Words instead of Pictures

BERLIN! a semi-detailed account, with no useful information, for no particular reason.* Enjoy/read when bored.
*possibly to delay writing of 10 page paper due tomorrow

Berlin began, or shall we say didn't begin on TUESDAY afternoon. My flight was delayed five hours and then moved from Orly Airport to Charles deGaulle by way of bus and grumbling Germans and Parisians, and indignant Americans who demanded that information be disseminated "Um, in English please?" We touched down in Berlin at 1:30am to the beginning of a STRIKE that left no night buses running. The story of how I came to my lodgings is a long one, but I was extremely grateful to be accommodated by Lissy, Sebastien, Thomas, and their cat, Rosa-- friends of friends. Of friends. Who weren't even expecting me. Lissy is self described via text message as tall, with red hair and a black jacket. She's in the midst of lighting a cigarette and trying to figure out how we're going to get home when a miraculous lone bus pulls through and we run for it, Lissy yelling "C'mon, girl!" as I trail behind with my stuff. The bus drops us of in kind of the middle of nowhere and our feet walking over wooden planks echo as we pass under a bridge and out into a street. Thomas, who was at home sleeping and sick, kindly picks us up. Thomas is young and handsome,with almost androgynous features, bright blue eyes and side parted, slicked light brown hair that belongs to my grandfather's era. He has a shyness to him and is almost stoic as he drives us to the bar where Sebastien works, but his eyes light up as he tries to explain the process of making prosthetic limbs to me, searching for the technical words in English and unabashedly demonstrating on his upper thigh while I ask inane questions like "Is there skin paint? Does it feel like skin?" (Yes and yes, but it is rather expensive.) The bar is large and cozy and quirky and relatively empty. I am treated to a beer and a spliff while Lizzy and Thomas help clean Sebastien clean up for closing. The moment I meet Sebastien I want to be his friend but he feels so far away. He has a slight frame, dark brown hair and stubble and blue, slightly worried eyes. He has a kindness and softness to him paired with a matter-of-factness that recalls harder times. He wears a blue checked shirt rolled up to his elbows and tucked into black pants. I watch him mesmerized as he moves around the bar, washing dishes and counting money, his movements small and deliberate, his arms close to his body. We finally close up and drive home at around 4:30am. By the time we reach the front door at around 5am birds are chirping and the sky is turning a quiet light blue. Sebastien introduces me to Rosa, their black and white cat who I am surprisingly not allergic to. I'm given Lissy's room, who will stay in Sebastien's. As I get ready for bed Thomas peeps in. "I'm going out driving," he says. "I'm too-- what is the word? The opposite of asleep?" "Awake?" I offer. "Yes, that's it." Thomas spent the next few days at his parents' and I didn't see him again. WEDNESDAY. I wake up sometime in the middle of the afternoon to Rosa's meowing and insistent attempts to get me out of bed by walking on me. Lissy's room is its own quirky modern art gallery, as is the rest of the house. Drawn in sharpie on the tiled kitchen wall is a dishwasher with 3 settings, neatly written: A- Clean Dishes, B- Clean Dishes and Put Away, C- Destroy Dishes.We spend a lazy afternoon in and I go out for a walk around the area. In the evening Greta calls. She's a friend of friends here in Paris and has been studying in Berlin. We meet up with some friends to watch the premier of 1st Mai at an open air movie theater in Kreuzburg. The movie comes on the eve of the real May 1st, Worker's Day in Berlin and famous for protests and anarchist vs. police-ness. We sit in the front on wooden hammock-like seats with blue cloth, eating popcorn and drinking wine out of plastic "football" cups. Afterwards we get free beer and pretzels. THURSDAY is May 1st. I go to see Brandenburg Gate and Reichstag. There's a big festival-- breakdancers, music stages where the musicians and audience members are both a little past their prime, lots of meat and donuts and beer. Plastic crates and scraps are a make-shift ride, kids climb it tentatively and roll down a slide of pipes, sitting in a box. I walk around Friedrichstrasse and Oranienberg and make my way to the KW Institute for Contemporary Art. For eight euro you can see the exhibition "When Things Cast No Shadow" at four different museums around the city, pretty neat-o. I head over to Potsdamer Platz and walk over to the second part of the exhibition at the New National Gallery, also very cool. On my way I pass the Sony Center and see a screen full of jellyfish-- an ad for the Zoo Aquarium Berlin! Thank you Sony Center. In the evening I meet up in at Kottbusser Tor in Kreuzburg with a friend, Rosa, from AUP who happens to be in Berlin too. While waiting for her under a bridge- inebriated guy, broken English: "Hi, me and my friends go to a cool bar. A FIRE bar. club. Do you want to come?" "Um..." "I do drugs." "You do drugs??" "I mean, I DON'T do drugs. But I can get you some." Rosa comes. The streets are PACKED for blocks and blocks. The whole area is one music stage after another, from angry rappers screaming "fuck the police," to Rastas to ska bands to electro djs. There is noise and people and SO many cops, a mass of green and blue and bulk and helmets. The air is filled with sirens and bottles breaking and the smell of weed. Glass pads the street like gravel. Sometimes the crowd gets so thick I can barely breathe, Rosa loses her beer in the confusion. All the chaos is definitely crazy but confrontation-wise things are pretty tame. The only cop-exctiement was the end of the night. Rosa and I were trying to catch the last metro and as we were talking towards the station area we came upon a thick wall of polizia, who were blocking off the entire area. Rosa started to take a picture when all of the sudden they all came marching towards us/the crowd very quickly. We turned around and ran and it was quite a rush but they stopped after several yards. We climbed up a fence to get a better view but all for all the drunk belligerent people no one could really get a rise out of them. Or get through. We found a back way to the metro and saw some cops pushing a guy around so we left. Scared-y cats. FRIDAY I went to the Zoo Aquarium Berlin! The word for Jellyfish in German is Quallen. SO MANY jellyfish! It was wonderful. After I went to the Jewish Museum and Checkpoint Charlie (about the Wall). Both really cool if not a little overwhelming. So many stories. In the evening I went to the East Side Gallery (a crumbling stretch of painted wall) and sat along the river bank. Blue sky and silver clouds and warm yellow light. I got in touch with Dakota, one of Greta's friends, and meet up with him and some friends at a German fencing fraternity in a residential area for a BBQ. It's a huge house with a SERIOUS bar-- complete with dark wood paneling, yellow light, tons of benches, tables, stools, rows of glass mugs, beer on tap, and various pictures of past fencing generations that go hundreds of years back. We drink beer (I successfully opened my beer bottles with other beer bottles! huzzah!) and roll cigarettes and it feels like we own the place. I ride the metro home with a new friend, Christina, and come home at 4:30am to Rosa in my bed. On SATURDAY I wake up fairly late. Take a last shower sitting down (Cape Town all over again...) and leave a note goodbye to my flatmates, who I haven't really seen since my arrival. I go to see a wall exhibit at Bernauer, roamed around Berlin and see the last two parts of the KW art exhibition. I make my way to the station and hop on the trusty Eurolines bus for 15 hours of hazy half-sleep. Out the window all I see is green green green. Forests and fields. Sometimes through the trees I see massive patches of yellow, almost neon. Yellow flowers growing in thick squares.