Short Ramblings on a Week in Berlin

I’m currently sitting near the window of a coffee and tea cafe in Prague, Czech Republic. Got here the other day on a bus from Berlin. I’d flown to Berlin on a 13-hour flight from Da Nang, Vietnam with a layover in Singapore. Most people don’t know Singapore is a city-state. That’s because most people are stupid.

Before Berlin, I was traveling throughout Southeast Asia for six months. I’d left my South Philly apartment in October 2018 with the ceiling caving in, literally. Flew from Philly to Rome. Stayed south of Rome, in Infernetto, for three weeks. I wrote and self-published a book about it called Satori In Rome. (Ebook is available here.)

What was I doing in Berlin? Good question.

I was spending money, you self-righteous prick. Yeah. That’s right. I made some money and took it overseas with myself along with my pecker. Don’t worry about my pecker. I met a Chinese girl in Chiang Mai, Thailand. When she left for India, I wrote each morning at around 8 o’clock. Getting up and finishing my bottle of beer from the previous night (a trend I also began again in Bali and have continued since). Writing, writing, writing. Then I’d start my day, living it.

And I guess that’s what I’ve been doing, and was doing, and will continue to do—in Berlin, Czech Republic, and next week I’ll be in Bratislava, Slovakia.

For now, I’m sweating. Sober. Drinking black tea, a shitload of it. No Wi-Fi. No AC. No music except for the faint reverberations of people talking in Czech and some kind of noise coming from speakers somewhere in this quaint cafe…

***

Landed in Berlin, Germany a confused schmuck. There were fields in the distance, past Tegel Airport. I read that they’d be closing the airport soon. However, when I landed it was quite open, spread across the northwest section of the city, abreast of the wind turbines farting in the hot and still air. (I guess “the hot, still air” would’ve been better. But it’s too hot to be poetic.)

The customs area, getting through it was a cinch. I stood in line with the other idiots while the European passport holders went to their own line, neat and tidy. They were unkempt, those bastards.

Up to the window, a German lady with bustling, flowing, flowering brown and gray hair looked at my passport. Flipped through the pages. DareIsay, rifled? Then she looked back at me.

She stamped my passport. (I could feel the thoughts flowing through her: Trump. Oh, but this boy is special. Yes, he’s one of a kind. Well-traveled. Doesn’t smell too bad.) In a few moments, she was reprimanding somebody who had done something wrong in her presence while I was waiting for my bag at the conveyor belt.

I stood and waited. Like a jackass. Pulling out my phone and downloading an app I’d read about in a magazine aboard the plane, a kid said something behind my shoulder.

“That’s the app you’ll want…”

“Huh?” I turned around.

“That app is the best one.” He pointed at my phone.

“Oh. Okay. Thanks.”

Later, I’d see him in the airport. I was sitting at a table trying to decide how I was going to get to my Airbnb. My plan had been to land and use the WiFi or to at least purchase a SIM card for my phone. The kid told me that there probably weren’t any SIM cards around except at local grocery stores. Or something.

Then he told me about a surfing trip to Bali. I had clumsily guessed that he was from Australia.

“Hamburg,” he told me, “we don’t really get summers up there.”

Anyway, these are boring details. Nobody likes airports. I meandered around, indecisively. That always happens after a long flight, with me. It usually takes me some time to get my bearings, after testing the local beers.

I got on a shuttle, eventually. (After getting robbed by the ATM at the airport.) The shuttle took me to the trains. S and U. Hmm, I’d heard about that, hadn’t I? I thought about it while three or four Spanish anarchist lesbians made fun of my hair and shoes in their native tongue.

Off the train, it was hot. But I felt good. Saw some young people walking around, saw a mall nearby. There were restaurants: Korean, Middle Eastern, Italian. All the signs and everything was in German. Mostly.

I got to my Airbnb.

“And if it gets hot,” the landlord dude told me, “just open one of the windows.”

There was a little mattress on the floor. $260 for one week. Good.

***

I enjoyed my first day in Berlin. Went out to the grocery store for something with which to wash my balls. Got some copy writing work done. Went out for a stroll, bought a few beers in my broken English (I hadn’t spoken decent English with somebody in months) after pissing off a German woman with my ineptitude to order a coffee, yanking at the Euro deep in my left pocket. She scowled at me. The Germans seemed like nice people.

I walked around, a little out of it. Drinking, sitting on a curb.

In the morning, I felt the jet lag running down my leg. Went out for some coffee at a bakery nearby. The woman was patient with me. Her ogre of a sister was standing in the shadows, a peach-colored apron tied around her waist.

It was rainy, later in the day. After working, I went out again and got on the S. (One goes around the city in a circle, clockwise. The other S goes the other way. Got it? There are some other S lines, too.) I walked and walked. I saw the space needle-looking thing. The TV station. Berlin culture.

Went into a grocery store, heard some English ladies talking about pizza slices as a good dinner decision. I concurred.

The next day, it was brighter. Friday. I took my stiff lower back out to the streets, again. (I’d decided to get coffee at a place where the proprietor spoke English a little better. For example: “Yes? How can I help you?” Me: “Coffee” Proprietor: “What size?” Me: “Medium”. Very difficult for my bashful nature.)

The first place I wanted to go was the park where there was a monument to Beethoven and Mozart. I went there and laughed at the white light. Then I strolled to the Brandenburg Gate. Lots of tourists swarmed me for my autograph. I made it out of there, pushing them to the sides of me. It was a close one.

Then I went to the intersection of Checkpoint Charlie. Aw, shit. (Bad habit.) It wasn’t so hot and bright that day, it was actually cloudy and gloomy. The next day though, I went back. This time, I’d learned to take the U2 down to Potsdamer Platz.

I saw Beethoven again. And smiled.

DUN DUN DUN DUN.

***

Friday was actually when I went to see the East Side Gallery. It was hot. I sweated, walking, aching. (Thursday was the gray day.) Um, the East Side Gallery was wicked in its splendor. Like a thumbtack holding up the remaining humanity all across the globe. A spigot on full-blast shooting out all the good stuff: love, colors, tolerance, acceptance, beauty, rock and roll music, hippies, daydreamers, tourists, locals, blacks, whites, reds, yellows, romantics, drunks, sexless freaks.

I grinned, grinned. Then I cried.

Most of the rest of my time in Berlin, I worked. And then I drank good German beer, strolling along the streets. Squinting in the sun. Visiting Mauer Park on Sunday afternoon. Listening to people singing about Jesus. Watching couples, married people, dogs, punks, and graffiti artists. Berlin, in fact, is covered in graffiti.

I guess that’s what I was thinking about when I rode the S loop to the bus station for Prague. When our species is long gone, there will be graffiti covering the bridges, buildings and flanks and faces of everything humans will have left behind. Some other creatures will visit, a thousand years hence, and they will wonder what all that strange writing is and what the purpose of it all really was.

A few stops before the one for the bus, a young couple got on and sat in front of me on the train. A cream-colored girl in funky dreads and a black spaghetti top that exposed some of her rebellious tattoos and her boyfriend, white, blonde hair, also somewhat covered in tattoos: a smiley face on his left forearm and a frowning face on the other forearm. The girl had a speaker on her chest as she was sitting down, the guy there next to her. She spoke in German, I think it was. The music she played was American rap music. Before my stop, I motioned for the guy to sit in my place. Turning my back, I thought of the faces. What did they have going on in their minds? WHAT IS THAT STRANGE AND TERRIBLE MUSIC? AND DON’T THESE PEOPLE HAVE JOBS?

“Hey,” the girl said, yanking at my bag. “Your zipper’s open.”

I tried turning around.

“No, it’s okay. I’m closing it for you.”

The roughest-looking people always had the best and kindest hearts.