In just two weeks time, thanks to the munificent hospitality of my friends Isabel and Paul, we are going to be their guests in their apartment in Berlin, Sile and my first visit to that city.
It is a scource of infinite satisfaction to me that one of my first memories of that city was watching, live on television, a moment when the President of the United States became lost in translation.

In 1963 ,shortly after he made his historic visit to Ireland, John Fitzgerald Kennedy went to West Berlin and made a speech there to show his solidarity with the citizens .
He finished his speech by declaiming that he too was a citizen of Berlin, then he translated this into German and announced “Ich bin ein Berliner”.

Now unfortunately the German people have a habit of calling their favourite foods after their place of origin so what the president was telling the German nation was that he was a sort of jam doughnut.
One can only be grateful that he wasn’t making the same speech in Frankfurt.

Mind you, according to Bill Bryson in Mother Tongue , he had rather less jam on his face than President Carter who employed a Polish translator on his trip to that country in 1977.

His first gaffe was when Mr President said that he had left America that morning he translated “left ” as abandoned- to the consternation of his listeners- but his piece de resistance was his translation of the President’s remark that he wished to know the Polish people’s desires for the future.
This he translated (to gasps I have no doubt) as Mr Carter desire to have carnal knowledge with the people of Poland in the future.

One of my firm desires on my holiday in Berlin will be to eat a Berliner, and hopefully, unlike JFK, I won’t get any jam on my face while I do.