Female and male bullfinch There was a small apple orchard close to our farm in the early 1950s that was one of my preferred childhood patches for bird watching. I would go there to watch jackdaws, woodpeckers, starlings, blackbirds, and thrushes, but during spring, I …
Great black-backed gull There were never great black-backed gulls around the farm during my childhood, and only a few wintered close to York. I had to go to the seaside if I wished to see them. Great black-backed gulls are the largest gull in the …
It was 1958, I was 14, and had recently joined the York Bootham School Natural History Club to broaden my knowledge of birds and to learn of the best birding spots near York. 138 species were listed by the School, and I had probably seen half of them. A description that caught my eye was that of the lapwing (also called the peewit or green plover) since this was one of the earliest birds I could recognize out in the fields. The Club’s report alarmed me by stating:
“Old Bootham records (beginning March 1851) indicate that this species has always been a common bird in the York area, but it is less common than it used to be. Many diaries at the turn of the century report the presence of many nests in fields near York, while today it is increasingly easy to find fields having no resident pair of breeding lapwing.”
It was enough to stop me from eating their eggs.
Lapwing nest and eggs
This pigeon-sized bird lays – usually 3 or 4 eggs – in an open field, using a scrape in the ground. If its nest is threatened, it may approach you and pretend a wing is damaged by dragging it along on the ground. If you do not follow, it may start to dive-bomb and screeching “peewit, peewit”. The bird is medium-sized (about12 in/30 cm) in length, has black and white plumage, a glossy green back, a wispy crest on its head, and rounded paddle-shaped wings. It breeds across northern Europe and north Asia, and winters as far south as North Africa, Northern India, and southern China. It gets its name from the undulating pattern of its flight and has long suffered from human activity.
Lapwing range map: yellow – breeding; green – year round; purple – winter
Not only were lapwing eggs taken for food in earlier times, but the bird was killed and eaten as a countryside delicacy. The consequences became so severe that the British government passed the Protection of Lapwings Act in 1926 to make it illegal to offer the bird for human consumption or willfully disturb its nest. Even so, during World War 2, its eggs were knowingly taken and turned into powder to be consumed by soldiers on the front line.
This population decline has continued because of the use of pesticides, loss of habitat, and reduced food supplies. Their number in England and Wales is now approximately 80 percent lower than it was at the end of the 1950s. Even so, there are still an estimated 140,000 breeding pairs of lapwing, and in winter this number increases to around 650,000 individual birds because of visitors, with many gathering in flocks on flooded pastures and ploughed fields. The species is currently on the UK Red List of birds with conservation concerns, allowing for close monitoring and preventative actions.
Lapwings in winter
I should mention that there is a similar looking bird in the southern hemisphere known as the southern lapwing. This species is widespread throughout South America and its range has expanded to Panama, Costa Rica, and other parts of Central America. Since its population is expanding, it is not considered at risk. Like the northern variety, it has a crest, can be very noisy, and makes use of similar habitats.
Southern lapwing
Arriving in California, I lost contact with this bold and beautifully crested bird They are not found in North America except for occasional vagrants in eastern Canada and the northeast US. Its closest relative in North America is the widespread killdeer which is also a member of the plover family, has similar feeding habits, is similarly rowdy, and feigns injury to protect its nest. This species I see during much of the year.
Californian killdeer
It seems a long time ago since I ate lapwing’s eggs, and regardless of its legality, I have no intentions of resuming the habit. Hopefully, steps being taken to safeguard the species presence in the UK will be successful. As temperatures rise, causing foreign birds to arrive in the UK, native birds such as the lapwing are at risk of being pushed out.
Cute lapwings
Growing up with blue tits on the farm is one of my earliest memories. These feisty little birds (4.5 in/12 cm in length) were noisy, sociable, and inquisitive, and the moment we hung up bacon rind after breakfast, they would be there, hanging upside down, …
Red-necked phalarope Sexual dimorphism was not something that had significance to me during my juvenile years as a bird watcher. I sometimes wondered why the female blackbirds were brown and why it was more difficult to identify female chaffinches and bullfinches than their more colorful …
For 10 years, starting in the early 1950s, my family spent a summer week’s holiday in a rented bungalow on the coastal hillside at Reighton Gap near Filey, Yorkshire. The bungalow has since been demolished. Nearby, to the south-east, stood the hard chalk outcrops forming the nearly perpendicular cliffs known at the time as Bempton Rocks. Today they are named the Bempton Cliffs and are an RSPB Nature Reserve. They were a haunt of mine during my early days of bird watching and a special place for watching the fulmar..
Bempton Cliffs
The cliffs are occupied by about a quarter-of-a-million seabirds that breed along the alluvial ledges that adorn the face. Here is the only gannet colony in England with about 10,000 breeding pairs. I was mesmerized by these birds, so much so that I titled chapter 16 in my novel She Wore a Yellow Dress as The Voracious Gannet. Their insatiable appetite reminds me of my thirst for knowledge during my first job at Ford Motor Company in 1967. It was also at the Bempton Rocks that I was given a guillemot egg to add to my egg collection.
Gannets at Bempton
My favorite species, however, was the fulmars, gull-like, pelagic birds, always over the sea, that glide low over the water and then soar high up the cliff face on rising air. One of their distinguishing features is the “tubenose” or large nostrils on top of their upper bill that links to salt glands in their nasal passage, allowing them to excrete a high saline solution to desalinate their body. Today at Bempton there are about 800 breeding pairs, and following nesting, they spend the rest of their time far out at sea, usually journeying south before returning to their nesting site in spring.
Occasionally, I would see fulmars over the sea at Spurn Point in the 1960s. Their breeding population today in the UK is around 500,000 pairs, and in winter, the population grows to in excess of 1.5 million. A fulmar usually lays one egg on the ledge of bare rock or on a grassy cliff, and defends it and its chick by spitting foul-smelling, orange-colored stomach oil at whatever is threatening it. There are an estimated 3.5 million fulmars in Europe, and likely well-over seven million globally.
Fulmar tubenose
These are heavy set, medium-sized sea birds (18-20 inches long/46 to 50 cm), colored grey and white, with a pale yellow bill and gray legs, and display a large wingspan. The word fulmar is derived from the Old Norse words full for stinking and mar for gull. There are three subspecies; one that lives in the Arctic, another across the Northern Atlantic, and a third that inhabits the North Pacific.
Fulmar range map: yellow – breeding; blue – wintering
The fulmar, sometimes called the Northern fulmar, is one of the few birds in my childhood that I can also see here in California. The same is not true for the gannet that only breeds on the east coast of Canada and spends winter at sea as far south as Florida and Texas.
However, the opportunity to actually observe fulmars in California is low because they only visit California during winter and spend most of their time away from land. Nonetheless, individuals do show up in bad weather, and if you go whale-watching, you may spot several out at sea. They are a darker gray than the pale white ones I saw at Bempton Cliffs.
Pacific dark morph fulmar
Globally, fulmars are very abundant and therefore classified as Of Least Concern from a conservation perspective in North America. They are on the watch list in the UK and Europe because over there, their numbers have declined and dropped about 40 percent since the mid-1980s. They are sensitive to oil and plastic ingestion and can become caught up in fishing nets when following fishing vessels to feed on waste. Climate change also affects the quality of their food and its availability, which in turn influences the fulmars’ breeding success. This is one of the few species I see in California as well as can go and inspect in the UK when I visit my family.
Long-billed dowitcher Early during my bird watching career, I recorded mainly everyday species around my home near York, but at the start of the 1960s, at the age of 16, I took my first journey to Spurn Point. Here my ornithological expectations quickly changed. I …
Male whitethroat The whitethroat is a bird I became acquainted without knowing its name. I must have been eight years old, and riding a two-wheeler bicycle when I fell into a bed of stinging …
Falcons have long, pointed wings and fly with strong, rapid wing-strokes. Hawks have rounded wings and in flight alternate between several rapid wing-beats and a short glide. As a result, even before I left primary school in the UK, I could recognize a kestrel from a sparrow hawk. Both species were common around the farms on which I lived. Kestrels would hover above me, waiting to catch their prey, whereas sparrow hawks would fly by, low and fast, in pursuit of some unfortunate bird. And then one day at school, I had the opportunity to trade a yellowhammer’s egg and one from a tree pipit for a rusty brown egg, about the size of a wood pigeon’s egg, and was told the egg belonged to merlins. My school friend claimed it was a taken from a nearby nest, and the exchange took place only weeks before the 1954 British law forbidding egg collecting was implemented.
European kestrel
Sparrow hawk
My friend assured me the merlin was nesting in a tree close to his home and was using an abandoned crow’s nest for its purposes. He invited me to come and look at it at a place called Redhouse Wood, near to the River Ouse on the west side of York. The wood itself was largely coniferous. I saw the nest and I tried to convince myself that I spotted the parent. The problem was, back then, in the early 1950s, there were only a few merlins nesting in Britain, and the nearest one should have been miles away on the North York Moors. These are supposedly ground nesting birds in the UK, and only appear on the lowlands during winter. Nonetheless, the egg looked very much like a merlin’s according to the illustration in my Bird Book. Some of my earliest early bird watching experiences are included in more detail in the early chapters of my most recent novel She Wore a Yellow Dress. This particular story is referenced in chapter one, titled The Abandoned Cuckoo.
Historically, during the Middle Ages, the merlin was the falcon of choice for important European noblewomen such as Catherine the Great and Mary Queen of Scots, and nicknamed the “lady hawk”. It was used in their sport of hunting skylarks. Even today, some merlins are kept in captivity and are bred to hunt small birds. They fly fast, just a few feet above the ground, in pursuit of songbirds on the wing, and utilize their speed and element of surprise.
Merlin eggs
Merlins are small, fierce falcons, preying on birds ranging in size from sparrows to quail. It is the smallest falcon in the UK, but in North America, where it is colloquially named the “pigeon hawk”, it is slightly larger than the American kestrel. The male merlin has a slate-gray back and underparts that range from buff to orange-tinted and streaked with black to reddish brown. The female is brownish-gray above, with whitish below spotted in brown. Today there are approximately 1300 breeding pairs in Britain. While their population in my early days of bird watching was fairly stable, despite being persecuted by landowners, their numbers were subsequently reduced significantly by the introduction of agricultural pesticides. As these chemicals are now banned, and new laws protect the bird and its eggs, the population has increased.
I had to wait until I arrived in California to see my first authenticated merlin. Here the species are winter visitors and can be observed along the Marin Headlands in Northern California. More recently, I thought I had spotted a merlin sitting on a branch a couple of feet above my bird feeder, but on closer inspection, it turned out to be a sharp-shinned hawk. In North America the population of merlins is estimated to be around 1.6 million, and 3.2 million worldwide. They have an extremely broad geographic range and are present across all of North America, Europe and Asia. Many migrate for winter, as far south as South America, and to Southern Europe and North Africa. In Europe, the UK is on the southern edge of the merlins’ European breeding range.
Merlin range map (yellow: breeding/ blue: winter)
Land use change is their greatest threat, especially in their breeding areas, but the species seems willing to adapt and live wherever there is sufficient food and nesting opportunities. Britain considers the merlin an “endangered” species, especially because of global warming that is likely to push the breeding range northwards, with only the Scottish Highlands remaining a refuge for the bird. It has been added to the Red List of birds facing severe decline and in need of urgent conservation action.
In the United States, it is classified as of “Least Concern”, with its population stable. Here the species is expanding its breeding range south for unclear reasons, and adapting to live in urban and suburban areas so long as there is a food supply and the space to chase down its prey. A merlin will eat as many as 900 birds each year. It may also be following crows that increasingly rely on human habitation for protection and food, and when they abandon their nests, the merlin quickly makes use of them.
I will never know if I truly saw a merlin back in the early 1950s but I still have the egg in my birds’ egg collection. However, it is embarrassing to think that back then I would take birds’ eggs and trade them at school, and give no thought to the consequences.
My Bird Blog is a series of “then and now” stories that combine my experiences as a juvenile birdwatcher in Britain during the 1950s and 1960s with my knowledge of the same species in California today. Each month I publish the details of a bird …
Download as PDF A Word from Hilda The last two years have been quite an adventure. I never knew how fortunate I was to be alive. All my thanks go to my parents, but especially to my mother, who through her warmth, gave me a …
5. Early Revelations
Several weeks later, back in Novato, California, Hilda was increasingly apprehensive about whether or not the woman in the Land Register would fulfill her commitment. Six weeks had passed, and the lady promised a reply within four. An irritated Hilda was drafting a letter to remind the woman of her pledge when the package arrived. It was a large, bulky envelope containing several official-looking documents. Everything was in German and Hilda understood none of it. Her neighbor, who read and spoke German, took charge of the cover letter, while a doctor friend called Bill, living in nearby Larkspur, agreed to translate the legal contracts. The remaining pages were converted into English by Hilda using her computer. She anxiously hoped that the correspondence would reveal details about her family’s ownership and describe the circumstances under which the building was lost during 1936. The letter confirmed the address of the building she visited as Guntzelstrasse 44, at the corner of Holsteinische Strasse 19.
The cover letter was signed by the woman Hilda talked to in the District Court and was quickly translated by the neighbor. It explained that the materials in the Register of Deeds confirmed Hilda’s family owned the property from 1919 to 1936. It showed her grandfather taking possession during June 1919, but unfortunately the handwritten document describing the transaction was written in a German script known as “sutterlin” and was impossible to read.
Maybe that didn’t matter. The 1919 purchase price was expressed in German Papiermarks, a currency discontinued in late 1923 because of German hyperinflation following the First World War. When the property was registered, there were thirty-three Papiermarks to the United States dollar, but four years later, the German currency was worthless. One trillion marks equaled a single dollar and a new currency had to be introduced a year later, with an exchange rate of one billion Papiermarks to one Reichsmark. The importance of the document
was to confirm the date of family ownership rather than to discover the property’s value at the time.
Hilda now knew the apartment building she visited in Berlin was her ancestral home, and had been the family source of income for seventeen years. Other correspondence among the papers she received implied her grandparents might have occupied the property for a longer period of time. There was evidence they lived at the same address as early as 1908, not long after the property was constructed. Hilda’s interpretation was the family must have been well-off and possessed the resources to give both their daughters untroubled and carefree lives.
There were two additional ownership deeds, one dated 1933 and the other 1936. Each was lengthy, and Hilda waited for Bill to complete his translations. The November 1933 document included a copy of her grandfather’s death certificate. She learned he died during December 1929, and his two daughters and wife inherited the building in accordance with German inheritance law.
German estate regulations required property to pass to next-of-kin immediately after death, with proportionate shares compulsorily assigned. Hilda’s grandmother received a quarter ownership and her grandmother’s two daughters each inherited three-eighths. In effect, Hilda’s mother, as an eleven-year-old, suddenly became the heir to a significant portion of the family business. The arrangement was certified in a 1933 ownership document, and the value of the building was recorded as 150,000 Reichsmark (U.S. $60,000). It was unclear whether the appraisal was at the date of death or on the day of certification. As a result, each daughter owned property worth 56,250 Reichsmark (U.S. $22,500), or an estimated half million dollars in today’s value.
The third deed, dated March 31, 1936, was the most alarming. It recorded the conveyancing of the property to a new owner. The person’s name was given and he carried the prefix of Hauptmann or Captain. It was unclear if the title referred to his status in the military or simply acknowledged him as the “head man” of his family. A more disturbing aspect was that the building had been declared “Aufgelassen” or “Abandoned” in the Registry of Deeds. Hilda wondered what this meant. There was no explanation. She speculated it was possible her family had been forced out of their home by anti-Semitism, and the property confiscated. As she solved one mystery, others seemed to emerge. There were no signatures on the last document, leaving Hilda to wonder if the transaction had been voluntary.
The same document showed the sale price for the property was 208,000 Reichsmark (U.S. $84,000), but the financial arrangements were complex and unusual. A 90,000 Reichsmark (U.S. $36,000) mortgage apparently existed that was assumed by the purchaser. Hilda always understood the family owned the property outright and did not need to borrow money. There was no explanation of why, when, and how this loan had been obtained. Another 78,000 Reichsmark (U.S. $31,500) was to be paid to Hilda’s grandmother and two daughters, presumably immediately, although there was nothing in the documents to confirm it was actually paid.
The biggest surprise was the third component. An amount of 40,000 Reichsmark (U.S. $16,000) was set aside to be paid as a delayed purchase mortgage. This meant the purchaser was not required to release the funds until, at the earliest, April 1941. During the five-year deferral period, quarterly interest payments were due at an annual interest rate of five percent. This seemed a strange arrangement, especially if the family was considering leaving Germany at the time of the sale. Before the due date for this payment, war would have begun, Hilda’s grandmother had died, and Hilda’s mother and father fled to Shanghai. It was incomprehensible that the family would accept such an arrangement. Maybe they had no choice. Was the money ever paid or did it remain an outstanding debt? Did the family of the 1936 purchaser still own the property? Were there bank records that would show payments had been made?
It seemed a series of new questions had arisen and the task Hilda set for herself was now much more complex. It was difficult to decide what to do next. If the research was continued, she might unearth family secrets that were embarrassing or shocking. She talked to John and other friends, and they told her she should continue. Maybe she would discover details of the purchaser, establish the chronology of ownership after 1936, and possibly investigate if proceeds from the sale were actually received by her family.
She wrote to her cousin in London to tell her what she had begun and heard back that the cousin’s mother often spoke of the 1936 purchaser as a person strongly disliked by the family. Hilda’s aunt had passed away in 1992.
Eventually, Hilda decided she was not going to give up. She would investigate the background of the 1936 purchaser, write to the lady in the Land Register requesting ownership records after 1936, and see what more she could learn about the circumstances of the sale.
Download as PDF 4. The Vienna Connection The trip to Dresden took over three hours on another bright and warm day, and the tour participants arrived at their destination during early afternoon. On the way, the tour guide lectured them on the present-day economy, culture, …
Download as PDF 3. The Land Register Hilda slept soundly Sunday night, excited that the organized tour was beginning, and she would visit the District Court on Tuesday morning. Carlos had asked her to share the Court experience with the rest of the group during the …
2. A Surprise Welcome
The unwillingness to speak German was the one thing threatening Hilda’s plan, if the shopkeepers didn’t understand English. She decided to communicate in German, even if it embarrassed her, since at least she could apologize and laugh at her mistakes, and maybe the people would be more obliging if she tried to speak their language. Serendipitously, encouragement came to her as she prepared to cross the road. Two children approached and asked what time it was. Without hesitation, she answered, “fast Mittag.” They smiled, thanked her, and quickly disappeared to wherever they were expected. That wasn’t so difficult, thought Hilda, as the exchange boosted her self-confidence. If children understood her, so might the shopkeepers.
She took one final glance at the property from across the road, observing its steeply pitched black roof, cream walls, and neatly trimmed windows and balconies. It dominated the neighborhood, looking graceful and elegant, and surrounded by other rather ordinary post-war structures. If buildings could speak, what stories this one could tell. She remembered her mother talking about how, during the years of National Socialism, tenants would ask members of the Protective Squad or SS guards (Schutzstaffel) to leave the premises, and shopkeepers would lock their doors to keep out the Hitler Youth. Her grandmother faced enormous risks if something went wrong since not only was she in charge of the building, but she had sole responsibility for the care of Ellen. By all accounts, she spoiled Ellen.
“Who do you think I am?” Hilda’s mother would ask years later when entering her daughter’s cluttered and disorganized bedroom in San Francisco. “I’m not your dienstmaedchen,” she would declare, referring to the housemaid who kept her room neat and organized during her adolescent years in Berlin.
What was clear to Hilda was her mother’s fondness for the home in Berlin, and how sad she had been to leave it. Her mother could never remember exactly when she left Germany, but knew it was before Hitler invaded Austria during March 1938. The outcome of leaving had been ten years of refugee status, the first four in Vienna, and the next six in Shanghai. This period of displacement only came to an end during July 1947, when Ellen and her Austrian-born husband, Walter, arrived in San Francisco on the USS General Gordon, having been granted refugee admission by the United States.
In Vienna, Ellen had met the son of the person who looked after the family when they first arrived in Austria. The two fell in love, and once Ellen reached age twenty-one, she married him on November 10, 1939. He was in prison at the time, where he had been confined since around the time of the Vienna Kristallnacht. On November 9 and 10, 1938, paramilitary organizations combined with thousands of civilians to form mobs that torched synagogues, vandalized Jewish businesses, looted and destroyed Jewish stores, and arrested several thousand Jews. A few weeks after he was released, in late 1940, the newlyweds fled to Shanghai.
Hilda’s parents arrived penniless in the United States. Her mother found a job as a packer in a shoe polish factory, and her father Walter was employed as a janitor by the Pacific-Union Club. He declared himself a journalist on Hilda’s birth certificate in 1950, the profession he followed in Austria, rather than admit he cleaned toilets.
Back in Berlin, Hilda returned across the street to visit the shopkeepers she had not previously spoken with. As she repeatedly explained in German her connection to the building, and ambition to look inside, she encountered a slow and frustrating process. The retailers listened carefully, and on occasion would ask her to repeat herself, but then the reply would be the same, that they could not help. Soon she was entering the last store. It was different from the others in that it sold products only made in Switzerland, and was operated by two non-German men who spoke perfect English, German and French. They had no difficulty understanding Hilda as she returned to speaking her own language. Her story fascinated them and they were shocked that she had never been inside the building.
“Would you like to?” one of them asked. “We have a friend who lives on the second floor and she will be home shortly. We can ask her to show you around. I’m sure she will.”
Hilda was astonished by this sudden turn of events. She smiled her acceptance and told the shopkeepers she would wait as long as necessary until the person finished work and returned home. The shopkeepers called their friend who said she would be delighted to show Hilda and John the apartment, and would return in about an hour.
As soon as she arrived, Hilda and John were introduced. The lady was a charming person, easy to talk to, in her mid-forties, an attractive brunette, well-dressed, and a lecturer at a nearby university. She spoke perfect English, with a slight British accent, and lived in the apartment with her young son, who wasn’t home on this particular day. She explained that the apartment had been owned by her since the mid-1990s, when she purchased it from a real estate company. She loved the home and was proud to show it to visitors. Most residents, she said, bought their property back in the 1990s, although the landowner kept ownership of the shops. She couldn’t remember the company’s name and was surprised that the property was once owned by a Jewish family. No one had ever told her.
The three of them entered the building through the side door, and climbed the stone staircase to arrive at her immaculately decorated apartment. The host welcomed her guests inside. She pointed to the Art Deco displays on the ceilings and the molding trim on the doors, telling them that these dated back to when the building was erected. A tour of all rooms was given, ending at the door of a small bathroom, adjacent to the kitchen. This, she said, had been the bedroom of the apartment’s dienstmaedchen (servant). She invited Hilda and John to stay for a cup of tea and talked to them about her life as an art student and a single woman. Hilda shared with her stories from her mother.
After the tea was finished, “Let me take you to the top floor attic,” the woman volunteered. “It’s part of the building only recently repaired, and you can still see the marks of bullet holes made at the time of the war.”
The host knew the building suffered additional damage during hostilities, but didn’t know the extent. It was some time later, when Hilda was studying correspondence she received from Berlin, that she read how the two apartments above the one she had just visited, were destroyed by incendiary bombs during Spring 1944. The windows of the entire building were blown out by bomb blasts amid the last days of the Battle for Berlin. Additionally, the roof was badly damaged twice, the second time catching fire towards the end of the war. However, compared to many other buildings in the vicinity, the property escaped the fighting relatively undamaged.
The climax of the visit was when the host took her guests downstairs to the main reception area. Still in place was an ornate, polished, wooden banister, curling upwards to the highest floor that Hilda’s mother had often talked about. Witnessing it stimulated Hilda’s memories. She stroked the wood, saying nothing, but the look on her face and her tear-filled eyes said it all.
With the visit over, the three returned to the store, where more surprises awaited Hilda and John.
As soon as the woman left, the youngest-looking of the two men announced with vigorous enthusiasm, “You need to go here.” He gave Hilda a map and a scribbled address that
he said was the headquarters of the local District Court, a place he called the Amtsgericht. “These people maintain land registry records for buildings around here. History on every property is kept, including owners’ names, sales dates, and registration documents. You should visit them. Maybe they can tell you when your family owned the building. It’s open only a few hours each day, but if you’re staying in Berlin until Wednesday, you should have time for a visit.”
He continued, “And if you go, please return and tell us the outcome.” Then he added, “And we have another idea. You should see the Wir Waren Nachbarn exhibition (“We Were Neighbors”). It’s located in the Schoeneberg City Hall, not far from here, and holds records of every person living in this neighborhood who was killed during the Holocaust. The exhibition contains hundreds of biographies and photos, and maybe they can help with your research.”
With the information on several scraps of paper, it was time for Hilda and John to say goodbye and start their journey back to the hotel. The day had been exhausting and they were hungry. Before resuming the journey, it was time to eat a late lunch at a delightful Italian trattoria less than a hundred yards away, across the street. They talked about whether they would have time to visit the District Court. Hilda confirmed she had brought her mother’s birth certificate and other documents with her, and these might help gain access to the law courts. They decided to delay a decision until after they talked to the tour guide, the following Sunday afternoon.
The Hop-On, Hop-Off buses had finished their daily schedule by the time Hilda and John completed their itinerary of sightseeing, concluding with a walk in the Tiergarten Park. Consequently, there was a five-mile hike back to the hotel, but that didn’t seem to matter. Hilda had achieved far more than she expected, and walking through central Berlin on a Saturday
evening was a way to soak in the sights and sounds of the city, and reflect on a very successful day. John mapped the way as Hilda chatted about the kindness of the shopkeepers and the tour of the building. After losing their way several times, they finally made it back to the hotel late in the evening. There was no time for dinner. Instead, they retired to the bedroom where they jointly composed a letter that would be presented to the District Court, if they decided to call on it and it wouldn’t let them in.
The following morning was devoted to a visit to the remains of the Berlin Wall and a walk through Memorial Park. Somehow the fierceness of the Wall’s former purpose was missing because of the presence of so many tourists and commercial activities, despite realistic exhibits of the death zone. The nearby Documentation Center gave a thorough education on the differences between the two Berlins, the Viewing Tower offered a panoramic view of the neighborhood, and the Visitor’s Center sold pieces of the Wall as souvenirs. All in all, it was an invigorating walk, but with none of the excitement of the previous day.
Late in the afternoon, it was time for the Rick Steves tour orientation, and introductions to fellow travelers. The group was small, with a range of reasons for people being there. For some, it was curiosity, others an interest in history, and for the musician in the group, to attend a symphony in the Dresden Concert Hall. Hilda and John described their adventures of the previous day and explained Hilda’s links to Berlin and Vienna. Afterwards, they sat down with the travel guide for a personal discussion. They were surprised by his interest and encouragement, as he listened to their story. He was a slim, thirty-something, bespectacled German called Carlos, who had led this particular tour many times before. He smiled and seemed eager to help, and he and Hilda discovered they had a number of things in common. Both had one parent born in Germany. Carlos’s father had escaped from East Germany to West Berlin during the 1950s, and had met his Costa Rican wife in Bonn. Carlos was proud to be German, and like Hilda, enjoyed the perspective of parents who were able to objectively critique their home country.
Reacting to the unexpected request from his two traveling companions to be let off part of the Berlin itinerary, and using his Rick Steves training, he diplomatically agreed their plan was sensible, but the visit to the District Court should take place on Tuesday rather than Monday. That way they would not miss the important tour of central Berlin he had arranged for Monday morning. He added, during Sunday evening, and before the start of the Monday morning itinerary, he would introduce the group to the Berlin public transport system and instruct them on how to use it. That way Hilda and John would be able to travel by train to the District Court, and he would provide directions to the Amtsgerichtplatz in Charlottenburg, after dinner on Monday evening.
