Berlin airlift

Derren Nesbitt

I'm 56, and I should know better. I arrive at Berlin's Schonefeld airport. I'm greeted by my friend Nick. I say in my best Colditz  voice: "Ze Eagle has landed!" I can't help myself. If you know the names Derren Nesbitt and Anton Diffring, you'll understand.  But I wasn't alive in the Second World War, our house was never bombed by a Heinkel. My dad was a youth, not a Tommy. Our family wasn't persecuted, or killed by the Nazis. Yet in some dark, dead end alley of my mind, I instinctively refer to a conflict I was never part of, and have no right to adopt as a badge of victimhood or a source of humour. My fellow passengers,who are mostly young, 25 or less, are coming to Berlin to enjoy a great European capital, it's culture and it's nightlife with no reference to past ghosts.Thank God for the grown ups....

Lights in the city in the eve of the poll :"To the German People"

To the Reichstag  for what promises to be a revelation. It's grandeur, its muscularity, its size, make me realise how mad the Nazis were to burn it down.

Full moon over the Reichstag. Picture by James Fraser