Friends Like These: My Worldwide Quest to Find My Best Childhood Friends, Knock on Their Doors, and Ask Them to Come Out and Play (28 page)

I was now a man of some responsibility, unable to simply board a plane and leave the country, and I understood that. I was,
for one thing, a
boss.
I’d called Paul and instructed him I would be away this weekend and therefore would not be around to let him in to begin
the canopy and the guttering. He’d listened attentively, but then I’d had to spend a couple of minutes reminding him who I
was and what he was supposed to be doing for me. He said he could maybe sort things out this week, only his assistant was
ill and he wasn’t feeling too good either.

All of this had, though, meant I could board my flight with the beginnings of a clear conscience. I sat quietly and read my
complimentary copy of
High Life
magazine, and there, over three or four pages, was a huge and colorful feature on… Los Angeles.

I wolfed it down. LA looked exciting. Dangerous.
Exotic.
A place of fun and shenanigans. Ben Ives must
love
it there. There were muscly men rollerskating near the beach. Girls in bikinis eating ice cream and dancing. Yellow cabs,
and bright sunshine, and neon lights, and billboards and cops and film stars.

But, as I looked around me, and at the stewardess starting to point out the emergency exits, I remembered that I wasn’t going
to LA.

My plane would land in Berlin in an hour and forty minutes.

Tarek’s email had made me remember exactly why we’d been friends. It was warm, and inviting, and immediately made me feel
like we hadn’t been apart for sixteen years. It was like nothing was missing… and it was full of promise, too. He’d told me
to look him up the next time I was in Berlin, that we had so much to catch up on, that there were so many things he wanted
to remember with me, that I should absolutely,
definitely
come back over…

And so I’d decided I would. There and then.
A friend’s worth a flight.
Yes. A friend
is
worth a flight. And so I’d started the booking process—a booking process that reminded me that a friend would have to be
worth a hotel, too. But yes. A friend is worth a flight
and
a hotel, I assured myself. And a taxi from the airport. Yes. A friend is worth a flight and a hotel and a taxi to
and
from the airport.

Yes.

But I’d begun to feel slightly nervous. Finding a hotel had proved difficult. Two separate websites which individually checked
availability throughout the whole of Berlin had both come up with just one option… a hotel next to the Ku’Damm, right in the
heart of the city, at a nightly rate of £290.

£290! A
night!
I struggled to see where the money could possibly be going. There was no talk of king-size beds, or duck-down duvets, or
complimentary champagne, or any of the things you’d expect and demand as you handed over your 290 quid. There was just a picture
of a room. A very normal, German room.

The lack of accommodation, and the high price, were both, I knew, down to one thing. I was heading for Berlin on the day of
the World Cup final. The day all eyes would be on the city. It was Tarek who’d suggested it. He’d said we should meet up,
have a chat and a beer, and then go and watch the final on one of the big screens near the Brandenburg Gate. It just seemed
too perfect not to do. Me and Tarek, hanging out again, in the most exciting place of the moment. And so I’d bitten the bullet,
bought an overpriced ticket and booked an overpriced room. Ah well. Hang the expense. I’d live in luxury for a weekend in
the name of friendship. To make it work, though, I’d had to cancel my meeting with Peter Gibson. But that was fine, I reasoned,
as I stepped off the plane and walked into the arrivals lounge. Peter would be okay about it. He was in London, after all,
and now that contact had been made, I could see him
anytime.
Who’d begrudge me a trip to see an old friend on a night like this?

I turned my phone on and immediately received a message.

Why have you painted everything white? Why did you only paint half the shed?

Well, Lizzie maybe, but that was fair enough.

Now that you and I are best friends, I’d like to present you with a new rule of travel. One which I hope you will treat with
all the gravitas and seriousness you have come to treat
all
my important advice.

Never get a hotel room based on a picture you see on the Internet.

Because, sometimes, those pictures are
actual size.

If I’m honest, I was mildly suspicious from the very second I caught sight of my plush, £290-a-night, luxury Berlin hotel.

For a start, there was the fact that, as per the website, nothing so far was really screaming “plush.” Or “luxury.” In fact,
there wasn’t really much even screaming “hotel.” For the price of a night in the Dorchester, its location was undoubtedly
excellent—ten seconds from one of central Berlin’s most exciting streets. But location isn’t everything. Sometimes a hotel
needs a little more. Like locks. Treat this as piece of advice number two.

The lack of a proper lock was my first clue, as I stood outside, fruitlessly pushing a doorbell from which wires spilled out
liberally, and noticing the scratched and scruffy door secured by nothing more than an open brass padlock. Not one of those
big ones, either. A tiny one. The kind you’d give to a child so that he can lock his pencil case. Then there was the broken
lawnmower on the stairs. The peeling wallpaper and cracked, blackened windows. I found myself tutting as I passed these, noting
what a lick of paint could do for those frames. And then there was the fact that, as I found the lady sitting behind the plastic
desk in what the sign above her peroxide head insisted was the reception area—but which also appeared to be someone’s bedroom—she
seemed incredibly surprised to see me there at all. I knew this because her eyebrows were somewhere around her hairline. But
then, these were eyebrows she’d drawn on herself, so who knows
what
she was thinking.

“You booked on Internet?” she said, perplexed. She was young, and Polish, and I may well have been the first guest she’d ever
seen.

“Yes,” I said.

“But… you have read description of the room?” she said.

Another clue for me, there.

“Um… yes,” I said.

“Well… we need you pay now, before I can give key.”

This was suspicious. If I’d been buying a car or adopting an orphan I might have thought twice. But I handed over my credit
card and shrugged. I’d seen a
picture,
after all—surely I didn’t need to see anything else. The lady ran the card through the system, never once taking her eyes
off me, and then handed me a massive key, attached to a large block of orange plastic the length and width of a brick, but
heavier.

“Are you here to see football?” she said.

I nodded.

“Kind of,” I said.

“You must be very big fan,” she said. “You must
love
football game.”

“Well, I’m here to see a friend as well,” I said. “An old friend.”

“He must be
very
old friend,” she said.

“Yes,” I said. “He’s 102.”

I laughed lots and lots. She didn’t laugh at all. Her eyebrows remained perfectly still and blue.

“You go down this,” she said instead, pointing to a corridor somewhere off to the left. As I wandered off, I turned round
to see her still looking at me with a mixture of confusion and fear on her face. I walked on.

There was a strange smell in the air. It was manly, and musky, and reminded me of cheap nightclubs and angry, fighting men.
As I found my room, I also found the source of the smell. The cleaner—and it’s hard to call someone that when they actually
look dirtier than you do—was doing a spot of air freshening by walking down the hallway with her finger jammed down on a can
of Lynx. This is how I used to make my room smell nice when I was a student, and it did not work. I scrabbled to get the key
in the lock and managed to force the door open just in time to avoid total saturation by the smell of a thousand teenage boys.
And then I saw my room. Well, I couldn’t help it. One step in and I was already halfway through.

It was tiny. Absolutely
tiny.

Every piece of furniture had been shoved into one small corner. The TV—one of those wood-paneled push-button ones that one
day no one will believe ever existed—was rammed with the sink, the bin, everything, all into one corner. There was a dirty
bar of soap face down on a damp table. The window couldn’t be opened because it was jammed shut by the communal bins outside.
There were wires where lights should have been. The cold tap spat water around the bowl, unpredictably and perilously close
to the telly. There was no toilet or shower. There was a three-inch gap between the floor and the door. I stood there and
blinked at it all a few times. And then I blinked a few more times, because the cleaner must have been in here a few minutes
ago and the fumes were prickling my eyes. I looked around me and tried to convince myself that this was £290 well spent. And
then I realized that looking around me wasn’t helping my case.

I went out. I’d be making friends again with Tarek at six. For now, I’d make friends once more with Berlin.

When I’d first arrived in Berlin, in 1990, I had never been anywhere like it before. The closest I’d been was probably Leicester,
and it’s very hard to get excited about seeing Leicester. It had been the height of summer and the city was bright and vast.
From my little seat at the back of the van I’d looked up as we drove down Unter den Linden to see the Brandenburg Gate in
the distance. The entire street was lined on both sides with precisely the same model of pale blue Trabant—the car which millions
of East Germans would save for millions of years to buy. The same car which, in thirty years of production, was never once
updated or changed. The same car which was originally supposed to have been a three-wheeled motorbike, but which the designers
decided to change at the last minute and sell as a car. It was an incredibly odd sight. There must have been hundreds of them…
and now, as I walked down the same street, I couldn’t spot even one. Just beemers. And Mercs. And slick, silver Audis. Things
had changed. So I went to try and find the Berlin
I
knew.

Almost immediately, I found myself riding the U-Bahn to Oskar-Helene-Heim, the tube station I’d used every day in Berlin.
At the stand outside, I bought a currywurst and a beer, with chips and mayonnaise piled on top, just as I’d done when I was
thirteen. Apart from the beer, I mean. I walked past my old flat on Gary Strasse, the scene of the KGB invasion, with its
parquet floors and tall white walls. I wandered through the park that I’d first eaten Oreos and drunk Mountain Dew and played
baseball in… past the duck pond which froze solid in the winter and which I once fell into trying to rescue a frozen fish
which turned out to be a large brown stick. Down the streets around Dahlem, where I’d cycled with the small Russian kid who’d
lived downstairs. Grisha.
Grisha Kozlov.
I wonder what
he’s
up to these days?

I got the bus down to Zehlendorf, towards JFK. I walked through the park next to it, and remembered the shaving-foam fight
on the last day of school, when the entire park had turned white, and the entire park smelled just as my hotel room smelled
now. I found the tree that Tarek and Josh and I would sometimes sit under when we couldn’t face geography and would decide
to skip class and eat apples. And then I hopped back on the U-Bahn and made my way into town again, doing my best to take
in exactly the landmarks I remembered best as a kid. The Gedächtniskirche, the church in the center of Berlin, with the spire
damaged in the air raids of the Second World War still as it was… the KaDeWe shopping center and the bright blue Mercedes
sign that shines over a darkened Berlin like a second moon… the TV Tower, built as a symbol of communism—but which annoys
all communists on sunny days as a giant cross appears on its huge, curved windows… then, further into town, a stop at Checkpoint
Charlie, where somehow, sixteen years on, men are still making a living from selling pieces of the Berlin Wall which must
surely have run out a day or a week after it actually fell… where tourists snap up symbols of the past, tottering home in
oversized Russian military gear, or having their passports stamped with the words CHECKPOINT CHARLIE.

Seeing Loughborough again after so many years had been one thing. I’d found it interesting that the Wimpy was still there,
for example. But seeing Berlin, a city which had been through so much, been given a second chance, been made into the
capital
of Germany while I’d been
living
there, was quite another. It was such a confident city. Confident of its place, of its cool, of its future.

Perhaps, of course, it had something to do with the World Cup. All around me, all day, had been football fans in various states
of dress and sobriety. I’d seen desperation in the face of a wild-eyed Italian, tapping strangers on the shoulders and holding
up a sign saying ICH BRAUCHE A TICKET. I’d seen love gently blossom between a girl in a France top and a boy in an Italy top.
I’d seen tension, as a drunken Italian in a central square kicked a ball as high as he could in the air, only to watch with
simple-faced horror as it came smashing down on a table full of Germans and beers. I’d seen a man inexplicably wearing a North
Korea shirt, a girl bringing a pizza to a cheering group of rival fans, and a poodle that someone had sprayed red, white and
blue. The at mo sphere was incredible. Berlin was a party town at the best of times. Berlin was a party town, in fact, at
the
worst
of times. But now Berlin had a
reason.

I wandered down a side street, away from the Ku’Damm, and found the pub that Tarek and I had agreed would be our meeting point.
From here, we could easily make our way to the Brandenburg Gate to watch the final on the big screens. I found a seat on a
bench outside and sat in the late afternoon sun. A group of very drunk Germans were at the next table. One of them, sporting
a look I genuinely thought had died out as the Wall came down (mustache, spiky-topped mullet, tight black jeans and large
white sneakers), was leading the group in a rendition, bizarrely, of “Rule Britannia.” There appeared to be no reason for
this whatsoever, and no reason for the group to segue seamlessly into “The Final Countdown.” It was a bold move, combining
two such distinct genres with such reckless abandon, but it worked out for them, and I had to applaud their progressive attitudes.
Internally, I mean. I didn’t stand there and applaud a load of blokes with mullets singing “Europe.” But I smiled my appreciation,
and they looked at me and raised their glasses and cheered. Berlin was a lovely place to be.