CFS post yesterday
Most interesting that you were in West Berlin pre-reunification and it must have seemed strange to be living there . surrounded by the DDR (and only BEA permitted to fly the corridor for civil air travel I believe).
I was lucky enough meet an old boy last year who was a pilot assigned to the Berlin Airlift of 1949 in his early RAF service - and totally exhausted in those round-the-clock resupply missions to subvert the communist stranglehold, I learned.
I don't know the reasons for the parting of Auden and Isherwood but can understand a nostalgia for the populace and earlier ambiance of places such as Fire Island and Greenwich Village, about which I have read.
A wise friend once said however "Never visit the scene to relive memories of past enjoyable events - you will only be depressed and disappointed".
I think he's right and I recall Ayia Napa Cyprus - today an overdeveloped brash new mass tourism resort - but a place I discovered many years ago (only by me I thought) as a small and idyllic deserted beach of white sand bordering gently lapping clear blue warm and shallow water to swim in.
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