Pilsner, Putin and Me (Part Four).

(In which we come perilously close to the point)

In 1989, Dresden was the sort of destination that merited two days of sightseeing before rejoining the train for Prague. Before World War II, the city’s history, architecture and position astride the Elbe prompted frequent comparisons with the Czech capital. These comments largely ceased following the still controversial Allied bombings in February, 1945, which killed perhaps 40,000 residents, reduced the city’s center to kindling, and were witnessed by Hoosier soldier Kurt Vonnegut, who incorporated his experience in his 1969 novel, Slaughterhouse-Five.

To this very day, feelings are hard. In 1989, the East German the sluggish regime was lightning fast when it came to exploiting the past for political purposes.

It should suffice to say that with the exception of the Zwinger Palace and Opera House, the GDR didn’t make a truly serious effort to restore Dresden’s grandeur during the Communists’ 40-year run. Bits and pieces of pre-war Dresden, most of them pockmarked by unrepaired bombing damage, survived, resting uneasily alongside shoddy Communist-built, high-rise buildings built from unpainted, pre-fabricated concrete.

Culturally, the city was in a time warp even by the GDR’s standards, situated such that it was popularly reckoned to be the only part of East Germany unable to receive West German television transmissions – and in Communist countries, it wasn’t possible to stroll to the neighborhood Engels-Mart and buy a satellite dish.

But … there were certain advantages.

Maybe just one.

Analogous to West Germany, where the beer always seemed better in the southern region of Bavaria, the beer brewed in and around Dresden tasted better, and none more so than Radeberger Pilsner, brewed just outside Dresden, and served in the city’s most user friendly beer drinking venue, the Radeberger Keller. It was a below-ground restaurant downtown, and we went there every night of our stay to cool our heels, kill time and drink what for us was extremely cheap, good beer.

We had little else to do, although one evening Jeff and I entertained our fellow foreigners, especially the heavy drinking Finn, with a bout of “drinking wine spo-dee-o-dee, which we defined as alternate shots of Cuban dark rum and Bulgarian cabernet.

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The service staff at the Radeberger Keller was a shade surly and inefficient in the typical fashion of the Bloc, which didn’t institutionally value such merits of customer service, but traditional beer hall etiquette was honored, and we were allowed to seat ourselves wherever open spaces permitted, with one exception.

One seating area, a gallery off to the side, was perpetually festooned with “Reserviert” signage, and not coincidentally, it was always filled with the privileged caste. In East German terms, this meant the friendly faces, brown uniforms and dingy black suits of the Soviet officers and bureaucrats who liberated Dresden from the Nazis in 1945, and never bothered to leave.

In 1989, there were almost 500,000 Soviet troops stationed in East Germany, and a sizeable contingent resided near Dresden, where a branch office of the KGB maintained a fraternal presence, and although there’d have been no way of my knowing it then, at least one of those KGB officers assigned to the area had come to develop as much affection for Radeberger Pilsner as my motley group of Western volunteer workers.

None other than Vladimir Putin, in fact.

You may recall that Putin became acting President of Russia on the last day of 1999 and was legally elected to the office a few months later. Around this time, an English language translation of a slim Putin biography appeared, and my friend Jon loaned me his copy. Putin’s first-person testimony about his six years as one of the KGB’s men in Dresden included the frank admission that he found Radeberger delightful, so much so that it threatened the continued viability of his slim, athletic build by distracting him from exercise. Furthermore, when not dieting, he confessed to frequenting the Radeberger Keller.

As an aside, having visited the former Soviet Union on three occasions prior to the 1989 stay in Dresden documented here, I can say with perfect candor that Soviet beer was wretched, indeed, and in general terms didn’t rise to the level of the bilious beer brewed in East Germany. But Radberger was a famous export label, and there was profit to be derived from it, so the brand was not degraded. Presumably the hoarded hops were going in the Radeberger instead of the people’s lager.

In retrospect, Putin’s fascination with Radeberger seems quite reasonable to me in the context of the time and place. After all, I was right there in the same beer hall, equally fascinated, though not only by the merits of the beer, also by the denizens of that perpetually reserved gallery off to the side, with the officers and bureaucrats of what in effect was an occupying power, albeit in one with a steadily ticking shelf life, drinking beer and having it all in a captive foreign land.

And so, in the final, authorized version of my five days in Dresden in 1989, there can be no confirmation that Putin was ever among those fellow Russians in the Radeberger Keller’s reserved seating area, much less that he and I drank beer together. I still believe it, anyway. The only famous person I ever met was Alvin Dark, manager of the 1974 Oakland A’s world championship club, and laying claim to beers with the future president of Russia is both more interesting and validates the way I spent the summer of 1989.

Along with the rest of the statue, Lenin’s shoes were removed from the Volkspark entrance after unification. I’d have liked to have them as souvenirs of one of the most unforgettable summers ever.

I wonder what Putin remembers?