patrick neate

	Walberberg 2007: You cannot be serious!

"Berlin"

I've been in Germany at the Walderberg Seminar just outside Berlin. Good fun, really. I met some cool writers – Glenn Patterson, Patricia Duncker, Anne Enright, Wendy Cope and Jamie McKendrick – and they didn't make me feel too much like a charlatan. I particularly enjoyed meeting proper poets. I sometimes suspect that all novelists are failed poets. Other times I reckon it's just me.

Aside from the writers there were about 50 academics from various German universities. Generally I find talking about my work torturous (after all, everything I wanted to say is in the book), but this was OK because everyone was so interested and plain nice. Frankly, I couldn't believe how respectful they all were. If the situation had been reversed (German writers, British academics), I can't believe it would have been nearly so amicable. It was a pretty place too: there was snow and a lake and I had a brief fantasies of a cold war romance with a beautiful Soviet officer, gamine and blonde beneath her big furry hat.