Ghosts of East Berlin (Now available on Amazon)

First Impressions

ARRIVING IN BERLIN 

Authors note: This chapter contains profanity and references to general stereotypes that may be offensive to some readers.  

The six thousand miles and day of flight from Los Angeles to Berlin had calmed me down. Although I would still rather have been at home in California, I was now determined to make the best of my circumstances and was actually excited to experience a foreign country and specifically Berlin. I also figures it was now less than six months before I would return home. Unfortunately, my first expression was quite mortifying. 

To fully appreciate why my first moments in Berlin were so traumatic at the time (they give me a great laugh now) a brief cultural distinction needs to be explained. (Profanity Warning). In America, the main profanity is the acronym of For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge, known as "FUCK". Perhaps it is our puritan roots and the accompanying warped sense of sexuality that has made the word FUCK, in all its forms, the quintessential word in American slang. In Germany however, the equivalent to FUCK is sheisse, literally translated "shit". In America we say Fuck You! In German they say "Ich Sheisse on sie" (I shit on you). The connotation is the same, but the words are a reflection of each culture. As I quickly learned, the fact that Germans said Sheisse had real world consequences that fucked with me at the moment of my arrival.  

About 20 minutes before the flight from Frankfurt to Berlin was to land my stomach started to hurt. One of my greatest phobias experie is having to shit in an airplane bathroom. Although now as an adult I could manage in a pinch (pun intended), there was no way on earth at ten years old that I was going to use the inflight bathroom, no matter how badly my stomach hurt, especially since the flight was so close to landing. An airport terminal bathroom, although not optimal, was a much better option. After one of the longest half -hours of my life, including de-boarding time, we finally were standing on firm ground in Berlin, West Berlin's Tegal airport to be exact. While my mom and Frank were excited to be on terra firma in one of the most historical cities in human history, I was excited because I could now avoid shitting my pants.  

After de-boarding the plane and entering the terminal I hurriedly walked into the men's room with my legs cramped together. I was doing the poo walk\/dance and knew I had about a minute left until my colon was going to explode. As I entered the men's room I couldn't believe my eyes. I found myself in the cleanest most perfect public bathroom I had ever visited! There wasn't a germ for miles around! I had heard about the German's and their adherence to cleanliness, but this was ridiculous! This facility was more sterile than a hospital. I breathed a huge sigh of relief and even had a cracked a smile. Perhaps the next six months weren't going to be so bad after all I thought. With time of the essence, I stepped into the first all-black stall and prepared to do my business. BUT WAIT! Something was wrong. I looked at the toilet and became perplexed.  

Immediately I thought Frank. He loved telling jokes and frequently told jokes with the punch-line stating something about European toilets. As a kid I never understood the significance, until now, for the joke was on me. The toilet looked like an American toilet, yet instead of having a deep bowl with a few inches of water, there was a small raised trough in the center of the bowl that had only about an inch of water! With time running about, I quickly went to the next stall, then a third stall where I ran out of time.  

Those few minutes sitting on a German toilet with my feces piling up below provided me with some valuable insights into human nature. As humans we are naturally attracted to things that make us cringe. While I was mortified about having to use this toilet, I couldn't help but periodically look down. When I finished wiping my ass, I got up and flushed but no matter how hard I tried, I was compelled by forces greater than myself to look down at my excrement, completely out of the water, as if it was designed to be there just there for me to observe before I flushed. As it turns out, it was.  

After this experience, it was explained to me that the German toilet was a remnant to pre-sanitation days in which people had to look at their feces in order to tell if there was a sickness or other condition that could be observed through analyzing feces. But I also learned that Germans are very precise, or anal, and nothing could be out of place, especially in their shit. The result is that in German culture, shitting , not fucking, dominates. If you think about it, shitting on someone is a far more demeaning statement than fucking someone. Shitting on someone would put them out of place, something no self-respecting German would ever allow. Whether there is any truth to this observation, I leave it for you, my readers to decide.

Shitting in East Berlin: 

As a post script to my experience in Tegal airport, there was an added bonus to the shitting experience that occurred once we found ourselves on the other side of the Wall. In East Berlin there were very few resources which caused shortages and a government that decried the luxuries of the West. The resulting consequences were a lack of resources led to shortages in foods such as fruits and vegetables and other convenience items. Unfortunately, convenience items included soft toilet paper. Upon arriving at our apartment in Germany there was a roll of toilet paper that felt more like 100 grit sandpaper. We were fortunate my mom had planned ahead and packed a few packs of toilet paper in her bag. We made it last until our first trip to West Berlin a few weeks later. Over the next six months, nothing became more valuable than soft civilized toilet paper. As we made friends through our stay we would make it a point to offer them real toilet paper. You would have thought they were in heaven.