On a "perk"

Dear Mago,
On my way home from Berlin yesterday with the budget airline Germanwings, I was surrounded by several very attractive and friendly Swedish women, most of whom appeared to be in their mid-forties to late fifties. They were on a ”perk” weekend financed by the foundation for which they work, an organization that lobbies for entrepreneurship, with a focus on lowering employer social taxes in Sweden. Since I was familiar with their employer’s agenda, likewise sympathetic to the cause after having shouldered the burdens of self-employment myself for so many years, it was easy to keep a conversation going, at least for a short while… above the drone of the jet engines.

The woman seated beside me had never been to Berlin before. Intent on shopping, and without a guide, she and her colleagues didn’t have time to visit any museum, gallery, cultural or political event, nor to do any sightseeing. With regard to their impression of Berlin, they said: ”prices are about the same as in Sweden.” I didn't ask them what they had purchased. They seem to have had a good time together.

As I returned to Margaret Atwood’s Cat’s Eye, I couldn’t help but feel perked - thinking about the hospitality of my friends in Berlin, as well as the pleasure of my own company - from another crow’s nest.

Your devoted granddaughter

ps. The first time I was in Berlin I flew with Lufthansa and stayed with the same good friends. That time I wrote:

"Ich bin einer Berliner"
said John F. Kennedy
from the Rotes Rathaus balcony
on a brief visit
in nineteen sixty two.
Who can say
I am a Berliner now
if not an American
advertising agency
ultimately commited
to the mad
myth of freedom
on a specially priced
weekend Jackpot flight
with Lufthansa?

I don't think I've changed my outlook, it's just that the news today is that I'm more than half deaf, easily disoriented in outer space, more brittle and easier to chime when struck, closer to...