A meeting with an old German lady.

In the difuse light of the small bar where I have breakfast I try to make sence of the Berliner Zeitung I found on the table and which is several days out of date - to say the least - and a touchy bit yellowish.

The runny eggs with stale bread that seems to have to rule the menu in these Eastern German villages, has already gone down to my starving belly. The watery and luke-warm cup of coffee is still waiting for consumption. Not that I expect to really wake up seriously from this low cafeine brew that looks more like dish water then anything fit for human drinking purposes.

I`ve no doubt that an impoverished Indian or a Thai individual from the poor north of the Thai Kingdom would consider this breakfast a once in a life time five star restaurant delicacy.

However I'm far from being an impoverished Indian or a poor Thai and need my food desperately in order to do my daily 100 km. of cycling.

"Darf Ich mich vielleicht ein moment mal bei Ihnen setzen?".

Being disturbed in my mental ponderings about bad food and weak dish water I look up into the roundish and wrinkled face of a rotund old woman, maybe somewhere in her late sixties dressed in faded jeans and a woolen sweater that once must have been red but has discolored to a darker sort of brownish color with age.

Her face is open and honest betraying curiousity.

She introduces herself as Die Kerstin coming from the nearby village of Brüel having been married to a local man in this village called Dabel. "Er ist aber schon seit vielen Jahren tot und unsere Kinder sind alle ausgeflogen zum West".

Husband died many years ago and the kids have moved to the Rich West. She seems in a serious need to tell me her life story and wants to hear all about my travels across the globe....she tells me she can see from the look in my eyes I`ve seen many places....have been to the corners of the world.

"Ich kenne nur diese Wälder, war sogar noch nicht mal in Berlin, noch nicht im Leben im Zug oder Flugzeug. Das war in meiner Zeit gar nicht möglich, lieber Herr". "Die Partei gab kein Erlaubnis und jetzt bin zu alt zu reisen".

Basically she never has been anywhere in her life, no permission from the former communist party and now she is too old to go anywhere but enjoy her small pension.

I offer her a Schnapps feeling genuinely sorry for this gnarled old woman who is obviously still in the possession of all her wits drinking one myself as well mentally considering the fact that she has probably been eating runny eggs and stale bread, drinking weak dish water all of her life.

One Schnapps turn into several and while the heavy german rain drums away on the opaque windows of this little run down bar with its disfused light and stale air inside, while the habitual clientêle slowly fills the five tables oppressing the already laden air with old men`s farts and the smoke of cheap tabacco, Fraulein Kerstin tells me what it was like to life under the communist yoke. With a Lächelchen - a smile you knowe - she tells me how it feels like to be the Mum of children who have left and have Keine Zeit für ihr Mütterchen heute. No time for Mum today.

Trying to get my act together after all the Schnapps I expalin my life in Thailand, my trips to India and South and Middle America, my cycle trips around Europe.

Half drunk on all the Schnapps and with the German rain having come to an end I apologise and stagger out cycling through dark green Eastern German forests where the animal world is feeling happy with the onslaught of Spring and most definitely much more sober then me.

written by  heraclio on March 20, 2009 from Berlin, Germany
from the travel blog: 600 km. to Berlin
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