Page 24 of Who We Think We Are

M ikelia guides Kate through the complicated maze of the huge Berlin Hauptbahnhof and outside to the tram they’ll take to the hotel. Kate says, “Wow, nice to have such a knowledgeable guide. I would’ve gotten lost in there.”

“Thanks! I’ve been here a bunch of times. Here’s where we catch the tram.”

When they get to the hotel, they walk through an ultra-modern lobby with white marble floors, white and lime green leather furniture, glass tables, and chandeliers with simple, clean lines.

At the white marble front desk, the clerk, a young woman with a thick accent that Kate can’t identify, welcomes them and starts to check them in.

Her name tag says Daciana. She says to Kate, “We hope you will enjoy Berlin and your room. We’ve given you a room with a lovely view of the Spree.

I’ll need your passport to complete check-in. ”

Kate hands her passport to Daciana, who enters the number into the computer and hands the passport back to her. Daciana’s eyes widen, and her face flushes. She looks up at Kate and says, “One moment, Mrs. Hathaway.”

Daciana leaves through a door behind the desk. “That was weird,” Kate says to Mikelia, who shrugs.

About five minutes later, Daciana returns with a man in his mid-fifties or so. He looks at Kate.

“Mrs. Katrina Hathaway? I am the manager. I am so sorry, but we don’t have any rooms available. My silly clerk here is new and is always making mistakes. I am sorry to trouble you.”

“But I made a reservation online,” says Kate.

“The online reservation system is often behind. It keeps allowing people to make reservations until we manually stop it. Once again, we are so sorry to trouble you. You should not have any trouble finding another place to stay. There are many hotels in Berlin.”

“This is unacceptable. I made a reservation, Daciana told us about our lovely room, I paid for the room, and now you say there is no vacancy?”

“Once again, we are so sorry, Mrs. Hathaway. Your credit card will be refunded. Give me a moment to take care of that, and I will give you a receipt.”

After a few moments, he hands her a receipt to show the refund, and Kate opens her mouth to speak when Mikelia takes her by the arm. “Let’s go, Kate.”

As they step outside the doors, Kate says, “Nothing pisses me off more than poor customer service.”

“I know. We’ve traveled together before, remember? This isn’t worth ruining our day over. Let’s go somewhere else.”

About a block down the street, there is another hotel that looks nice but not too expensive.

This hotel is more traditional, with dark hardwood floors, wallpaper with forest scenes, and a deer antler chandelier.

Kate looks at the front desk clerk’s name tag.

“Hello, Crina. Do you have a room with two beds for two nights?”

Crina says, “Yes, we have a nice room overlooking the river.”

“Excellent. We’ll take it.” Kate hands Crina her credit card.

“Thank you, Mrs. Hathaway. I’ll just get your passport to complete your check-in.”

Kate hands her passport to Crina, who enters the number into the computer. She looks up at Kate, her face impassive. “Just a moment. I’ll be right back,” she says, and with Kate’s passport in hand, she starts to go through a curtain behind the desk.

Kate says, “Stop right there, Crina! Give me my passport.”

“But I need …”

“Now!”

Wordlessly, Crina returns to the desk and gives Kate her passport.

Kate and Mikelia look at each other and shake their heads.

After a few minutes, Crina returns with her manager, a woman. “I am so sorry, madam. My clerk here has made an error. The room she promised you has already been taken, and no other rooms are available. I have refunded your card. Here is the receipt.”

Mikelia steps forward this time and says, “This is crap. Take another look. I am quite certain you have a room.”

Kate takes Mikelia by the arm. “Let’s go. Clearly, they don’t want us here, and I wouldn’t stay here now if they offered it to us for free.”

When they get outside, they look at each other, and Kate says, “What the hell is going on?”

“I don’t know, but it is weird. There’s a hotel a few blocks from here that I’ve stayed at before. Not quite as nice as these two, but it’s fine.”

“OK,” says Kate. “This time, you check in.”

When they get to the third hotel, Mikelia checks them in, and they have no trouble at all. The hotel is being renovated, so it is wrapped in plastic. When they get to their room, instead of a view of the Spree, they have a view of plastic wrapping and scaffolding.

“Oh well, at least there are two beds and a bathroom,” says Kate. The past hour has been so strange that they break into a kind of hysterical, relieved laughter and can’t stop. “Let’s go find a good gin and tonic.”

As they walk down the street, they see two Vietnamese restaurants. “Well, I guess we came to Berlin to have Vietnamese food,” says Kate.

“And gin and tonic!” says Mikelia. They start laughing again and walk into the restaurant arm in arm.

The next morning, Kate and Mikelia have breakfast at the hotel.

The breakfast room is decorated in a charming old German kind of style, with white plaster walls with dark-brown wood beams and crisscrossed boards.

As Kate munches on a pretzel bun, sausage, eggs, and muesli with fruit, Mikelia shows her where the Resistance Memorial Center is on a map on her phone.

“Let’s go there first; it’s closest. Then we can head to Mitte, which is kind of downtown Berlin, and see whatever we feel like. ”

“Sounds good. You lead the way. I’ll follow.”

“You’ll follow?” Mikelia laughs. “That will be a first.”

“Stop being cheeky.” Kate laughs, too. “Honestly, it’s a relief to follow you. You know where you’re going! Traveling is kind of exhausting when you’re always trying to navigate places you don’t know in languages you don’t know.”

“Even though literally everyone we’ve encountered on this trip has spoken English.” Mikelia sips on her coffee.

“True. But the names of places and streets are so different than what I’m used to.”

“OK, wow. What if you were in Asia, where they don’t use the same alphabet?”

“One trip at a time. If I travel to Asia, I’ll have to travel with someone who knows how to get around there.”

“Ah, I get it; you’re not following, you’re delegating! Now I see the Kate I know and love again. You scared me for a minute.”

“Who wants a tour guide who talks back? You know how much I hate poor customer service!”

Once they’re outside and can see past the hotel’s plastic wrap, they find it is a beautiful fall day.

The leaves are yellow, orange, and red against the brilliant blue sky.

They take a tram, walk a few blocks, and arrive at the German Resistance Memorial Center, an older white plaster building that looks like it used to be something else.

Sure enough, as they walk into the courtyard, a sign tells them the building used to be the Supreme Headquarters of the Army.

When they go inside, they find the museum has fit itself into the existing rooms and hallways.

They spend a few hours wandering through the exhibits that show all the ways Germans resisted Nazi rule.

Many of the exhibits have large black-and-white photographs with descriptions written in German and English, documents, and videos.

“I had no idea there were so many plots to assassinate Hitler,” says Kate.

One of the largest displays commemorates the German military officers’ attempt to assassinate Hitler and overthrow the Nazi regime on 20 July 1944.

There were nearly two hundred officers involved, but almost five thousand people were executed as a result.

Apparently, military officers had been plotting to overthrow Hitler since 1938.

“Too bad they missed in 1938. What a different world it would be,” says Mikelia.

“That’s for sure,” says Kate.

When they enter the room where the Jewish resistance exhibit is housed, Kate uses her phone to take pictures of the black-and-white photographs and the accompanying descriptions to bring back to Suze.

So many lives were lost, but resistance, however futile, never stopped.

The human spirit could not be broken. “I wonder what Suze’s great-grandfather Saul did in the resistance.

I want to return here with her one day.”

After she has taken every picture she can, Kate says, “OK, my feet are sore, my head is full, and my heart feels broken. Do you want to go for lunch?”

“Yes, please! There’s a great Jewish deli called Mogg. Want to go there?”

“Lead the way.”

Over a delicious spinach, beet, and orange salad and a liver-wurst sandwich, Kate and Mikelia talk about what they learned at the museum.

“There was a lot more resistance on the part of the Jews than I knew about,” says Kate.

“Forest camps, bombing trains, partisan groups working with the Soviet military, disseminating anti-Nazi leaflets, ghetto uprisings, uprisings in concentration camps. And it’s interesting to learn about all of the attempts on Hitler’s life. ”

“He was like a demonic cat with nine lives,” says Mikelia.

“Yeah. It’s good to know that not every German adored him. I can’t imagine the courage it must have taken to resist that level of evil.”

After lunch, Kate and Mikelia walk to the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe.

It takes up a whole city block, and they wander through the concrete “stelae,” huge blank concrete cubes and rectangles that are like a couple thousand coffins.

The ground is a little hilly, so the memorial looks different wherever you stand.

After a while, Kate says, “I keep wanting to get up high to see the whole thing. It’s so abstract—nothing like all the other memorials everywhere you look around Berlin. ”

“I think that’s the point, Kate.”

“I get it. I guess I can be so literal.”