Thank you for the idea Mwenenzi; I tried the Finnair web-site. Our reservation does show up on their web-site, but no seat allocation. I am going to try to call Air Berlin again (it is 16:00 in Berlin right now), so I'll see if I at least am provided a better explanation as to why they allowed me to pay for pre-selection of seats 7 months ago, but when I wrote to them to verify what seats these are, they without explanation refund my money on these seats and say I now have none. Great way to operate a business ......