Destination: Berlin

In my research schedule, the big cities are the daunting hurdles. Berlin is not only big, it’s changing fast, and I am personally committed to having a great chapter on it in my book. Compared with Berlin, Munich is now stale strudel…flat beer. Berlin is it. It’s not only emerging…it’s cheap. And for anyone into 20th-century tumult, Berlin puts you in hog heaven.

I have a powerful image of Hitler and his right-hand man, Albert Speer (his architect), poring over plans for postwar Berlin…built up in a way to make Paris look quaint. Of course, by 1945, the city was in ruins, Hitler was identified by his dental records, and Speer was in jail writing his memoirs (“Inside the Third Reich,” which provided me with my best Third Reich images).

With my last few visits, I get this queasy feeling that Speer’s vision is coming true. The latest example: the massive new Hauptbahnhof (central train station) — the only one in Europe with major lines merging at right angles. Toss in 80 stores and local subway lines — and it’s a city in itself.

The other strong feeling I get in Berlin is that it’s a victory celebration for capitalism. Like Romans keeping a few vanquished barbarians in cages for locals to spit at, capitalism and the West flaunt victory in Berlin. Slices of the Berlin Wall hang like scalps at the gate to the Sony Center (at Potsdamer Platz, the biggest office park I’ve ever been in).

A sleek SAS Radisson hotel now stands on the place where the old leading hotel of East Berlin once stood. I remember staying there during the Cold War, and a West German 5-Mark coin changed on the black market would get me drinks all night. Now five euros is lucky to get me a beer, and the lobby of the Radisson hosts an eight-story-tall exotic fish tank the size of a grain silo with an elevator zipping scenically right up the middle. Next door, a little DDR Museum is filled with mostly East German tourists rummaging through the nostalgia on display from dreary life under communism.

Across the street, statues of Marx and Lenin (nicknamed “the Pensioners” by locals) look wistfully at the local Space Needle-type TV tower East Berlin built under communism. The best thing locals could say about it back then was, “It’s so tall that if it falls, we’ll have an elevator to freedom.”

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The victory party rages on at Checkpoint Charlie. With every visit, I remember my spooky 1971 visit — when tour buses were emptied at the border so mirrors could be rolled under the bus to see if anyone was trying to escape with us.

Thirty-six years later, Checkpoint Charlie is a capitalist freak show. Lowlife characters sell fake bits of the wall, WWII-vintage gas masks, and DDR medals. Two actors dress as American soldiers posing for tourists between big American flags and among sandbags at the rebuilt checkpoint — like the goofy centurions at the Roman Colosseum. Across the street at “Snack Point Charlie,” someone sipping a Coke said, “When serious turns to kitsch, you know it’s over.”

Brandenburg Gate faces Pariser Platz — the ultimate address in Berlin. It’s a poignant place. Within about 100 yards you have: the vast new “Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe”; a memorial to the first victims of Hitler (96 men, the German equivalent of congressmen, who spoke out in the name of democracy against his rule in the early 1930s and ended up some of the first killed in his concentration camps); the new American Embassy (still under construction, with such high security that visitors will enter through a tunnel via a park across a busy highway); a big Starbucks; one of the “ghost” subway stations that went unused through the Cold War — now looking like a 1930s time warp; the balcony where Michael Jackson dangled his baby (according to local guides, the sight of greatest interest for most American tourists); the glass dome capping the bombed-out Reichstag (capitol building) where on the rooftop on May Day 1945 Russian troops quelled a furious Nazi last stand; and hills nearby created entirely of the rubble of a city bombed nearly flat 60 years ago.

The newest addition to the neighborhood is a Kennedy museum filled with JFK lore, such as the handwritten note he referred to with the phonetics for his famous Berlin speech. As I read his note, I could hear his voice: “eesh been ein Bear-lee-ner.”

Thinking of the amazing story of Berlin — Speer’s vision, Hitler’s burning body, the last stand on the rooftop, the communists, the heroic American airlift, Kennedy’s speech, Reagan’s “tear down this wall” speech, the challenge of reunification, and the gleaming city visitors marvel at today, I hopped into a cab.

I asked the driver if he was a Berliner. When he turned to me, I realized he was Turkish. He said, “I’ve lived here 31 years. If Kennedy, after one day, could say ‘Ich bin ein Berliner’ — then I guess I can say I am a Berliner, too.”

I’ll be honest. As a travel writer I have an agenda. I want to help Americans better understand our world by communicating with it through travel. So I’ve got to share something that’s been troubling me lately. All over Europe I hear how the US ambassadors to various countries are buffoons when it comes to understanding the intricacies of the countries in which they serve. When being interviewed on TV, it’s American ambassadors who require a translator to speak for them. Of course, Democratic and Republican presidents alike give posts as favors to big supporters. But President Bush seems to take the cake in choosing ill-suited ambassadors. To non-Americans, this symbolizes our country’s current contempt for the notion of talking with the rest of the world.

Here in Berlin, Clinton’s ambassador, John Kornblum, is well remembered. He spoke German, went to festivals, and enjoyed mixing with the locals. Now retired in Berlin, Kornblum is still active in the community and a household name among Berliners. He invited average Americans living in Berlin to famously fun Fourth of July parties each summer. These expats no longer hear from the current ambassador.

President Bush’s first ambassador, Dan Coats, famously said that he had no idea why he was in Germany, since he had no experience, spoke no German, and had roughly no concept of what made the country tick. Locals tell me America’s current ambassador, William Timken, speaks no German, and his favorite Berlin restaurant is Tony Roma’s. Timken caused a buzz when he had guests at his Fourth of July party repeat the Pledge of Allegiance.

All stand: “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all.”

With their ugly recent history, Berliners aren’t big into pledges of allegiance. Their current oath is relatively mild: “I give my vow that I will serve the Federal Republic of Germany truly, and will bravely defend the laws and freedoms of the German people.”

Berliners who were children in the 1930s recall the Hitler Youth Pledge of Allegiance: “We carry the flag forward into the battle of the youth. It stands and is raised and blazes to the heavens like fire in the sky. We are sworn to be true to the flag for all eternity. Whosoever shall desecrate the flag will be cursed for all eternity. The flag is our belief in God, People, and Country. Whoever seeks to destroy it must first take our lives and prosperity. We care for the flag as a mother cares for her child. The flag is our future, our honor, and the source of our courage.”

Their fathers, most certainly in the military (and very likely killed defending this pledge), held out their arms and said: “I swear to God, this holy oath that I will devote my absolute obedience to the Leader of the German Empire and people, the supreme commander of the German Wehrmacht, Adolf Hitler, and I, as a courageous soldier, am prepared to lay down my life to fulfill this oath.”

Today, Germans fly their flag rarely outside of soccer games, and are most comfortable pledging their allegiance to a good frothy beer.

In the last few days, seeing 1945 photos of cold and hungry locals wandering through piles of bricks that were once grand cities, I’ve wondered what would cause a people to fight literally to the bitter end. Perhaps a good strong holy oath of allegiance.