Everyone – and I mean everyone – warned me about the cold. The Brits at home before I left: “Berlin! Ooh, they’ve got proper cold winters, you know”; the Berliners themselves when I arrived: “Only last week, a fierce Siberian wind carried away most of the city’s children”; even the internet-at-large joined in: “You’re going to need a killer winter wardrobe of fur, capes, long johns and serious boots…” Well, okay. I bought and packed extra jumpers, fleece and fur-lined tights, and thermal leggings and long johns. I packed three pairs of boots (jettisoning the velvet pair at the airport thanks to an overweight suitcase) and 15 pairs of socks. I bought a new hat, and rolled seven scarves into my hand luggage. I got to Berlin and I… sweated like Seabiscuit after a hard day at the racetrack. It was all blue skies and fluffy white clouds. A couple of days at 18-20°C, even. The Germans in the office cheerfully told me I was experiencing a blip: “This sunshine is very unseasonal,” they said. “It will soon go back, don’t you worry.” But it didn’t.
And then after a couple of weeks of walking around with my coat wide open and my emergency scarf jauntily tied around my bag strap, winter descended very suddenly. I felt it all the way through my layers, clear to my bones. The rain felt icy, the drops as sharp as tiny Nazgul fingers. “Ah, shit,” I thought as I jammed my hands into my pockets. “Winter is here.” Also: “I should’ve worn my gloves this morning.”
In London, the cold season always prompts me to think about the more unfortunate among us, the ones who live on the street, or barely cope in their makeshift shelters. Stories like this and also this make me ache; winter is a terrible time for many of us, but never worse than for the people who go without all year round. At least we have roofs and walls and central heating. In Berlin, the homeless seem a lot more visible than in London, especially around where I live in the southeast of the city. There are a couple of young women often outside the Penny supermarket on my way home whose faces I’ve come to recognise – one hijabi, the other not – and I try to drop some money for them when I can. It’s not enough, of course. It’s never enough.
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I saw one very unfortunate soul at Hermannplatz station, shuffling along with one obviously bad foot dragging a half-step behind him. He was dressed in layers, all seemingly coated with the peculiar grey of grime and wear. He had a granny shopper on wheels – this one was red – plus a rolled-up bundle on top, not unlike people whizzing by at airports, jackets rolled on top of their hand luggage. He shuffled along, shoulders rounded and head seemingly permanently bowed, until he came to a public payphone. In an internationally recognised move, he stuck his forefinger and middle finger into the chamber at the bottom of the coin slot. His feet barely stopped moving – a small but telling giveaway that he was neither expecting, nor was used to finding any money sitting there – as he rooted around. And then, some luck! His fingers had connected with something. There was the sound of a coin scraping the metal. His foot briefly paused its shuffling. He put what he had found into his trouser pocket.
I almost cheered.
He kept it moving, though. It had been a short stop. When I looked around, no one seemed to have noticed this man’s fleeting ‘good fortune’. In the next few seconds, the train arrived. I got on, and wrapped my scarf around me a little more securely. I remembered a programme I’d watched a few months back (and written about): the things we take for granted as permanent have a nasty habit of turning out not to be. Whatever stopped that shuffling man’s fate from becoming mine (and vice versa) are not necessarily by my own doing, nor his. Life’s a bitch, but bitchier for some more than others.
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