A Wonderful Night In Berlin

 

Moi, Sarah and Margaret

A few weeks ago I got a email from the British Embassy in Berlin, inviting me over to speak at a cultural evening ( when I say that to my friends, they snort in derision. Caro? Culture?).

There was the Northern Irish Writer Claire McGowan, the Welsh writer  Sarah Ward and Margaret Murphy  representing England, and The North of England in particular.

Huge temptation to tap dance down these stairs

The event was organised with supreme precision as you might expect. Claire, Margaret and Sarah could get to Berlin on a direct flight, in Sarah’s case having to spend the night with family first to be close to the airport. As we had to get up at 4 a.m., we went out the day before.

The event itself was something I’ve never witnessed before. And jolly excellent it was!

We met in a boardroom beforehand after going through security at the embassy where ‘him indoors’ was held back for looking well dodgy. They let him through in the end.

Once inside the boardroom we met our moderator Gesa who, I think, is a Professor of Cultural Studies. ‘Him indoors’ and her had a long and heartfelt chat about the inability of German students studying English literature etc to come to Britain since BREXIT.

In the Drum!

We were then taken through to sit on a small stage in a circular room, ‘The Drum’, while the media comms spokesperson addressed the crowd outside. When she’d finished her speech there was a James Bond type rumbling as the doors of the Drum rolled open and in walked our audience.

Waiting. We could the gathering of the crowd outside.

I’ll happily admit that Brits are not good at talking other languages. Our audience were all German who spoke English fluently and often another 2 or 3 languages – more about that on another blog.

It was quite formal and well behaved until one of the readers called her character by the wrong name. She had written another two novels by then and had her Davids and Damiens mixed up. I think we’ve all been there! We were reading in alphabetical order, so by the time they got to me they were well warmed up.

                                                                Me talking. As usual.

The event was running to a very strict timetable, four ten minute readings with some questions from the audience and then outside to the atrium where there was lots of drinks and lovely food from each nation. Scotland had smoked salmon, Wales had Welsh rarebit, Irish was something that looked like a potato samosa but real genius was a wee pokey hat full of chips with a little bit of deep fried fish on top. We had that, and donated the fish elsewhere. There might have been other food, but the veggie stuff was superb.

Gesa and Margaret

German book events  often have readings going on for 40 minutes and our audience dutifully listened to us. In Scotland a reading exceeding 5 minutes would have to be facilitated by whisky and some form of anaesthesia.

Sarah and I.

At the Q and A, I did see a few nodding heads when I talked about Scotland and the weather, the fact that we have got two roads that go up and down the way and if any point if you want to go side to side it takes a very long time.

I’m going to ask the other members of the panel to do a guest blog, about what they said about their part of the Uk. It was very interesting, and very different to ‘where do you get your ideas from?’

                                                          Audience really enjoying the evening

At the mingling, when people were talking to me about Scotland, they spoke with great affection. They had been to University here for part of their studies. And there was two lovely comments along the lines of ‘yes, I studied in Edinburgh but we always went to Glasgow when we wanted to enjoy ourselves.’

I was last in Germany I think, in 1980 when we visited both East and West on a school trip. It was both poignant and interesting to stand at Checkpoint Charlie again, but more about that in another blog.

Munchies, Wine and Signing!

My vision of walking around Christmas markets, drinking lovely coffee and eating gingerbread was somewhat spoiled by my suitcase being in Heathrow airport for a lot longer than I was. I know most MIE bloggers, by the nature of the blog, are well seasoned travellers, but being without a suitcase for 24 hours was a lesson learned.

It only leaves me to say Merry Christmas to you as it was on the lovely bookmarks at the Embassy event.

What a wonderful evening it was.

Caro  Merry Christmas to you all,