The Battle of Berlin

Route: Arrendorf to Finnentrop by bike. Finnentrop to Berlin by train via Dortmund, Essen, Hannover.

Distance: about 560 km.

Camped once again in the frozen drip of the Western German forests, I awoke to the chime of a text message on my phone. I knew she was gone.
When the light finally broke through the mist, I shuddered awake to my last day on the bike. Going through the usual routine of trying in vain to dry my damp clothes under the blower in the bathroom I realized that I was dog tired. Tired of living on the ground in a foreign country, tired of sharing dirty campsite bathrooms with weird middle aged people, tired of getting lost in cities with road nets resembling spaghetti, and tired of following grandpa’s path when it was obviously leading back home.
Rousting out, I slowly packed up the bike for the last time. The rear wheel was shot, it’s bearings loose and its rim bent hopelessly out of round. I threw away a lot of the useless junk I’d managed to acquire on my journey from Normandy; tourist maps, sales slips, plastic bags and silverware. Even with the bad rear wheel, I noticed that the bike was much lighter for the first time in ages as I pedaled down the steep hill leading down into Attendorn.
After aimlessly riding around the small town seeking a train station with a person in it who may be able to explain the intricate German rail system, I elected to bike to Finnentrop, the town I had been through twice the day before and the local rail hub. Besides, it would be a great little spin through the forest past a majestic castle in the trees and through a little valley covered with ponds and rivers; a fitting final trek through the past before rejoining the 21rst century.
When I got to the river under the castle, I had a strange feeling that I was leaving home for the last time. My thoughts turned to Grandma as I rolled a fast downhill and pondered what would happen if I hit a transition from pavement to gravel at 45 kph. Nothing did. I wondered if she was with me.
I continued slowly through the woods, savoring these last moments of freedom in the wilderness. Once I arrived in Finnentrop, I knew that my path would be dictated by train schedules, money, and civilization. The 15 kilometers of dirt, rock and paved trail passed all too quickly underneath my tires and I soon found myself boarding a train to Hagen.
Once you figure it out, the German rail system is truly a marvel. Beyond the usual items of praise like trains running exactly on time, and stations generally being clean and safe, I was blown away by the special cycle car! It’s a whole car on the train with the usual passenger seats removed and fitted out with wheel cages for stowing your bike safely and easily. Small folding jump seats line the opposite side of the car for those riders, like me, who don’t want to leave their bikes and sit with the civilians.
In any case, once your bike is secure, you are free to go anywhere on the train you want. More importantly, you can get anywhere you want in Germany with a bike and a train ticket. I had just boarded in a true backwater the likes of which would not have seen regular rail service in America since the McKinley Administration, and I was headed for Berlin. Imagine trying to New York with a bike from Montana.
The landscape flashed by the window. Soon the forest was replaced with grassy hills, then by cement smoke stacks and graffiti covered walls. It was time to change trains in Hagen. I wrestled the bike down the stairs, through the little corridor, and back up to the platform on track 6.
Once aboard my first transfer, a much bigger and nicer train than the little red regional I just debarked, I stood along with my bike and saw the urban decay of the Ruhr Industrial area replaced by grassy hills once again. Rolling plains soon replaced the hills with little farms settled on them like tiny blankets on an ocean of green grass. All too soon however the smokestacks of Hannover replaced the farms of the Central German Plain, and it was time to change trains once again.
The final train to Berlin had a much bigger and more spacious bicycle car complete with a row of larger folding seats where I could lay back and watch the pictures flash by the window frame. Hannover receded into memory as the flat plains became the dominant terrain feature, only broken here and there by stands of young cedar forest. In the distance, in almost every direction, were tall pole-mounted windmill generators lazily spinning in the breeze like patches of metallic dandelions.
Minus the windmills, all of this would have looked familiar to Grandpa as he speed northeast in his jeep from town to town, city to city, and finally in leaps covering distances of hundreds of miles in a day. After the splitting of the last German resistance in the west with the collapse of the Ruhr Pocket in April 1945, the 7th Armored took in over 113,000 prisoners of war. In a lot of cases, the Germans raced west to get away from the advancing Soviet army, so they could surrender to us. They knew as American POW’s they would be treated fed, housed, processed and treated according to the Geneva Conventions.
As Grandpa continued north toward the Baltic Sea coast near Hamburg, the war for us became a race toward the Soviets. We were trying to get to the sea before them, and secure as much of Western Germany as possible before the end of hostilities. One of the notable missions run during this period was a dash of over 40 miles into German territory made by the 87th Cavalry Recon Squadron, another unit in the 7th Armored. This was the fastest way to contact the Soviets, the thus keep them on the east bank of the Elbe.
Finally, in early May 1945, the main body of the 7th Armored contacted the bulk of the Soviet army northeast of Hamburg. Grandpa spent VE day in Badow, a little town in that area just about 30 miles from the coast. In his letters, he writes that “the Russians seem a gay, childish bunch”, but that they “must also be ferocious fighters” to have “whipped” the Germans like they did. He doesn’t write about any impending sense of confrontation with them, everyone was simply happy that the war was over.
As I stood watching the scenery, a plump German man in a suit came into the car and said hello. I said hi back and we stood awkwardly in silence for a while as we contemplated how to bridge the language barrier. In very broken German I asked him where he was from. In just as broken English, he said “The most beautiful City in Germany! And, the oldest!” He pointed ahead indicating the next stop on a sign over the door which read something like Hoogeburg.
“All of this was British”, he told me in a booming voice while sweeping his arms about him in an arc around the train car. I looked confused. “In the war.” He said by way of explanation. He must have assumed that it was the only reason why an American would be on this train to Berlin.
“Of course,” he smiled, “I wasn’t there.” Just then, the brakes hit and the train came to a squealing stop. He said goodbye, and squeezed through the door ending the odd encounter. He was right of course because the whole section north of Dusseldorf was occupied by the British after the war, but it was the troops of the 7th Armored that had spearheaded the advance and taken it from the Germans. It was paid for with American blood.
Coming into Berlin, the trees were again replaced by pole-mounted lights; the flat countryside by flat rectangular buildings. The Teutonic computer voice rendered in female came over the intercom announcing stations in German and broken English. “Berlin Spandau.”, “Berlin HBF”. It was time to get off. Wrenching the bike from it’s home in the cycle car, I lowered in onto the platform and was soon standing in a dazzling contemporary train station four levels above the street. I was surrounded by grey concrete with polished metal hardware, and a huge metal-framed glass enclosure covering the entire four levels. It began far below me on the cobblestone street and extended in a gigantic arch over the mega-station. It was like standing in a 21rst century cathedral.
Having no idea where to go, and surrounded by rushing people for the first time since leaving New York, I stood dumbfounded by civilization. Mom was calling me about flight details to Seattle and my contact lenses were glazed over and sticky from 12 hours of struggle to get here. I suddenly felt guilty for not biking here and I wanted to take it all back. All the kilometers, all the hours, and all of the days, all of the way, back to the beginning in Cherbourg where I started out with wide dreams and a living Grandmother. But I couldn’t. It was done. I was in Berlin.

Farina and Inez

I was met by Farina at Alexanderplatz Station in Central Berlin. She walked up, hugged me as a long lost friend, and introduced me to the petite blonde standing beside her.
“This is Inez, she is my best friend from Duesberg.”
“Actually, I am hers but she isn’t mine.” Inez said with a wry grin while Farina pretended to pout.
“So, you guys are roommates I take it?” I chimed in. They both sighed and looked at each other like a middle-aged married couple.
“Yes” they toned in unison.
“We are the coolest bitches in Berlin ya?” Inez said finally.
“Ya.” Agreed Farina matter of factly.
Farina, the 22 year old event coordinator of Sleeze Magazine whom I had met while camping at Attendorn, was wearing a white t-shirt and nylons. That is to say, she was san-pants and it wasn’t that long of a t-shirt. While we walked across the square toward their apartment, I noticed that this wasn’t an unusual style among the hip and hot young women of Berlin. Farina also sported a labret piercing and a series of tattoos starting at her neck, disappearing down her back behind her shirt, and reappearing briefly on her upper arms. “That’s Farina.” Inez said to me while pointing at Farina’s backside as she bent over the sink doing dishes in their tiny post-soviet block apartment.
Sleeze Magazine appears to be a fashion rag generally extolling the virtues of topless and otherwise nearly nude women drinking cheap booze, getting massive tattoos, and generally excreting various bodily substances and fluids in and around a brown 1968 Ford Mustang parked in the woods. “It’s called Trash With Substance”, Farina said.
As we sat in the even tinier little kitchen of their punk rock flat, torn pages from Sleeze, an Ozzy Ozborn circa 1981 trading card, and acres of leopard print covering evcerything from the beds to the microwave, Inez explained Farina’s obsession with sales on vintage shoes.
“She’s always looking at ze sales on ze shoes ya?” As if to punctuate this point, Farina produced a high-lift pair of wooden clogs out of a white and black plastic bag that she had bought for 8 Euro earlier in the day. “Come here bitch and take of my shoes” Farina said to Inez while staring at her with a mock-sultry expression.
“She always makes me help her with her shoes.” Inez sighed while putting out her cigarette in the tuna can atop the tiny plastic table.
“So, that makes you the dominant one?” I snapped at Farina.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“You see what I have to live with? Quipped Inez. Also 22, she works at a local pop station in Berlin. She is an aspiring DJ, but like many people in show biz has found herself mostly doing programming. “She never does anything around here, she never cleans, she never cooks and she talks back all of the time. Fuck it.”
“Yeah, fuck it.” I laughed, wondering to myself just what kind of scene I had managed to stumble upon. It was if they were both trying so hard to be shocking. Even with all of this apparent rebellion, back talk, and fake punk-rock attitude, they both still found time to prepare me an evening meal of toast, cheese and tea. After all, I was the guest.
About the first thing the girls pointed out to me when I entered the trash-flat was that none of doors worked, or in most cases, were missing. What this meant quickly became apparent when I got up to go to the bathroom and found that the “door” consisted of a broken piece of wood with a boot-sized whole in the middle of it leaning against the wall. It seemed to have been relieved from its former duty on the hinges by violent force as significant pieces of it remained attached to the hinges on the frame.
Every door, except for the front door and the one to leading into Farina’s room, was in a similar state of rapid mis-use and tenuous balance at various points in the apartment.
“That’s just my crazy ex-boyfriend.” Farina said. “He lives here.”
“He lives here?!” I exclaimed.
“Oh wait” she thought a moment, “he lived here, no more. He’s crazy.”
“I don’t like him.” Inez announced while nodding.
“oh, ok.” I said.
“NO, he’s coming back tonight!” Farina laughed.
“Ya!” Inez chimed in like a wolf pouncing on a lamb, “he’s going to kill you tonight!” They both laughed maniacally, and starting uttering German phrases through the guffaws.
“Ya” Inez finally said, “have another beer, it makes our job easier.” They both laughed watching my expression change from sedate to curious to, likely, serious contemplation of jumping out the window.
“Yeah, well, “ I laughed nervously, “I’m a pretty big dude, so you’ll have your work cut out for ya.”
“We are joking.” Farina said very seriously as they both stopped laughing indicating that the humor was over.
“Ya, joking.” Inez followed, “I’m going to the shop, you want some gummy bears?”
“Yeah sure.” I said.
“If you kill her while I’m out, just let me back in when I buzz the door ok?” Inez announced over her shoulder as she flitted through the door. I guessed that it was normal for Germans to joke about sudden violent death. I had heard a few great one-liners earlier including a kindergarten song involving children falling from horses and being crushed under their hooves.
In any case, I decided that two little girls would have a tough time getting one up on me. I wasn’t too threatened. Well, that and I didn’t drink the tea.