Dateline: Berlin
Last night Bob and I visisted his friend Torsten in Leipzig, they have this really nice loft-like apartment northwest of central Leipzig. Bob and I had spent the afternoon walking around some of his old neighborhoods in the lightly falling snow, and we saw the Thomaskirch where Bach's bones lie. We had coffee, cakes and hung out with Torsten, his wife and two kids – 4 and 6, very cute speaking german which I of course didn't understand, but I'd utter an occassional Ja or Neh just to play along. At one point, however, the little girl was talking about Dinos (dinosaurs) which I was very proud to have figured out before Bob did. She was saying the Dinos would fall into the cup at the table, and Bob said it wouldn't fit, and I improvised "kleine dinos" which was a big hit for a brief moment. The high point of my german-speaking career so far.
We took the train into Berlin and got in about 10 pm. Bob and I walked from the Ostbahnhof to the U-Bahn station at Warschauerstrasse, and parted ways – he to catch a night train to Liege, and I to find my hostel. I had bit of an unpleasant experience on the U-Bahn – I'd bought a short-trip ticket (Bob had said that's what I should buy and I didn't look at the directions carefully), and these two men were inspecting tickets on the crowded car, and pulled me off. I explained "ich nicht sprache.." or something like that, they switched to broken english, told me my ticket was invalid, and said I had to pay 40 euros. I suspect my ticket was, in fact, invalid – but the whole thing with the two men smelled like a scam.
They had very official-looking identification cards, and one guy had an electronic hand-held gadget that looked rather legitimate. But there were things about their style of presentation that struck me as very unofficial: they said I owed 40 euros fine for riding with an invalid ticket, but made no move to collect information about who I was – until I began to resist. If there's one thing officials always do, it's fill out lots of forms and documents. When I refused to pay, saying it seemed unreasonable or something like that, they said they'd have to call the police. The one man got out a cell and called the police (although his dialog – in german so I understood very little – again seemed short on the sort of detail one expect from officialdom). Maybe the call was just staged? Anyway, then they began sayng that when the police got there, the fine would be 390 euros.
"Really," I said. The whole thing stank – I was nervous, alone on the U-Bahn platform with the two men, but there were people on the other side. I didn't think they'd assault me, and of course, I was only half-confident that they weren't for real. But I figured worst-case scenario, I'd end up explaining my refusal to comply with the men to someone in a german police station. There was a point when we just stood there, for about 5 minutes. Nothing said. That was the moment when the one man finally asked to see my passport – which I surrendered to him only when he handed me his "ID card" – which as I said did look quite official. But even then, he made no move to record the information from my passport, and, more interestingly, he made no move to look for my date-of-entry stamp. Very unburocratic.
Another 5 minutes of silence, a train came and left. We were "waiting for the police." Then, suddenly, the one man turns to me and says (approximately), "you seem an honest man, sorry for the bother. Just go out and buy a valid ticket – you can be on your way." I'm almost certain it was a scam.
When I got to kurfuerstenstrasse station and got out to find my hostel, I was even more alarmed by the desolateness of the neighborhood – only prostitutes and shady-looking characters standing under overhangs sheltering from the falling snow. It was like 11.30 at night. I walked nervously around the block to where my hostel was, and was very relieved I'd found it. Things are much better this morning – I walked exploring, up to Potsdamerplatz and thence to Checkpoint Charlie (which I found rather by accident). Now I'm in a Starbucks on Friedrichstrasse in what I think is the former East. No relic of communism here, certainly.