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Watching Season 3 of the German TV series “Berlin Dance School” (streaming on Prime) and a tsunami of nostalgia washes over me. The plot takes place in 1963. I was 10 years old then, and while the Prague of my childhood had none of the western, forbidden pizazz of Berlin, there are nevertheless similarities which take me back.
One is amused and shocked by some of the outdated attitudes but the far larger shock is realizing how ordered and stable the world was. In Berlin, the bad guys were a stone’s throw away across Checkpoint Charlie but life for the good guys was grand. Men were men: they were courteous and well dressed, they wore hats and smoked unfiltered cigarettes. They held the doors open for the ladies and took them out to smoky clubs where you could dance to mock American rock’n’roll or listen to an intimate jazz band.
Doctors made house calls, arriving in an overcoat and suit, a nifty bowtie in the collar. They were paid discreetly before or after the call. It would have been gauche to mix the art of medicine with grubby mullah in the patient’s presence (today the vet won’t examine my cat until after the receptionist has run my credit card).
Men wouldn’t leave the house without a decent necktie and women without an elegant dress. I remember my mother making sure she had her makeup on even for a brief supermarket trip.
Everything looked nicer and more solid: the furniture had style, apartments were large and well appointed, ceilings high, doors massive. There was an air of permanence, of a solid order which was constricting in some ways and liberating in others. In cities like Berlin eccentricities were tolerated, even encouraged; nevertheless, the emphasis on family being the bedrock of society was firmly established.
Everything was simply nicer: the fashions, the architecture, the automobiles, people’s manners. There was a modesty of expectations which made life a lot calmer. The Soviets may have been planning to take over the world, the Wall divided father from son and neighbor from neighbor, the Cuban crisis threatened to end civilization. And yet, there was an all-encompassing sense of normalcy that is long gone.
I miss the 1960’s. I miss the music of the Beatles and of Miles Davis and of Louis Armstrong, I miss men in ties and hats and women with bouffant hair and narrow skirts. Life had a firm center which DID hold. No one yelled at you for saying that women did not have penises.
I miss my mom’s chicken soup, eaten on sunny Sundays at our large dining room table, on a snow white tablecloth. I miss her pastries, always freshly baked and always plentiful. I miss seeing mom and dad going out dancing in the famous Prague nightclub called “Kravin” (“The Cow Shed”). I miss taking walks with my dad. Like all men back then, he never left the house without a necktie, even when we went for a short evening stroll through the snowy streets of December Prague. He smoked his short Lipa cigarettes and always smelled nice of aftershave and mints. And he wore a long overcoat and a hat, which made him look dashing. I promised myself I would one day own an overcoat just like that and be a real gentleman like he was. For too many reasons, the future unfolded quite differently. But as I watch “Berlin Dance School” (highly recommended), I recall those fashions, those streets, those buildings, those cars and those people, now all gone. The era of modest expectations, and small things bringing large joy. Despite everything, the old normal worked quite well.