Last month I made a jaunt to Berlin, to write about the Ritz-Carlton Berlin's new sleep clinic. It's a weekend hotel package for people who want to learn to sleep more soundly. I'll admit that I was skeptical: with jet-lag, all I would need is an Ambien and a couple of glasses of red wine to knock me out for four days straight.
It also seemed counterintuitive to fly all the way to Berlin only to have Germans shouting at me to "RELAX!" What would they do to me? I imagined clinicians in white lab coats, with eyeglasses more severe than mine, attaching electrodes to my body, administering shocks, then jotting notes on clipboards, before shutting me in darkness for days. Would I turn out like Steve Guttenberg in The Boys From Brazil? (I like Steve Guttenberg. He volunteered for a week helping Katrina survivors at the Houston Astrodome.)
It turned out I had little to fear. There was nothing remotely fascist about the luxurious La Prairie creams, with specks of gold and infusions of caviar, slathered on my body as part of the sleep program's relaxation phase. Indeed for days I was steamed, sloughed, kneaded, and glazed.
The only thing that felt "experimental" was the forced wearing of the "brain light." (For a moment, I expected to hear a drill-wielding Laurence Olivier ask, "Is it safe?" Different movie, I know.) But the results of my Schlaf Profil (sleep profile) mandated that I wear the brain light. And I wasn't about to ask questions. For heaven's sake I was in Germany. Of course I followed orders!
All this pampering made me feel like a capitalist pig in sh#t! The hotel is located just on the Western (free) side of where the Berlin Wall once stood.
To get a taste of how the other half used to live, I forked over fifty bucks for the chance to drive a Trabant. The "Trabbi" was the car that pretty much everyone in the communist East drove - that is, everyone who waited twelve years for a car. (Its value was only slightly more than that of the loaf of bread you'd wait nine years to get.) Now they're collectors items, rented out for hugely enjoyable Trabbi Safari caravan tours. I chose to ride in the blue one:
Don't be fooled by how hot I make this piece of kitsch look. If you ever needed proof of the inefficiency of the communist system, observe a Trabbi when the rain begins to fall:
FOUR people to put the top on this Trabbi convertible?! What's more, the car has no cooling system which means it overheats going up the slightest of hills. And the fixtures aren't much more reliable. The tour guide reached to adjust the rear view mirror in this Trabbi and ...
Oops.
The Berlin Wall, of course, is still the greatest reminder of communism's failure. Many people don't realize that the wall was really two parallel walls. The East Germans (and Soviets) built the second wall about 100 yards inside their own territory. Meanwhile the West fearlessly built shops and homes all the way up to the edge of the actual border: it's not like anyone wanted to escape to the East. The East, on the other hand, could bark all it wanted that the Wall was meant to protect the East from the West; the construction of the inner wall was physical proof that what they really feared was the loss of their own citizens to a better place.
Above: This thin strip of bricks runs along the path where the
Berlin Wall once stood.
Sitting in my Ritz-Carlton suite in Potsdamer Platz, overlooking the space between walls that was once known as the "death strip," it's nice to know that at least some places in the world are better than they used to be.
(photo credit above: Roger Mena - www.menaphoto.com)
You think East Germans ever had it like this?!
Reader Comments ( Page 2 of 3)
16. that's hot.
Mahlia at 9:23PM on Sep 15th 2007
17. Not going to go there; I've spoiled you enough already.
Glad you had a good time.
giftedgirl at 9:26PM on Sep 15th 2007
18. Wow! You're pictures look cool. Ok, so they don't look too sturdy...but I want a Trabbie convertible! I would so like to take a bath like in that of our last picture. After much protesting here in DC today, a bath like that seems almost necessary.
Game Theory for Applied Economics Nerd at 9:41PM on Sep 15th 2007
19. Aw poop. The pictures won't show up on my computer!
Marta R. at 9:57PM on Sep 15th 2007
20. Ok Mo!
Living like an elite European socialist for a few days. I hear that life style is absolutely fabulous. Did ya see Al Gore or Hillary Clinton there?
willet at 11:25PM on Sep 15th 2007
21. Mo. You look AWESOME in the bathtub!!!! Wow..you could be in the new Abercrombie&Fitch Ad's....you also look very HOT sitting on the car...great legs dude! You look 100 times sexier than Anderson Cooper..
More articles like this with more HOT pics!
vince at 11:40PM on Sep 15th 2007
22.
Looks like your sleep clinic experiment went better than that of that other Maryland-born humorist (http://blog.nbc.com/frank) Will John Waters be playing with sleep dep next?
slackferno at 12:38AM on Sep 16th 2007
23. Master Mo,
You are
@ LEAST 360 degrees of SEXXY!!!!!!!!!! FUNNY is MAGIC...Beweave me, I saw some pretty splendid "magic" on The Jerry Lewis Telethon...And, I'd like to think o' ma'sealf as a spraing chickadee, But "magic" is fo' dummies, and FUNNY IS MONEY$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$! And, WHAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
christen maddox at 3:08AM on Sep 16th 2007
24. Liebchen,
Ich will Sie essen!
Do you shave your chest hair???
Mein Gott im Himmel!!!
lasereyechick at 5:10AM on Sep 16th 2007
25. mmmm hot pic, Mo
Sarah at 1:06PM on Sep 16th 2007
26. Come on Mo! You never gave Communism a chance! It's really just Government Capitalism- and what would make jobs and the economy more stable than to just federalize all jobs? We can make all business just as fast and efficient as the DMV, IRS and Post Office. No more hunger(bread lines), free healthcare (lines at the hospitals), and we can even start producing our own Trabbis in Detroit. And while the hoi palloy push their trabbis, you elites will still be taking bubble baths, seeing your upper west side therapists, and sleeping with a bed full of stuffed animals.
Mike at 2:17PM on Sep 16th 2007
27. I lived in Germany ten years,five of them behind The wall. I cant believe you shelled out 50 bucks to drive a Trabbi.back then we would have gladly paid not to have to smell them. They smoke like a two stroke engine.
Tater at 2:57PM on Sep 16th 2007
28.
MO,
I just wanted to thank you for doing such a great job on this blog.
I have really enjoyed being apart of it. Your efforts are paying off.
You are one of a kind. I mean that in the best possible way.
ON TOP OF ALL THIS YOU ARE SOOO CUTE AND SEXY!!!!!!!
.
marsha beckerman at 6:10PM on Sep 16th 2007
29. Mo, i do have to say. I usually enjoyed your stories. I usually read them on aol, and found you a bit interesting, as well as more cerebral. THEN I see a pic of you in the rub a dub tub. I am a guy, and im NOT afraid to say Richard Gere is sexy with his salt and pepper hair.......but im sorry to say you ARENT! IMHO someone who seems to be cerebral and then turns to pseudo sex appeal undermines their intelligence. Chances are ya lost me on this one, and I even talked to a few friends whom I said to look at your posts. They also agree. MO ROCCA PUT YOUR CLOTHES BACK ON
Joe at 8:16PM on Sep 16th 2007
30. Your vehicle, it is, how you say, peem-pid-doubt? In my country, we have only one brand car, it gets five m.p.g., has nein floor and you motivate with ein feet.
Sincerely,
DwD
citizen of Bedrockovia
Dw. Dunphy at 9:00PM on Sep 16th 2007