or much better. ‘West Berlin was marooned in East German remember,’ he told me. ‘So everything was more difficult to get and harder to do.’
Amid today’s gentrification and smart shops, it’s easy to forget the extraordinary history this city and what its stoic people have been through, which engraved itself into the hearts of innumerable Brits through 75 years of BAOR presence. I wouldn’t be writing this were it not for the date nights my parents – a British Army dentist and nurse – took in East Berlin after they met. Set against a potential third world war, an agreement between the allies and Russians cordially put aside the nuclear standoff to permit officers to cross the divided city.
At the sight of a mess-kit-clad British officer with his beau in what was basically a ball gown, Russian and East German soldiers threw up smart salutes. In restaurants, the resident band struck up the British national anthem as my future parents came through the door. The absurd romance of it all had to end before midnight, when Cinderella-like they scampered back through Checkpoint Charlie to avoid causing a diplomatic crisis (as befell a military chaplain, my father once told me; let’s hope it was just too much Schultheiss in East Berlin that made him miss the curfew).
BAOR became the UK’s largest overseas presence, a home away from home for hundreds of thousands of servicemen and women and their families over several generations. Eventually, there were 120 British bases in the two main German states of Lower Saxony and North Rhine Westphalia.
Germany was a popular posting. It offered a quality of life and opportunities that many Brits – especially if you were a soldier from a working-class background – had never encountered: sailing in the Baltic, skiing in the mountains, summer holidays beside Bavarian lakes. Life in the garrison towns offered sporting competitions, fairs and military music shows, alongside the rich panoply of German culture to explore. Friendships and marriages were made with locals and many Brits chose to make Germany a permanent home.
As friends who grew up in army families have also noted, it’s sobering to reflect that the way of life enjoyed by our parents’ generation now appears largely out of reach to their children. Those trying to make their own families face spiralling costs, an absurd property market and what I think it’s fair to say is a less-than-child-friendly culture these days.
After the wall came down – with the more benign cousin of today’s callous capitalism the victor – we took a summer trip to Berlin in the ever-dependable family BMW (it looked like an East German Trabbi compared to modern cars today). I remember sitting in the back listening to Madonna’s latest album on my Walkman as the bright energetic Berlin streets slipped by the car window. Besides the Brandenburg Gate, we bought giant furry Russian winter hats and military cap badges and chunks of the wall being sold on lines of tables.
Happy days. The global standoff was over, with us coming out on top. How did we let that slip through our fingers?
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