Happier Endings

I finally went out last night; first to a beach bar, then to a club. The ‘beach bar’ started popping up in Berlin the last five years or so. They just cart in a bunch of sand and then set up beach chairs, umbrellas, a little food/drink/bar shack, some palms, and a lot of paper lanterns somewhere along the River Spree. They are really cute and superchill. We met up with Torey’s sister’s friend Michael, who lives in Germany, and his Australian boyfriend Patrick and this girl whose name I can’t remember from Peru (how weird is that? How often do you meet people from Peru?) at the Helmut Newton Museum for Photography. After that I was fully intending on going back to Halbauer Weg, but Susie’s eyedrops and my hesitation to have to call a cab and talk in German at one in the morning and then probably have the driver not know where I am going really kicked in, and I tagged along.

We went to this place called Weekend that is only open Thursday nights I think. It is on top of one of the tallest buildings at Alexanderplatz, with a dance floor and bar on the lower floor and then a big terrace and bar on the roof. The dance floor was pretty small and thus very cramped, but there were some sweet lights, namely a huge grid above that flashed and pulsed and strobed, and then also a wall of lights in different colours that went off in patterns, etc. Nice and dark, though, so no one could see how gross anyone else looked at any given moment. I liked it when they turned them all off as it was really dark, and cooler. That many lights produce a lot of heat. Abby warned me that clubs in Berlin played nothing but electronic, and mygod was she right. Everyone seems really into it, too. I just don’t get how people can dance to computers yelling at them. Real songs let you dance so much better, but this stuff you just kind of twitch rhythmically to a beat that never really changes but sometimes the bass drops out and comes back in…for six hours.

I think the best thing about the club is that German guys will not approach you or hit on you or rub all up on you while dancing. They might come and try to dance with you, but they stay about two feet away. However, American guys have no such sense of personal space, and there were a lot of Americans there. I was saved by my masterful ignoring, weaving, and dancing with Michael, but Torey and Susie got caught, although neither seemed to mind. We stayed, alternating dancing and letting the sweat dry out on the terrace, until the sun rose over Berlin. Michael left us to walk home, and we walked to the U-Bahn, across an Alexanderplatz empty but for us and two other people. The fountain was off, and in the first place the three of us hung out together just last Sunday, in the early morning light, we finally felt like we lived in Berlin.

Little known to us, the “Exploring German Culture” class that the Berkeley students are also taking here is not something that just meets after our language classes (on Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday). Instead of having Tuesdays free in addition to our three-day weekends, we have our Berkeley class on Tuesdays. This past Tuesday we went on a walking tour of Berlin led by Herr Euba and David, his assistant here (a Berkeley grad student living in Berlin and studying German-Turkish relations). It was superfun walking around Berlin in the rain with a group of twenty people who walk slower than molasses and do not seem capable of walking and talking at the same time. But at least it got us a little more familiar with some of the city, and ended up with some delicious pizza and a mini-tour of Kreuzberg, kind of.

On Wednesday, we took a boat tour on the River Spree, which was pretty fun, really, as we all got to sit down and be blatant tourists, and Susie got to take a nap. It was cool to see buildings from such a different perspective and be able to put names to places. The architecture in Berlin is maybe my favorite thing about the city so far, other than all the sweet outdoor seating. There are old buildings next to new, which is often cool in the city but out in sketchy Lankwitz is usually sad because a lot of things are old buildings that would be gorgeous if someone hadn’t put hideous popcorn stucco on in the seventies or something. And the buildings that are new in the city are delightfully dynamic—sure, maybe a little symbolism heavy for my taste, but who cares when it creates such awesome government offices. On Thursday, I met my class at Potsdamer Platz, where I thought we would be seeing a German film, or going to one of the museums, or at least taking (yet another) tour. Nope. Nuh-uh. We went to a mall. And took two hours walking around, answering questions about how much this thing cost and where this store is and what this store sold, something we could have done in a quarter of the time if we had done it all at once rather than having to meet up after each section of the assignment. Then we had a tour of the Reichstag, where we listened to some history of the building in the main chamber (with chairs of Reichstag blue, created as a politically neutral color, and is totally purple and not blue), Susie fell asleep again, and then we got to go up to the dome. It was hot in the dome and windy outside, and the dome isn’t really that cool once you’re inside it, so we went up and down and took way too many photos of us in the mirrors on the center spike thingy in the middle that reflects light into the chamber. After dinner at this place near Potsdamer Platz, we met up with Michael at the gallery, and then the night began.

On the S-Bahn home, there was a guy that boarded the train and then once he sat down began muttering madly to himself. And making weird coughing raspberry noises and well, I was not looking at him because I thought that might indicate that I wanted to talk to him. All we really caught was something about Michael Knight and Nightrider. And maybe something about babies. There are crazy bums in Berlin, but they are tricky. They look clean and normal and you rarely see them sleeping in parks, etc, but they get on the train like anyone else and either just sleep or go quietly crazy in their seat, or they start yelling at (to?) everyone on the train, then walk back and forth with a cup for money. Then there are the gypsies who walk around and ask, “Speak English?” and then hold up some little sign asking for money. I just say “Nein” or “Non” for them. Some guy in front of us in the taxi line at the Gare du Nord in Paris said “Oui” which is kind of amusing to me.

Torey and I finally found a “bio” market right next to the Haeckesher Markt stop. It was so nice to walk in and have choices for soymilk! And tofu! And all organic stuff! I had no idea how much of I hippie I was until I spent about 15 minutes staring at the granola. Well, not granola, they don’t really do that here, but muesli. I settled on an Amaranth Schoko-muesli with chocolate, almonds, hazelnuts, bits of date, apricot and apple, honey, and the usual grains. It is pretty fucking tasty. I didn’t really want to find anything here that I liked that much because I didn’t want to have to deal with missing it, but I am so bringing some of this home with me.

Tomorrow we are going on a Berlin Wall tour by bike—finally, some ‘rad Berlin for y’all. Also, today I noticed the brand of toilet paper my bathroom mate buys is named “Happy End.”