Notes from Berlin

Berlin must be divided into three parts.

Part one start was landing in Tegel from Istanbul on Turkish Airlines Flight Number Gawdknowswhat (I think Air India is probably a bit like Turkish Airlines- promising the best and the worst in the world simultaneously- leaving the traveller experiencing mild hallucination).

The offence of "Travelling while Brown" is compounded by yours truly with "Travelling while Indian". The look on the immigration guy's face as he examines my Indian passport indicates he is either a) ready to spit on me or b) knock my block off. It comes with the [brown] territory and happens across Continental Europe outside of the Iberian peninsula and UK. For some reason I seem to be relaxed comfortable and chatty with UK immigration officials and maybe they sense the lack of criminal demeanour. C'est la vie. One day the training manuals for the pigs will change.

Anyway, as is his wont, Moz awaits outside the luggage area, wearing the Hat that turns a thousand faces. A little later, after parking ourselves at some stiff hotel called Transit, we walk around, eat currywurst (which isn't as bad as it sounds) play some pool and over many beers, generally attempt to find a cure for Germany, Sweden, India, England, pick a country.

Berlin is warming up.

Berlin Part Two ...
is wandering around, drinking good white wine in some bourgeois swamp and then finding ourselves in an alley somewhere near potsdammer platz where some dude is playing his films on a projector and citizens of the counterculture are sitting on chairs and sofas sipping beer and watching. The movie that was playing when we walked in was pretty cool. Then his software malfunctioned and I successfully resisted the urge to go do tech support. We kept drinking and dreaming even as the films stopped at some point and the party moved into the bar.

The absolute highlight of the evening was the bartenderess' skirt (diagonal white and black stripes) which in the hazy light of many drinks early in the morning threatened to hypnotise me. At some point she comes up to us, or rather down to us, as we were sprawled relatively comfy on a sofa, and smiles. Moz pipes up with, "We're brothers!" I say "Yup! Different fathers, different mothers, but brothers nonetheless, on account of our matching hats!"

Dear Diagonal (as I shall always remember her) hears the english wisecracks, frowns, immediately gets up and sits at the bar. Very sudden- a situation that was proven later in the morning to be irreversible- ah! the mysterious tragedy of it all. That skirt would make any woman irresistable- I'm sure the mystique of Diagonal was all skirt. Hell, if she'd shown up dressed like Billary Clinton, I would probably have spent the night looking at Moz instead, that ugly mug.

Berlin Part 3 is when ...

the next day we are called the Blues Brothers on account of our hats by the proprietress of some Biergarten called York. Fortified by that and some keen consultation of an event guide to Berlin we wander around the city in search of Falkensteinerstrasse, the street to end all streets. As we head towards party district, we make conversation with a cute young swedish couple that have been travelling all day, are completely drunk and/or stoned and sped up on the nirvana highway. The flower of the Swedish youth are marvelling at how alcohol is supplied everywhere in Germany without the usual re-education/cruxification at the local systembolaget by the morality police to follow shortly thereafter. Having overshot our station deep in conversation with their lovely accents, we double back to frankenstein street and Moz nearly lures them in our party direction with his usual smooth "I've got je ne sais quoi, care for some?" demeanour.

Late in the night, having eaten some great Turkish drunk food we get there and having passed many abso-bloody-amazing places, line up outside Watergate, a club. We almost give up hope of getting in, trying to find refuge in mumbles about our advancing age when we make it in, dressed like unrepentant unfashionistas but wearing our fabulous matching hats. And then happens the most abso-amazing clubbing experience in the last few years. Watergate is awesome. Totally laidback (with no dress code), Totally cool. Somewhere around daylight we get back to Transit Hotel blown away by all of it.

Berlin Part 4 (it was divided into three parts but part 4 just happened)

After two nights of sleeping very little, scratching out very few sightseeing photos (i.e. among other things one photo in front of a Zinedine Zidane poster) while wandering around the city with Moz, I thought that all I was fit to do was sleep. After Moz left for Malmo, I found my hostel, settled in, and decided to wander around before falling into the sleep of my life. I went to the absolutely amazing White Trash Fast Food (http://www.whitetrashfastfood.com/) for dinner and ploughed through Terry Pratchett's 'Making Money', chatted with the beautiful waitress when I could and sipped on a abso-bloody-tasty long cool weissbier ... and found that I was so tired I was ready to fall asleep at the table and snore into my german beer. I had to leave and looking deeply into her eyes, having left a generous tip, said I would return next year. [will she wait for me wonders the Baz ...]

So I went back to my hostel room bed and tried to sleep when some 16 year old bastards (only one of whom actually had a bed there) on the bunk above started talking loudly, waking me up and making me think about how old I am. I therefore dragged myself out of bed and went to the lounge area to relax with a coffee and pose with my ipod trying to write or read or do something ... 16 year olds came out to chat and kid without-a-bed-to-sleep-on paid me the compliment of "Big Chiller" [when I said "Wha?" He repeatedly insisted he said Big Chiller not Pig Chiller]

and so I tapped the following somewhat drowsily on my ipod:

Notes from Berlin
I'm tired out of my mind, There is so little energy in the air, Around my head
That when I stand, I want to fall down and sleep, Berlin and its driving energy cannot be matched by this pup

All the plastic in Europe couldn't pay for my

I stopped typing. Of course the language is crap. Almost everything I write is crap. But as I was about to finish the sentence I met two Canadian law students, then one phd student from Melbourne and within five more minutes, 5 newly minted lawyers from various parts of the US. And within half an hour, throwing caution and sleep deprivation to the wind went off with the lot to a pub. Sometime between 2 and 3 am Americans and Canadians left. Australian and I kept going, dancing to, among other things, "love me do" by the Beatles and discussing 1) her guilt about polluting South Asian culture with her WASP presence 2) fresh water fish and 3) anything else I could turn the conversation to. By the time they closed the pub and after much dancing, I having wandered off and collected a free drink from two Scottish brothers who I regaled with my thoughts of how much I loved Scotland, it was daylight outside and time for us to head back to the Hostel.

I had already agreed to buy Australian breakfast before I headed off to Prague in the morning. So I slept for three hours, having managed about six hours in the two days before, packed my bags and went up to the 2nd floor and woke the old girl up. Brekkers (very sleepy) followed, exchange of e-mail addresses and the like and I made my way to another city and another country.

Berlin was the absolute bomb.