Malte – acrossberlin

He hated the Schäferberg. He really really hated it. He liked cycling and he liked the idea of cycling between Berlin and Potsdam, but this hill was too much. It was more than a hill, it was the longest slope the devil could have thought of. No matter which city you started, you always had to climb this torturing slope. 44 m in 2 km along a boring straight major road. Not even the forest on either side of the road could distract him from this eternal seeming slope from hell.

But he was gratefull to be able to commute between the two cities without having to answer any questions about his whereabout, without controlls, without fearing to be shot dead by the boarder guards.

In all those years, he had never stopped to look at the communication tower on top of it, even though it was one of the highest buildings in Berlin. Now, it looked quite impressive, dooming over the hill, the trees and the little road leading to its entrance. The entrance was closed, looked as closed as the border had been for 28 years.

When the tower had been built, after the wall which enclosed West-Berlin, it had been a connection to the Bundesrepublik, a radio link to home for many inhabitants. Malte wondered what it had been like to live in this outmost corner of the so-called free world, which had never been that free either. Certainly not in this corner. He had an uneasy feeling.

Since he couldn´t enter the area, he walked down the road, smiling about the reflector posts which appeard out of place in the middle of the wood. He crossed the main road to Potsdam and entered a residential neighbourhood. Were the houses here expensive? Some of them looked rather posh, but who wanted to live here?

He had been shocked when he learned about the nuclear reactor. Research or not, he didn´t like the idea of it. He had been afraid of atomic power since his childhood, since Chernobyl, and he still was.

It was a ghostly area to him. Everything was quiet, no one on the streets, not even cars. The first living being he saw was a dog. He was relieved to see it´s owner walking behind it.

He was even more relieved when he found out, that he couldn´t enter the area of the reactor either. Despite his fear, he would have liked to see more of the architecture and the safety measures. But at least, not everybody, not every inconspicious looking terrorist could get too close. Feeling queasy he smirked at his own faulty logic.

Malte had never been here before. It had been raining when he arrived, but it was neither cold nor windy. In fact, it was a rather nice day for being outside, considering the time of year. Nevertheless, there was hardly anybody on the streets. Malte didn´t realize this now, but he would be overwhelmed by all the pedestrians when he returned to Prenzlauer Berg two hours later.

Turning west, a spacious square followed by a wide boulevard lay before him. In the distance, there was a man with a hoodie in the middle of a bench reading a newspaper, looking somehow displaced and self-assured at the same time. Malte himself was feeling insecure when he passed the man. Everything except himself seemed so strongly to belong here, that he couldn´t help but feel like an intruder. Which he was. Even though the houses reminded him of his childhood, he had never had that much money. Nor had he ever known anybody who had. Or at least he had never been friends with anybody this wealthy. Everything looked so dignified.

Or didn´t it? In summer, he wouldn´t have been able to make the houses out at all. They were all standing tall and solemn on little hills within wild but tamed gardens behind fences and hedges. Dark green rhododendrons were looming before the windows, dark wood themselves, green and brown, exuding nobility.

He expected distinguished old people to live here. Retired after a lifetime of decent and very well paid work. But the only people he met were young mothers with their infants, smiling widely at him as if he wasn´t an intruder at all. Welcoming. Happy smiles. Young adults without any worries, he thought. Or just nice people.

On the other side of the station he could hardly cross the street, so many cars were following each other, the true inhabitants of the neighborhood. Malte felt confirmed in his view of the world.

A famous singer-songwriter had pictured himself in a car on his last tour poster. Malte had been bewildered, admiring the songwriter for his leftish pacifistic lyrics. A car! In these times. When Malte read, that the singer-songwriter lived in Frohnau he accepted the car to be a sign for the famous singer to be normal, unpretentious.

And Malte longed for this normality to be normal again.