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The last weeks have been dark in
more ways than one. And now it's snowing! The sky is grey, roads are icy, people mutter ominously about how 2016 Was The Worst Year Ever (Unless 2017 Is Worse) and no-one wants to be back at work. But Berlin is never entirely dark. Like most cities, it's obsessed with light, but unlike most cities, this does not take
the form of giant flashing billboards, dizzyingly high tower blocks of a
thousand empty, lit-up rooms, or sodium lamps pouring out a haze of orange dust
to hide the stars. No, instead Berlin goes shamelessly in pursuit of pure bling,
sometimes even dressing it up as art, to dispel the dreariness of its long,
long winter.
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| Festival of Lights...not kitsch at all |
Festivals of lights. Christmas lights. The endless fireworks at
New Year. And it's just as well. Berlin winters have a darkness to them
that can be as bleak as the darkness of a Scottish island, and that can feel
just as existentially threatening, for very different reasons. It's a real,
physical darkness too. There's not much light pollution here (except at New Year, when Germans gleefully give up their environmental credentials and release thousands of tonnes of fireworks into the atmosphere). Where we live, it's so dark that we can get off the bus at midnight and
see thousands of stars, bright constellations above us. And unlike
London, Berlin has real borders; it may not have a wall any more,
but beyond the city are still forests, lakes and endless fields, rather than,
say, Surrey.
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| Boat trip with glühwein |
Maybe it's the transition
between the dark and the light that really fascinates us. When I think back to
this winter, I will think most of the nights. Of our night-time Aquarium visit
for example, where by torchlight we toured the echoing, shadowy halls where
fish and sharks and crocodiles live their mysterious lives. Of our wanderings through Berlin during
the Festival of Lights, which most Berliners see as a kitsch effort to bring
more tourists into town, and it is, but I don't care. Of the candles that are
lit in all the bars and cafes as evening falls and the streets are too dark and cold and
damp to stay out any longer. Of the hours and hours and HOURS of fireworks going off at New Year (Mel: "I never knew that fireworks could get boring!"). And of our visit to the Botanic Garden that rounded
off our Christmas holiday. With not only lights but real fires, glühwein and sausages,
it was a good way to see in the New Year....now we just have to get through
January, when all the lights are put away as if we were being told to grow up
and get back to work. Which we are, of course. But let's not think about it for
a while yet. There are still light-up reindeer and light-up bears in the world. Happy New Year!
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