Dear Varsity,

At the time of writing I am stuck on the Teufelsberg: on the sixth floor of an American cold war listening-station on top of a hill made of the ruins of Berlin piled up on top of Albert Speer’s Nazi military school, in the middle of a forest. Much as I am enjoying all that symbolism, it’s rather nippy out for the time of year; and although I am of course wearin’ me furs, I wouldn’t mind if someone threw up some fluffy earmuffs to stop my head going numb.

Now I’m not one of those people who walks around gritty realist 20th-century ruins with a polaroid camera. It’s just useful to have a place like the Teufelsberg in the arsenal. For seductive purposes. This is where Americans listened to conversations going on in Moscow. Underneath us is the rubble of that glamorous 1920s Berlin. Below it is one of the prime pieces of Hitler’s new Germania. Perfect second-date material.

So I brought the current fling, and Julius who I’m living with, through the forest to this suggestive erection; and Igor, Julius’ dog, decided to come too. And when we got here, we climbed all the stairs up, and Igor got on with his doggy life rummaging in piles of broken glass and cigarette-butts (he’s a beagle, and everyone knows beagles love fags); but now he refuses to come down. The sixth-floor staircase fills him with an inexplicable terror and he attacks anyone who tries to drag him down it, and we forgot to bring the lead.

Meanwhile the fling has got very cold and angry, and vegan, so refused to wear any of me furs, and has just stormed off. And Julius has to catch a plane back to Cambridge in a few hours.

So I’m sending this mayday postcard via a delightful tourist from Bognor, and if anyone happens to be in the area, could they perhaps come to the Teufelsberg with a string of beadle-tempting sausages? And if they happened to be tall, brown-eyed, bubbly, GSOH, MBA, NK, (try looking those up), then, well, I guess I’m single again; how about it?

WLTM,

Ali

 

Read the first postcard from Ali McKinnon here