There needs to be a word for the very specific frisson of setting out for the first time in a new city. The usual response, thanks in part to Ben Schott, is “There probably already is, in German.” Which feels close to hand this morning, as the streets are still waking up this first morning in Berlin.

I was supposed to come to Berlin 40 years ago but, thanks to a twist of fate half-past Copenhagen, never made it. There were two Germanys back then, and two Berlins, each with their own intrigue. And while I eventually did make it to Munich, I always felt like I had somehow missed out. Forty years – it seems unthinkable that I was old enough to be hitchhiking around Europe that long ago. And unthinkable these days, to me, to contemplate hitchhiking anywhere. But those were different times as, I suppose, all times are. Forty years from now, what of today will then be unthinkable?

Contemplation aside, here I am, and so far the town of such long-held mystery has treated me well (For comparison, my most enduring memory of Munich was being chased through the train station by a deranged woman screaming that I was a CIA agent). No train stations yet, but the coffee shop just off of Kurfürstendamm – Ku’damm to the locals – this morning has furnished me with charming service, a cappuccino, and some sort of yoghurt-drizzled frittata with which to temper the anticipated joys of jet lag.

As I mentioned in my last missive, my mother and I are in Berlin for a couple of weeks of exploration, with a touch of work slipped in here and there. Neither of us, it seems, are able to ever truly stop “working.” Even though officially retired, she’ll be meeting with colleagues and former students and, I think, giving a lecture or two. For my part, it looks like I’ll be fitting in Zoom calls with colleagues in Antarctica to do some long-distance tech support for a project I’m helping support.

But aside from the half-dozen pushpins of talks and meetings in the schedule, our slate for the coming days is mostly, delightfully blank. We’re off to see the Pergamon Museum this morning with its Babylonian artifacts. Also maybe one of those city boat rides, but after that? We’re going to wander. It’s what I always do when left to my own devices, and my mother, with whom I have not traveled since reaching my maturity, professes to do the same. Balance the figurative dowsing rod in our fingers and see where it leads.

I’ll keep you posted!

[Postscript: Berlin has failed to disappoint. The Pergamon Museum was breathtaking, with walls of Sumerian and Assyrian documents (including surprisingly egalitarian laws on divorce and womens’ rights), Gilgamesh tablets, temple engravings recovered from the Hittite city of Yazılıkaya and, most impressively, the Ishtar Gate from Babylon, reconstructed from tens of thousands of glazed fragments of brick. From there we walked – my family seem to all be serious walkers – to and around Friedrichstraße before kicking back for the promised boat tour up and down the Spree.

Everywhere we went, it seemed the fates smiled on our timing: we had the museum almost to ourselves until, on our way out, we had to navigate the incoming deluge of visitors. We stopped in the train station for a snack; at the cashier we turned around to see an enormous line had materialized behind us. The same thing happened at riverside: I approached the nice, unoccupied lady selling tickets for the riverboat. In the 30 seconds it took for her to set us up, a line half a block long had formed, waiting for her attention.]