Mary Fleming

A Safe Place

Good Friday, 25 March At 7.30 Tuesday morning I was as usual walking Elsa. As usual I was listening to the news on Deutschland Funk to improve my German. And I said to myself: Thank you, President Obama, for visiting Cuba. You may be supplying Americans with yet one

Morning in Berlin

Ostbahnhof, Berlin Friday, 4 March One of my early odd jobs in Paris was teaching English to a journalist at Radio France. Twice a week I would set off from the Latin Quarter on my bicycle. The time it took me to get to the Maison de la Radio depended

February

From the Eurostar, near Calais, France Friday, 19 February For those of us who live in northern climes, February is a nasty little month. The curl-up-by-the-fire charm of winter is long gone. It seems that morning and afternoon dog walks will forever be conducted in the dark, that spring just

Révolution à la Française

'UBER GET OUT' Friday, 29 January Real change in France, it is often said, only occurs through revolution. But most of the rebellions I can think of, since 1968 at least, have been about stopping change. Including the one that is brewing at the moment. Throughout the country

Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes

This is not a bad joke (photo credit: Wilmotte & Associés) Friday, 15 January It was tough being a teenager in the 1970s, that no-man’s land between the galvanizing, groovy 60s and the globalizing 80s. We didn't have much to brag about. But we did have David

Out of Joint

The good old days of winter Friday, 1st January 2016 Now it’s nature that’s scaring me. As everyone knows, 2015 beat all the records for high temperatures, and I have found the last unseasonably warm months of the year particularly disquieting. I don’t think, for example, that

The World According to Elsa

Elsa with Grâce and fly fishermen, Hasenheide, Berlin Friday, 11 December Humans are scaring me these days. Everybody seems to hate everybody else. After the mostly home-grown terrorists carried out the Paris attacks against young people having fun, the apparently ‘self-radicalised’ couple in San Bernadino, six-month old baby or not,

Jérémie and Caroline

Friday, 27 November Many people have asked about my son Christopher's friend who was shot in both legs during the Paris terrorist attacks on 13 November. Where she was that night and how she is doing now. Though I wasn't planning to write a blog today,

Ode to a Friend

Friday, 20 November Almost déjà vu: the stunned hours in front of the television, the shattering feeling that nothing will be the same from now on, the worry that the centre is crumbling right before our eyes. There was even the odd coincidence of returning to Berlin the Sunday following

Here we go again

Last night we were just finishing supper at a restaurant in the 12ème arrondissement with friends visiting from New York, when they got a text from their daughter in Salt Lake City, asking if they were all right. We all imagined some minor incident as we parted ways, they in

Changing Course, with Difficulty

Friday, 23 October 2015 photo by Mario Micklisch (https://www.flickr.com/photos/fvfavo/) I am not supposed to be writing this blog.* According to the itinerary, I should in fact at this very moment be arriving at the above scene: Wadi Rum and the The Seven Pillars of Wisdom.

Cheap Thrills

Friday, 9 October 2015 Last Sunday, our friend Christoph H. said: “Where else but Berlin can you be entertained for so little money?” The three of us were sitting at a table-clothed table with Kaffee und Kuchen, waiting for a free violin concert, after a free tour of the Karl-Foerster-Garten

Politics and Privilege

Friday, 25 September 2015 Being uncomfortable with both the very public and the very private, I have tried in this blog to navigate a middle course. But two public and private things have so dominated the last couple weeks, writing about anything else today—bottles, teepees, Grillparty— would be dancing

Calm, Peace and Near Silence

Friday, 11 September Just after I pushed the “publish now” button for my last blog entry, we got in the car and began a three-day weekend to the Rheinsberger-Seengebiet, a lake region about 75kms north of Berlin. It was the perfect antidote for lingering thoughts of the creepy former East

Irony and Evil

Friday, 28 August I am looking at my old map of East Berlin, purchased in 1987 during my only visit to this part of the city before the Wall came down two years later. Just north of the Lenin-Allee and just east of Ho-Chi-Menh-Straße is a blank spot, an area

Convention

Friday, 14 August From a distance, I’d seen signs but imagined that I’d missed it, or if not, that it would be at a far-flung venue at an inconvenient time. But I was wrong on all counts. The Berlin Tattoo Convention was last weekend, right at the end

Of Cherries and Berries

Friday, 31 July We have finally proven our friends Denis and Virginie D. wrong. Ever since we moved half-time to Berlin in January 2013, they have been pointing out a certain perverse proclivity of ours to spend most of those six months during the dark, cold, gloomy winter. But it’

Vive la République

Friday, 17 July It is impossible to live in la République for any length of time without bumping into la fonction publique. Bureaucracy, if not quite omnipresent, is a major force in French life. In fact, reducing its bloated numbers is viewed by many as one of the country’s

Dog Days

Friday, 3 July La canicule is as integral to the French summer as le 14 juillet and le Tour de France. It’s the time when temperatures rise and for several days hover between 30°C (86°F) and 35°C (95°F). The term in English is dog days

Modern Façades

Friday, 19 June A couple of weeks ago I was watching Roland Garros (French Open) on television. Frequently the camera would pull back for an aerial view and there at the top of the screen, beyond the Bois de Boulogne, loomed the island of sky-scrapers that constitutes La Défense. It

The Anglos and the Saxons

Friday, 5 June Einstein's study, Christ Church, Oxford When the French talk, often derisively, about les Anglo-Saxons, they mean the English. But five days in England last week was a constant reminder of the second part of the appellation, the Saxons, the Germanic tribes that settled in Britain

Travels with Elsa and Louise

Friday, 22 May On the road again last weekend, this time with Louise D. and Elsa. Another château but a different sort of experience. We were visiting friend and painter Claire Basler and her partner Pierre Imhof near Vichy, about four hours south of Paris. Louise, a friend since my

Pretty but Paper-thin

Friday, 15 May The mild shock I wrote about last week at returning to the geometry of the Tuileries gardens, after the more free-spirited approach to nature in Berlin, was just a warm-up for this week. On a three-day road trip, David, Trevor P., Dana W., Bertrand du V. and

Two Versions of Spring

Plänterwald Friday, 8 May After all these years on the earth, how is it that I am still astonished by spring? Every year I watch the world come alive again as if witnessing a miracle for the first time. In Berlin the wonder and excitement are particularly intense. The city

Never too late to be a Nimby

Friday, 1st May Before the bombs fell, Berlin was largely a creation of the late 19th century. Although founded in the 13th, it didn’t become a European powerhouse until Bismarck defeated France in 1870 and a year later united disparate states into Germany with Berlin as the capital. So