BEN STEIN'S DIARY: Boston to Berlin
Stein, Benjamin J.
BEN STEIN’S DIARY Boston to Berlin by Benjamin J. Stein MONDAY U GH. I AM IN A TINY LITTLE ROOM at the Essex House in New York. They screwed up desperately so now I am stuck in this tiny...
...We Jews could learn a lot from those other, entrepreneurial Jews...
...Just for being a Jew...
...But it still smells awful...
...I fell into a deep sleep and pretty soon we were passing the spires of my old hometown, New Haven...
...looks all right but the rest stops are a bit Führer had sped past so many times...
...The Nazis would “astonish Darwin,” as they put it, and kill 20,000 Jews a day...
...No apology...
...Then we were there and walked up another huge flight of steps and then we were in the miserable Frankfurt not at all smoke-free terminal, and then there was our faithful driver, Thomas, and we were in his car heading over to the world’s most elegant hotel, the Villa Kennedy, and we were asleep in minutes...
...So we can fly tomorrow to Frankfurt...
...Anyway, we did our work, and I flirted to no avail with the models...
...However it had been damaged, it was fine today...
...Then we waited in an airless jetbridge in stifling heat for way too long, then boarded...
...Great audience...
...This was a very, very evil legacy...
...Horrible food, horrible service, incredibly high price...
...Then off to the U.S...
...We’re making a commercial for Clear Eyes...
...It turned out they were Russian tourists...
...I get to do this fun work, get to duck back in the air-cooled Winnebago, get to sleep between takes, get to have unlimited sodas, all because men and women suffered and died to keep us free...
...Well, enough about that...
...Also, she’s sensitive, and she could probably feel the vibes of Lake Wannsee, where today, there are just sailboats lazily cruising around under an intermittent drizzle...
...yes...
...Our driver remembered that the Villa Kennedy had a sister hotel near there...
...Here is what travelers need: respect, space, light, and quiet—and again, respect...
...Across from us were two barefoot Canadians...
...I googled it...
...They greeted me happily...
...Please note, all opponents of capitalism: No war was ever fought over stock in a corporation...
...There were many hip young people there, including Americans...
...But he was playing with dynamite and when it blew up he had died peacefully and millions of Jews died in agony...
...Wifey and I took a long nap...
...Yes, very early...
...Finally, the woman herself, an English person, answers and in short order she finds me another nice room...
...There was installed an escalator to get to the plane...
...Very expensive and awfully good...
...It’s a pitiful place with a boring collection...
...After dinner, while my wife drank champagne, I walked around that plaza in front of my room...
...But it had everything...
...Germans are full of surprises...
...She talked for one hour straight without ever pausing to listen...
...Our hotel was a huge disappointment...
...How can I ever thank the U.S...
...I know they behaved horribly—horribly—to German women...
...Wiener schnitzel...
...Undemanding...
...Then into our lavish first class seats...
...It was a spectacular spot on a lovely large plaza with lofty-ceilinged, spacious rooms...
...As at every meal, I had Wiener schnitzel...
...Canada has gotten extremely rich...
...The euro is roughly $1.43, so figure it out...
...That is a superfranchise, if it’s a franchise at all...
...There is an immense indoor swimming pool and a fantastically lush spa (although the people who work there got very confused when they tried to speak English this time—last summer they were a lot better...
...Just, “Flight 575 to Boston is canceled and to hell with you...
...Wow, that was hot work...
...I swam in their pool, and then I went to sleep, but all night long I kept looking over at the Bebelplatz, imagining it filled with Storm Troopers who would as soon have kicked me to death as looked at me...
...It was great...
...To think of Hitler occupying the same space I was occupying...
...dilapidated...
...More stairs with my heavy suitcase and no one helping me...
...Some imbecile had installed an escalator to get to the plane...
...But a kindly man who worked at the ward to seeing her prints...
...Actually, I wikipediaed it...
...And there is the Holocaust Memorial right next to the Tor...
...If money is no object in your life, this is the place for you...
...They then moved me to a tiny little room and claimed there were no other rooms...
...We’re were playing something by Mozart and they were going through the former East Germany...
...Amazing, to see that place Der Führer had sped past so many times...
...The idea was that the Nazis would help along Darwinian processes by killing all of the Jews all at once instead of just waiting millennia for this “human tuberculosis bacillus” to be eradicated by natural selection...
...A little poodle wandered around...
...Anyone...
...Really great people...
...I don’t want to be in Berlin any longer...
...This charming walled town with ancient buildings was home to one of the most famous figures in Hasidic Jewry, the Baal Shem, a huge big deal...
...BENJAMIN J. STEIN I called my old pal Nan, who still lives in New Haven, to come see her, but she was in “print making” class...
...Small wonder that it gives me the heebie-jeebies just to hear German spoken by every person around me...
...It was here, in 1942, that high And there we are...
...When I was in it, I thought, “Even if I had hidden here, they would have found me and killed me...
...They were flying to Europe to see a Genesis concert...
...Someone told me it was designed by an Israeli with help from a designer from UC Santa Cruz...
...Perfect...
...Anyone...
...Armed Forces enough, or the Brits, or the Russian Red Army, which has never gotten the credit it deserves even remotely in America for beating the Nazi war machine...
...This called for the murder of all of the Jews in Nazioccupied areas...
...We took our rooms (very cheap—about 800 euros per night) and then went off to a hip restaurant called Borchardt’s for (yes...
...Blood dries quickly...
...There was not one other visitor to the museum...
...It evokes no emotion at all, at least not in me...
...He spotted my Hebraic features and said, with a smile, “Shabbat SEPTEMBER 2007 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 61 BEN STEIN’S DIARY Shalom...
...Still, it’s peaceful here at Down and at the tea shoppe here, the chamomille is delicious and the apple pastries are luscious...
...It has me at a gathering of bikini-clad beauties who are being baked by the sun...
...In the basement were several young women with babies...
...I called my limo company and they sent over a driver to drive me to Boston...
...Maybe we can start to repair relations with Putin by putting up a statue to the Red Army soldiers who, by the millions, died so our boys would not have to...
...Can you guess why she flew in...
...A “down” escalator, which I cannot take for mental health reasons...
...I love it a lot...
...and I am supposed to be up at 6 A.M...
...Then lunch at a fine place near the hotel called Legal Seafoods...
...The only exception I can think of is the Breakers in Palm Beach, Florida...
...This place totally scares me...
...On both sides...
...The memorial is probably the stupidest memorial of any kind I have ever seen...
...They meant by this that Darwin, the “saint of Down,” would be ever so proud of them...
...SEPTEMBER 2007 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 63...
...Its stones were vandalized, but not terribly...
...Wow, that was a terrifying, violent, painful life...
...You cannot, not in your wildest dreams, imagine how crowded the shuttle terminal is...
...It was illegal just to exist...
...There is not even enough room for a room service tray here, but I can’t get anyone at room service to answer the phone anyway...
...Anyway again, back in my car and back to the Essex House...
...Nazi officials created the Wannsee Declaration...
...Hard to believe how much time I spent there and what wild times we had...
...Thousands of black rectangular stones on a big dusty square...
...This is like holding up a sign saying, “I’m schizophrenic...
...I didn’t feel well but the driver was kind and courteous...
...I can imagine how bleak life was Amazing, to see that place Der here...
...Of course not...
...I kept imagining the people at this synagogue...
...I got up and spoke to many thousands of optometrists...
...There was no lounge to speak of, just a few plastic chairs...
...More on that to come...
...I kept marveling at the fact that in Nazi Germany, it was illegal just to be a Jew...
...Just as well, since I am married to a saint...
...And New York is the worst at it of anywhere on the planet...
...My wife’s room was about 600 euros a night...
...The most interesting parts were “home movies” taken by German soldaten in Russia...
...What an amazing day that must have been...
...My room was 1,300 euros a night...
...I call the night manager over and over and keep getting a recording of what a great hotel this is...
...BEN STEIN’S DIARY Boston to Berlin by Benjamin J. Stein MONDAY U GH...
...Wall to wall bodies...
...What did these good people think when their Jewish neighbors who had been their neighbors all of their lives started to vanish...
...The larger of the two men kept kicking his big hairy foot on the floor until I asked him to stop...
...Moments later, my wife had a panic attack and we had to leave...
...Not long after that, Pat led me to buy Mary, the Weimaraner, and my life changed forever...
...A large table of local burghers downed pitcher after pitcher of beer...
...Ben Steinis a writer, actor, economist, and lawyer living in Beverly Hills and Malibu...
...She doesn’t like mingling in crowds, which I love...
...It was a short flight...
...I stayed calm...
...The countryside was fairly interesting but not wildly so...
...THURSDAY E ARLY MORNING...
...The Vietnamese are an astonishingly gifted people...
...It’s not a maze...
...Yes, I told them I wanted a big room...
...This is the best one yet...
...Then there is Unter Den Linden and there is Hitler’s favorite hotel, the Adlon, totally rebuilt, right in front of the Brandenburg Gate...
...It incredibly good...
...They screwed up desperately so now I am stuck in this tiny garret...
...Well, best not to think about it, I guess...
...And they don’t have bikini-clad beau60 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR SEPTEMBER 2007 ties strolling in front of them...
...Some imbecile had duper rendezvous there with my old friend Pat Kane (not at the Boston area Roy’s but at one on Connecticut Avenue...
...The countryside is magnificent...
...In 1939, they were probably terrified but could not imagine that—since their families had been in Michaelstadt since the 13th century—they would be arrested and tortured and murdered...
...What insanity was running wild there...
...TUESDAY H ERE I AM out on Long Island at a lavish home with an immense swimming pool...
...All exhausted and disgusted because so many flights are being canceled...
...They looked a lot sweeter than the ordinary Berliner...
...I AM IN A TINY LITTLE ROOM at the Essex House in New York...
...No way to tell what it means...
...Le sang sèche vite...
...MONDAY A trio of musicians was practicing for a concert...
...The Wiener schnitzel is good, though...
...I loved it and so did Walt...
...My driver got righteously lost in the terrifying, damnable tunnels of Boston (sort of like the damnable Guns of Navarone—who here remembers that great movie...
...Did Darwin intend it...
...Dinner at the Adlon, my favorite spot in Berlin...
...Capitalism is inherently about peace and peaceful competition...
...WEDNESDAY O FF TO LA GUARDIA to catch a US Air Shuttle to Boston...
...Oh, great...
...This is well and truly a cause for deep gratitude on my humble part...
...Madmen will fight over land, over food, over ports, over resources, over women...
...After about six hours, we approached Berlin...
...In the museum, in a neighborhood called Karlshorst, was a large room that was the exact room where the Nazis surrendered to the Russians, Americans, British, and to the French—as observers—in May of 1945...
...Peaceful, green fields, fleecy clouds...
...Very cheap...
...Very right to think about it...
...We rarely get it...
...There is a sign that reads, in German, “Who burns books will soon burn men...
...Not for anything that Americans would call a crime...
...No matter where I hid, they would have found me...
...Fought hand to hand against the SS and won...
...I’m telling the world how Clear Eyes saves your eyes from sun...
...Anyone...
...Founded by a Jewish father-son team and now a huge hit...
...Yes, barefoot...
...Le sang sèche vite,” said Charles de Gaulle, and how right he was...
...However, the service is great...
...Extremely terrifying...
...They must think I am a funny guy because they laugh at every word I say as if I were Jimmy Kimmel, but they show no interest in me...
...That should be illegal...
...I said it back to him and went into the “shul...
...I’m looking at the bikini-clad beauties, but I am thinking of the glory of the courage and sacrifice of our Armed Forces...
...Then we met our boss, multi-billionaire Walt Ruloff, and off we went to Logan...
...There was a men’s room far under the museum...
...And there we are...
...Then dinner with my sister and brother-in-law and a friend of theirs, and then to sleep...
...The tomb of the Baal Shem was covered with candles and notes which (I assume) were prayers...
...We had I kept looking over at the Bebelplatz, imagining it filled with Storm Troopers who would as soon have kicked me to death as looked at me...
...His ideas of superior and inferior types led Hitler to think he was actually doing mankind a service by exterminating Jews, Poles, Ukrainians...
...When the band played The Star Spangled Banner and a small detachment of Marines paraded the colors, my wife and I held hands and cried...
...It has a special place in my heart because 35 years ago, I had a superLufthansa at the airport was a bad joke...
...It’s called the Bebelplatz...
...The rooms are immaculate...
...However, a middle-aged man was tending the tiny little synagogue...
...It’s hot as blazes here, and in fact this is the hottest environment I have worked in since I did gardening for 50 cents an hour back in Silver Spring in the summer of—what was it, maybe 1957...
...I had this room once before and nearly lost my mind...
...They are highly engaged in helping their communities and helping anyone with a vision issue...
...It had been built by the Russians...
...Can you imagine how hot our soldiers and Marines are in Iraq under all of that body armor and “battle rattle...
...I bribed the maitre d’ to let us eat outdoors and we really enjoyed the evening...
...SATURDAY A DRIVE WITH OUR GREAT DRIVER, Thomas Frech, out to his hometown of Michaelstadt...
...We (my driver and I) stopped at a Roy Rogers and I had fried chicken...
...It 62 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR SEPTEMBER 2007 BENJAMIN J. STEIN turns out to be the spot where, on May 10, 1933, the Nazis had their first and largest book burning...
...The odd thing is that when I move to my new room, it is spacious and has a great view, and I fall asleep at once...
...Sounds right...
...to work tomorrow or rather today...
...No writing on the stones...
...Lufthansa at the airport was a bad joke...
...Pleasant, lovely people...
...A beautiful buxom prostitute at the bar kept being visited by potential clients...
...Anyway, then, of course, they canceled my flight...
...We wandered around past long, straight “allees” and past monuments, and then suddenly there was the Brandenburger Tor...
...They NOW WE ARE ON OUR WAY to Berlin by car...
...This comes under my new rule of life: The more expensive a hotel or restaurant is, the worse it is...
...All was well until some artiste started smoking a smelly cigar...
...Anyway, I worked on my e-mails until my wife flew in...
...Very touching indeed...
...We raced into Boston...
...There’s a huge full moon and that would have been a danger to anyone hiding from the Gestapo...
...It was on a steep hill...
...Embassy July 4 party at an estate on Lake Wannsee, just a few doors down from where the Wannsee Declaration was signed...
...To give him his due, he very purposefully blew his smoke away from me...
...By this time, it’s 2 A.M...
...Quiet...
...I am not a fan of Darwin...
...We walked across the street to an athletic facility where people were swimming in a huge pool and an announcer was shouting something at them in German...
...I mean, really super-duper chicken...
...But the restaurant is great...
...He’s a Russian Jewish immigrant and he really knew his job...
...The Ambassador, “Tim” Timken, and his wife and son were as welcoming as could be and the setting was lovely...
...One of the honorees was a Vietnamese man who had been a boat person as a child and now is a pillar of his Texas community...
...Wiener schnitzel, and looked at the Brandenburger Tor...
...How can I ever thank the country boys from Nevada County, Arkansas, like my father-in-law, who fought against the Nazis even when they had pneumonia...
...I cannot remember her ever having one before...
...SUNDAY W IFEY, WALT, AND I ARE IN DOWN, outside London, at the home of one of Der Führer’s main sources of inspiration, Charles Darwin...
...Lufthansa counter took pity on me and took me down some stairs...
...She is a super-talented artist, so I will look forno lounge to speak of, just a few plastic chairs...
...The first sign I saw was for a posh suburb called Wannsee...
...Not cheap...
...It was actually interesting...
...Now I am here, furious, frustrated, unable to sleep...
...Yes, I stay here over and over and have done for years...
...I want to go home...
...Behind me, an immense woman is talking very loudly on her cell phone...
...Then we went to the Jewish cemetery...
...She must have been expensive because they all went away empty-handed...
...Dinner at the restaurant at the Museum of Art, one of Frankfurt’s many museums...
...Super creepy...
...Rather, kicked me to death than looked at me...
...His ideas led to genocide not once but many times...
...So, they gave me a huge room—but someone else was already in it...
...Not the fanciest...
...But they saved our bacon, and we will always owe them...
...WEDNESDAY J ULY 4. We went over far into East Berlin to a museum of World War II...
...We passed by the exit for Wannsee, then passed a disused racetrack, and then we were in Berlin...
...I became a dogophile...
...I have a lot on my plate...
...No explanation...
...No, I think I’ll guess again...
...No one ever fought a war over stock...
...I awakened with a terrible headache...
...Anyone...
...Youth was definitely not wasted on the young in my case...
...We native-born lazy Americans could learn from them...
...We went over to it: the Hotel De Rome...
...and then went down several one-way streets the wrong way, then down a driveway the wrong way, and then we were at the Sheraton at the Convention Center...
...I don’t “get” medieval walled towns, so Michaelstadt did not really send me...
...Wow, am I lucky to have arrived just in time to be their unimaginably lucky benefactor...
Vol. 40 • September 2007 • No. 7
