Berlin’s Templehof airport
And here’s one more NYT story worth noting, about Berlin’s Templehof airport.
The article notes the airport’s “magical” qualities; it definitely has an aura about it, but I’d say more eerie or uncanny. Definitely an unusual sense to have in an airport, which you expect to be more sterile, modern, and bland than a hospital.
Back in January we passed through Templehof on our way from Berlin to Nice, via Brussels on some weird Belgian airline. It was one of the only airlines running from that airport. We arrived for our 5pm flight at around 3pm, and it really seemed that the only other people in the airport were also there for that one flight. It was so eerily empty, it seemed photo-worthy:
The airport bar was called “The Airlift” commemorating that this was the West Berlin airport used for the Berlin Airlift.
Much of Templehof’s infrastructure was built up by the Americans for the airlift. The NYT article posits that this historic association links the city’s feelings toward the airport to the city’s feelings toward America. Which are on an individual level more complicated than what you’d guess from just reading the papers. I remember our cab driver on the way to the airport was very chatty and wanted to practice his English (which I don’t think anybody has ever explicity said to me before). Turned out, his sister married an American soldier and moved to Erie, PA (which is just about an hour or so away from where my sister Abby lives). He was also a big fan of country music, and played in a band that played James Taylor and Garth Brooks covers in bars.