July 2011

Saturday I had dinner next door to the Komische Oper, one of three opera houses in Berlin. I sat outside on a very warm summer eve eating oysters at the Art Deco-ish Dressler restaurant while faint hints of Mozart’s masterpiece, Cosi fan tutte, wafted over the night air.

The Komische Oper is regarded as Berlin’s budget opera house, neither as staid as the Deutsche Opera House in Charlottenburg or as glamorous as Deutsche Staatsoper which generally attracts the best singers. The Komische gets by putting out smaller productions with Eastern European opera singers. Still, how can you miss listening to Cosi fan tutte in Berlin?

There are a couple of things to be aware of when dining in Berlin. First of all, everyone smokes, no matter what the signs say. Particularly during meals. And your average German tends to get a little pissy, as I found out, when you politely tell them that your white asparagus has a rather odious Marlboro aftertaste. So don’t bother. What I have learned to do is to wear the same smoke encrusted shirts to cafes and bars, so as not to spoil my other clothes.

The other observation I’ve made about dining in Berlin is that German waiters are even better than the French at completely ignoring you, though they don’t act quite as annoyed when you finally do get their attention. The French, at this point, would make that little obnoxious puffing noise as they slowly strolled over to your table, but the Germans feign astonishment to find that you’ve been hiding at a table six feet away from their station, where they have not moved in fifteen minutes, without once being spotted.

“I did not see you slip in,” they will cleverly say, a big smile on their face.

No German waiter will ever say, “Guten Abend, my name is Hans and I will be your server tonight. May I get you a drink?”

No one will ever bother you with tonight’s specials (mostly because there will be no specials). And, most importantly, no one will ever interrupt your meal to ask you how everything is. Perhaps this is a good thing. I just wish I didn’t have to wave my arms in the air as if I were at a rock concert in order to get another drink.

A velotaxi in front of the Hotel Adlon.

When I pulled up in front of the Hotel Adlon in a velotaxi, which is rather like a bullet-shaped rickshaw powered by a bicyclist, the young doorman in the burgundy long-coat with black lapels and gold epaulets, didn’t quite know how to greet me since there was no door to open, no trunk from which to disgorge luggage. Just little ol’ me.

“Can I help you, Herr?” he said, in that rich Germanic way that is code for “Am I supposed to believe that you are a guest at the famous Hotel Adlon?”

“No, I’m fine, danke!” I told him, which is English code for, “Yes, you silly prick, I am a guest here.”

I strode up the steps and through the revolving doors while the doorman just watched.