I went to Berlin for the first time last October ... perhaps it was a place I had avoided, my Mother is was born in Koln married my Father who was part of the British Forces on the Rhine ... The marriage lasted up until my second week in secondary school then my Mother abruptly decided to leave my father , he was at work , she packed a suitcase ,told my older brother who was about to start his second year of university, to tell our Father that she had left him ... she took me with her to her sisters in Tonbridge. I stayed there with her for about a year until she once again made an abrupt decision to send me on a train back to my Father in Newcastle. I didnt see her for another 10 years. To speak of my Mother at home was verboten or at least to speak of her in a positive light. The connections to my German blood line were severed externally, I forgot how to speak the language or reach into that nations pre Nazi cultural heritage. So the notion of visiting the Berlin (which had crossed my mind) always fell away from my imaginings before they could take hold. Strange to be catching up on time ... a mixture of embarrassment and almost a sense of shame for not have visited earlier , when the wall came down .
So there I am at the airport in the departure lounge and have so far refused to buy a copy of Hans Fallada's Alone in Berlin ... I can be quite censorious over such matters , reading too much into something that I had not read.
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