Berlin or bust: Schnodderig mit Witz

If there's a better word than "schnodderig" I have not heard it. C'mon, just say it — and say it fast — shnodrick. Feels good as a mouthful of potato salad with little pickle chunks.

You know how native New Yorkers have their style? Get outa my way you fuggin' asshole! So foul-mouthed and fearless, you kind of have to love ‘em for it? Well, Berliners have their style, too. Don't expect subservience. Don't expect extra effort. Take our hotel staff, who spared us only as many words as humanly necessary, and beneath every one was ice so slick, we went sliding straight across the lobby and crashing into the glass doors whenever we dared expect more from them than they thought we deserved. An apology, say, when they'd royally screwed up our reservation.

I arrived at the hotel at 9:40 a.m. on Wednesday the 15th. This was after the Russian surround-sound flight, remember, and the near-arrest in Frankfurt. I straggled to the front desk with my two-ton bags. "My mother has reserved rooms," I mumbled in sloppy German. "Under Bobby Patri, I think?" A tight-faced girl with a blond ponytail tapped around on her computer. Nothing. "Gertrud Patri, maybe? Gertrud Reich?" Yes. But only one room, with a double bed.

I was very confused. Did The Moms expect us to share? "Under Lilan Patri?" I asked.

Nothing. "There is a single room available for tonight. Would you like to book that?"

I thought I'd better wait for The Moms. "I'll just check into the one room for now."

"Check in is at 13:00."

I stared at the girl. You know when you are so tired you kind of want to die? That's how I'd felt five hours earlier. My blouse was a wad of wrinkles. My back begged for full recline. Even my skull ached.

I was told I could leave my suitcases at the hotel. So, buckling under the weight of my backpack (how could I leave that, with my laptop, in the lobby? and how could I transfer all the books from the backpack to the suitcases, which hadn't an inch of space to spare?), I paced up and down ugly Kudamm Strasse. I tested the gluten-rich breakfast buffet at Marché down the block. I lingered for hours over a small coffee and lost myself writing a post about the cocaine bust. At precisely 1 p.m., I returned. "I am ready to check in." I smiled a smile, warm and desperate. It was not returned.

"Check-in is at 15:00."

I stared at the girl. Now I truly was dead. A patina of dirt and dried sweat caked my face. My armpits stank. My pant-cuffs dragged beneath my heels. I zombie-marched myself back to Marché for lunch. I piled my plate with cheesy roast fennel and cubes of pink mystery meat. My stomach began to weep. I nursed another cup of coffee. Finally at 4:00, I stumbled to the hotel. "Check in…" I managed. It was a different girl. Fuller face. Brown ponytail. "My parents…maybe…here?" Yes, indeed, she said, room 221. Then she handed me a key to room 420. What? Yes, the second room. Which had been reserved, and in the system, all along.

Still strapped into my hunchback-gear, I rode the glass elevator to floor 2. In front of room 221, I fell to my knees. I began banging my forehead against the door. "Hallooo? Halloo?" I called. My father pulled open the door and I face-planted into the carpet. I began to laugh hysterically. "Schatz!" he said happily. "You're here!" I dragged myself on my knees into the room. "Escapee from Lourdes!" my mother said.

"No room, for me," I gasped. "No sleep — Russians! Awake for 29 hours." I was laughing so hard my eyes leaked. "No check-in until 3!"

"No!" my mother said, looking aghast. I collapsed onto the double-bed and told my story to the ceiling. "What!?" she roared. "No!" Not only had she, of course, reserved a separate room for me, she had reserved it for the night of the 14th so that I might lie myself down immediately and circumvent the whole check-in problem. She can be brilliant like that.

She can also be brilliant in the face of injustice. I watched happily as she swelled and reddened. "Oh, they're going to get it now," said my father as she high-stepped out of the room.

But she returned unsatisfied. Later I understood why. I was with her at the front desk when we went through it again, what had happened. Two women, neither one the blonde, stood there, silent, their faces pinched. They should have been kissing my feet. Jesus, they should have been washing my feet. Instead they were so clammed up, I wanted to take pliers to their lips. "The reservation was in the computer," was all the brunette could offer, as if this somehow rendered my version of events incomprehensible. "Would I make this up?" I said angrily. "I gave every possible name!" And: "You certainly can't expect us to pay for the 14th," said my mother. "It's simply NOT RIGHT." The women looked at us in their pained and glassy way, and finally all we could do was walk away. "But we are NOT paying for the one night," I muttered. "Absolutely not!" said my mother.

Later the ladies relented. But amends? Funny.

The staff of Hotel Am Zoo: Schnodderig. Without Witz.

Now, real old-school Berliners, they put Witz into it.

On Monday, my parents and I decided to take a boat tour down the Spree. The boat pulled up to the boarding spot half an hour early. Uncharacteristically, we were already there. "May we board now?" asked my mother. "Don't see why not," said the captain-guy.

The boat was a low-rent affair: one level instead of two; drink selection instead of full café menu; and (we discovered later) pre-recorded tour instead of live MC. We settled into the benches at the front. Three old ladies sat at a table behind us, a dachshund at their feet. Wanting something to do, I asked my parents if they'd brought any postcards. "We wrote them all already," said my father. I scowled. "Maybe the boat sells some," offered my mother. "I doubt it," I said. But she wandered inside to inquire. (Why is it that I turn so impossibly whiny and passive in the presence of The Parentals? Please, make it stop.) When my mother returned she held a scrap of white paper. "Whaddaya need a postcard for?" the captain-guy had asked her. "Here, here's a postcard," and he whipped out his blue ballpoint. "It's even free." My mother handed it to me. A small boat breezed along a wavy line of water. The cabin had porthole windows. A head with a triangular cap poked out the top. The hull read "La Belle." A box in the upper right-hand corner stood for the sun. The boat was about to crash into the logo for "Wodka Gorbatschow," printed along the paper's edge.

This made up for all the postcards my parents had not brought. If I had a scanner, you would see.

The young waiter-guy came to take our drink orders. My mother let it slip that she was Bavarian.* "You Bavarians, impossible to have a conversation with — so slow, by the time you've thought of what to say, a Berliner's already finished saying it." From then on, he insisted on enunciating every syllable of every word when he spoke to us: Ja, min-e-ral-was-ser ha-ben wir, na-tuer-lich. Meanwhile, the old ladies behind us were chowing down on skinny wursts and white toast. There was food! (Having not eaten a substantial hotel breakfast, I was pretty much starving. My mother pulled a banana from her purse. "Ew, it's green. I hate them green!" I bit into it and winced. "How you can eat them like this?" I said. "Don't eat it then," said my mother. But of course, I did.)

The boat took off. The view from the river was cool, but the recording (in German) was set so low I couldn't understand the words — especially the big fancy words about politics and history. I sat beside my mother and tried hard to tamp my foul temper. I ordered a water, which never came. It began to rain and we headed inside the little cabin. "You forgot my water," I told the waiter-guy, who was lounging at one of the tables. "You're right," he said. He grinned at me. He did not budge."Totally." (Actually, he said, "volle Pulle," which is slang too excellent to really translate.) We ordered the hot dogs, and I asked for the potato salad I'd seen the oldest, most crumpled of the ladies eating — also that long-missing water. The waiter-guy brought us three orders of wurst with white toast. "Um, potato salad?" I said. "My God." He shook his head. "I've got a brain like a sieve today."

They were pure schnodderig mit Witz, those guys.

Done right, schnodderig mit Witz doesn't leave you feeling like the butt of anything. Done right, you feel honored — as if given fleeting entry into a secret club meant for locals only.

Done right, it's What I Love, number 3.

What I Love, number 4, is those hot dogs I ate. Seidenwürstchen, my mother said they were. Silk sausages. With a dab of sharp mustard and a scoop of potato salad (tangy pickle chunks!), they were one of the best Berlin meals I had eaten thus far. Volle Pulle. No friggin' Witz.

*Sort of the southern hicks of Deutschland. (Sorry, Moms)