There is nothing like being confined to home to make me sort through those books I picked up at various charity shops. I decided that Len Deighton's spy trilogy, Berlin Game, Mexico Set and London Match would keep me amused for a bit and I wasn't wrong. They were written around 1985 or so when the Berlin Wall was still up and Bonn was the capital of West Germany. I visited Berlin around then and saw the wall for myself and as I stayed with a German who grew up there, I was able to get into the atmosphere of all things berlinerisch. In addition, I had always loved hearing stories from my in-laws, whose exploits during and after the Second World War were hair-raising to put it mildly.
I found Mexico Set the least entertaining of the three books. I particularly enjoyed London Match, though. There was one paragraph of the book, towards the end, which resonated with me. The characters are talking about being Berliners and Samson is waiting for them to say that he, too, is German, because he grew up there. "Berlin was my town", he thinks. London was where his friends lived and his children were born but he was a German. But the others don't see him as a Berliner like themselves. He is still a foreigner.
Isn't this a bit like what every ex-pat feels? I have lived most of my life in Germany, before that I spent six or more years in London and before that a couple of years in Dublin. I never felt I belonged anywhere, I still feel like that. I love London and when I am there on a visit, I feel I could slip back into that life. I still have a great deal of interest in Germany and although I never felt that I belonged, I can identify with the mentality. I now live in Ireland but I don't think I will ever be 100% Irish. I've been away too long. Somebody (during my time in Germany) called me "a citizen of the world." Maybe that's not such a bad thing.
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