Berlin, March 2007. I'm walking back to the hotel at night and it’s absolutely freezing. A girl is begging on a bridge with her dog a mere 100 metres from where I'm staying. Bloody dog! I was thinking: food, a steamy hot shower, a movie, some beers, and let’s see if we get on. But there is no way in hell I can check her into my hotel with a dog. And I don’t know Berlin well enough to know about other options*.
It’s our last day on the course fieldtrip and it’s my free evening. We’ve got lots of leftover pack-lunches which students did not take with them in the morning, preferring to go to restaurants. I guess that the profs and the students won’t mind, so I pack the whole lot, add some clean skiing-socks and make my way back to the bridge, feeling weird, wondering if I can find the right tone.
D. Hi. I’m here with 25 students from England. We’ve got all those leftover pack-lunches and we‘re leaving tomorrow, was wondering if you would like them...
PG. (smiles) Hey cool, people keep giving me stuff today, thanks!!!
D. It’s so damn cold. Why do you stay here?
PG. It’s not that cold, you get used to it.
D. It’s fucking freezing if you ask me. Do you live near here?
PG. Yeah, we’re in a squat with some friends. No heating, but works just fine. In the evening we cook stuff. The other day, someone cooked a full Indian dinner. It was delicious. Looks like it's going to be good tonight with all that stuff. What do you do?
D. I’m doing a PhD in social sciences and I get to teach undergrads and take them to Europe to observe the "city revanchism" in Berlin.
We chat for another 25 minutes. I’m freezing my ass off on that bridge. After a while, she says:
PG. Hey, it’s great talking to you, you stick around a lot longer than folks! But look, you’re shaking, you should really get back to your place. Say thank you to your students and have a great trip back to England!
I've never felt like such a failure. Yet in a sense, I’m very glad she framed the situation in that way: it was wonderfully refreshing. There was not an ounce of dependence in her conversation, she was an amazingly resilient and extremely clever girl.
I was charmed. Now I often think of her and I wish we'd stayed in touch somehow. I wonder if she’d let me into her world. But she probably meant: "you’re sweet, but you don’t know shit". And she was right of course. Similarly, selling all you have is not a "faithwalk" which you do in you late twenties, for the thrill of it, before you can walk back into line. The point is not to give to those in need, it is to share their destiny.
* though I could have asked HER. Durrrrrr.
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