That time I took Berlin

A story from one of my previous lives

I’m in the house where my belongings are stored this weekend, poking through old photos and notebooks, and finding pictures of my earlier iterations. It feels like a different life now, but my first trips abroad were with The Salvation Army, first to attend a youth forum in South Africa in 1997 and then to work in Germany in 1999-2000.

My time working for the national youth department of the German Salvation Army (die Heilsarmee) was the beginning of a long process of dogma deconstruction, but that’s a story for a whole ‘nother Substack. That said, maybe you’ll get a kick out of those old pics and a memoir piece I wrote some years ago about one peculiar element of my Germany experience.

(This piece was originally published in The Windsor Review.)

I was on a brochure for the Salvation Army in Berlin.

The Pub Mission

The plastic coin bank is called a Büchse, which means tin, but your mind builds a bridge between this German word and the English word box.  You and David will refer to it as the Büchse even as you speak your own language. It’s coloured horizontally, three stripes of red, yellow and blue for The Salvation Army. Not the valiant colours of the flag: the burgundy of saving blood, the gold of refining fire, and the navy of the purifying spirit.  Rather this little container is the fire-engine red, canary yellow, and sky blue of a child’s toy, the kind with the pieces that fit through matching slots. By the end of the night, the tin will be so heavy with loose change that the thin metal handles will dig into your forefinger, a discomfort that you will find satisfying. In winter, gloves will cushion that.