Berlin Stories

Fat Punk Is Not Dead!

2006-03-09T12:22:00.000-08:00

So read the T-Shirt of the (admittedly) fatass bartender at my favorite local punk/goth/death-metal haunt, Trinkteufel.

Berlin is a city of contrasts.

It's a city filled with abandoned buildings, broken windows, and graffitied facades, a city with 20% unemployment and a seemingly endless number of young men who have nothing to do except drink, take drugs, and fight. And yet, it's crime rate is a fifth that of New York, the safest city in America. The explanation for this can't simply be traced to the lack of guns here, since Britain has even fewer guns, and more assaults and burglaries than the US, whereas Berlin has virtually no crime.

It's as much of a night city as anywhere in the world. Restaurants are open late, some subways run all night (all do on the weekends), and when one leaves a club at 7 in the morning, the people arriving look at you like you're crazy. And yet, nothing can be purchased after 8 PM, no business can be transacted after 6, and God forbid you need anything done on a Sunday.

Berlin is a city that encourages recycling. The bottle deposit for beers is roughly ten cents, for 2 liter soda bottles, 25 or more. And yet, try to find bottle bins on the subway (where one can drink, and where everyone does on weekend nights). This is a country that charges you for each plastic bag you take at the supermarket, but doesn't understand that aluminium cans can *also* be recycled.

Berlin is a city where everyone smokes. Specifically, it's a city where everyone rolls their own cigarettes. (I favor Samson Gold.) It's also a city with a strong anti-littering culture. And yet, it's dreadfully hard to find the little public ashtrays that the city sprinkles every two blocks. I often find myself clutching the still-flaming butt of my cig, searching for ein Aschenbecher, as the cigarette burns through my short filter and into my hand. In direct contrast, where smoking has already become a predominantly outdoor activity--which one indulges in en route from one party to another, or uses to have a private conversation outside a bar, or to escape a too-private conversation inside a bar--in Berlin, smoking is a private, indoor activity.

While on the subject of public behavior, let me point out that no one in Berlin jaywalks. And this is a culture that prides itself on its (contemporary) anti-authoritarianness! This is because pedestrians in Berlin are simply not given the information that pedestrians in America are. Traffic lights for cars occur about five meters before crosswalks, so you never know when the light is gonna change. One can't make one's own decision about how much time is left on the light, so one is stuck following the government's walk/don't walk signs. (Which, incidentally, don't provide for a flashing red. You literally need to have seen the green turn to red to know that you still have time to cross.)

Finally, Berlin is a very diffident city. People don't often make eye contact on the street, but this is certainly no more the case than it is in New York. People in clubs virtually never look at each other. However, anyone that one engages in conversation will always be extremely friendly. And if one shows too much nonchalance at the DJ or band one is seeing (as is the New York norm), everyone acts as if to say, "Well, why the fuck are you here then?"

In conclusion, Berlin is a city of contrasts. And with this brief and topic sentence-y essay off my chest, hopefully I'll now be able to resume my usual posting schedule of pleasant little bon mots and roundups of my (night)life here.

Bigger/Better Post Coming Soon

2006-02-28T07:53:00.000-08:00

I'm going to break my long, long silence by linking to some things that have struck me as interesting in the last couple weeks.

Two different friends of mine have now been trashed anonymously by Gawker. Oh God, please give me my fifteen minutes of internet fame soon...

I firmly do not believe in robbery, but if I did, this is exactly how I'd do it. No one hurt, and $92 million dollars in nonsequential, untraceable cash taken. It's the second biggest cash robbery in history, after the, er, billion dollars taken from the Iraq National Bank immediately after we occupied Baghdad. In the movie version Steven and I want to write, the security manager (played by Keifer Sutherland or Harrison Ford or--dear God this is so brilliant--Ricky Gervais in his first serious role) is informed his family is held captive by being sent a cell phone picture after he's already handcuffed in the robber's car.

There's absolutely no reason to see the new Bond movie. Or is there?

Fuck Sweden.

Correction,
Fuck Yale and Sweden. I'm sooooo beyond words jealous.

Everyone in the Berlin program is each going to get 110 Euro as a thank you from the government of Berlin for moving here.

Completely unrelated to receiving 110 Euro in cash, there's a whorehouse right across the street from me. Double gross.

The Most Awesomely Bad Place on Earth

2006-02-12T10:44:00.000-08:00

Let me begin by clarifying some confusion caused by my last post. Despite now eating Muesli for breakfast, I have not turned into a granola-crunching lesbian. When I expressed some limited interest in the body of work produced by Ms. DiFranco, I merely meant that I didn't dislike her music as much as I expected to. No endorsement was meant.

Friday night, I persuaded 10 people in our program (basically our whole entryway; we have three different addresses in our complex) to come with me to a trance club in some random West Berlin nabe. The ten of us, after much searching, eventually find the door, which is surrounded by blond-crewcut dudes with the blunt features which recent action films or a trip to Brighton Beach have taught us mostly belong to young Russian gangsters. Said gangsters are dressed in baggy white jeans, sneakers, white sweatshirts or zipped up white windbreakers, and a lot of baseball caps. We'll later realize why they're all dressed in white when we enter the club and see *a ton* of blacklights inside. The five American guys are literally the only men in the place not glowing. Oh, and almost the only ones not wearing fannypacks, but the natives are wearing them not in a stupid over-the-hill soccer mom way, but more like a Thug-who-keeps-his-poisons-and-guns-across-his-chest-in-a-fannypack way.

We roll ten-deep into an abyss full of trance/hard-house music and fog machines. The cover is 8 euro, very steep for Berlin. The bouncers immediately frisk all of us, and remove
the corkscrew I was opening bottles with (which I admittedly had been prepared to shank a homeless crazy man who was hanging out with us on the subway with not half an hour before). Walking in, we're presented with the sort of place where bad guys hang out in XXX or the cheesier James Bond movies. There's a raised level of tables and bars surrounding a sunken dance floor, upon which periodic smoke machines release themselves. Crappy European hard house is playing. There are about sixty of the guys I've already described and forty girls. The girls are fake-tanned, and look like very pretty 16-year-old girlfriends of drug dealers. Believe me, we all wanted to take pictures, but assumed our cameras or our lives would be taken if we tried to add to our Flickr accounts. It also feels like we're gonna be forced into a fight tonight when someone hits on some dealer's girl. We form buddy groups so that no one is ever alone.

We check our coats and order drinks. It's basically just Beck's and vodka shots at 3 Euros apiece. Everyone orders one of each. And then we dance.

My God how we dance. We take over the fucking dance floor. The pattern seems to be that the men at the club go around in groups of roughly two or three, and dance as macho as can be. By this I mean that they swing their arms in a chain-breaking fashion, do a shuffling two-step, and whistle through their fingers like a doorman hailing a cab every time the DJ plays a song they recognize. The girls aren't much better, each dancing by herself, endlessly circling the dancefloor like little Halley's Comets, returning only once every 70 years. They all do this ridiculous little pony-step and move their shoulders, avoiding eye-contact at all costs.

Meanwhile, the Americans move to the center of the dancefloor. Pete and I were both ravers in high school, so we start liquid (rave dance) battling each other. Every native in the club is very excited, as apparently this particular piece of ecstasy-inspired retardation never reached this side of the Atlantic. Pete is, to my regret, a much better dancer than I am. Pleased by Pete's and my ability to make one hand fluidly follow the other in time to music, virtually none of the locals bother us over the course of the night, much less try to make eye contact. God knows, in any
American club they would be all over us by now, especially the Asian girl, who is getting shy, yet very interested sidelong glances from every dude there.

We escape unharmed from the club at 4 in the morning, I recover my corkscrew, and we laboriously make our way home via long hikes and cab rides. We all agree that it was an incredible experience, but not one we'd ever like to repeat as long as we live.

Infinitely Late at Night...

2006-02-08T21:13:00.000-08:00

Today is my last day of the school week, and a number of us went out drinking for a bit tonight, so I'm posting very late. My German class been rescheduled, so I have a four-day weekend, which certainly facilitates travel. This neighborhood, which I used to find so ugly, is really starting to grow on me; it has character.

Germany (or at least the former East Berlin) is far more Eastern European than I expected. The buildings are shabby, the drinks are cheap, no American credit cards are accepted anywhere, and it's unbelievably difficult to buy things. Steven and I have spent many fruitless hours searching for olive oil and a bag of ice. We need olive oil for our pasta, and we need ice to shake cocktails. We have to buy ice because our furnished apartment lacks ice cube trays, and we can't even begin to think of where we could buy those. As embarassing as it is to buy ice in New York, where the corner stores all have bags of it even though we all have ice cube trays, it's far worse to attempt to buy it in freezing-cold Berlin. The word for ice in German is "eis," which is also the word for ice cream. My German is really shitty, and Steven's is worse, so no one is able to understand our desire for a 10 lbs bag of ice. Three times now, rather than admit that I'm making no sense, I've purchased the last thing the store clerk offered me. I am now the proud owner of a tub of ice cream, a box of popsicles, and a plastic bag (which was what we got when we asked for what my German-English dictionary assured us was the name for "bag of ice").

I've taken to rolling my own cigarettes from loose tobacco, as almost all Berliners seem to do. I also bought filters, both because I can't stand unfiltered cigarettes and so I might one day live my dream of smoking filtered marijuana. Every day, I try to get home by 4:00 to roll cigarettes for an hour and watch The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, which is dubbed into German and called something like "Prinz." Not only is Carlton's voice hilarious (the high-pitched, stressed-out voice of a low-level Nazi functionary) but the whole show is hilariously dated. Today's episode featured Bo Jackson and Heavy D as guest stars.

Tomorrow I buy tickets for the Berlin Film Festival. V for Vendetta is playing, the movie Natalie Portman shaved her head for. Shan and I saw her at Bua one time, and I argued that she couldn't possibly be Natalie, because, manifestly, Ms. Portman does not have a shaved head.

I'm about to go to sleep. I'm listening to some Ani DiFranco live album that a friend gave me. Her crowds are terribly enthusiastic about everything she says, especially when she curses. Crowds must give musicians the same sort of hubris fascist despots used to enjoy. I remember going to a Le Tigre concert in late 2004 where Kathleen Hanna expressed certainty that the recent national election had been stolen and asked who in the audience agreed with her. Over two-thirds of the audience raised their hands. Now, I hate Bush just as much as the next bloke (more than most of the Fundy Fatties in, say, Ohio) but I must regretfully admit that, unlike 2000, he won the last one fair and square. Anyways, at the risk of offending much of my readership, I must say that I find Ani perfectly fine and competent, but it certainly seems like it would be easy to imitate her. I feel the same way about Hemingway.

In Berlin

2006-02-04T07:56:00.000-08:00

So I arrived in Berlin this morning, and have had quite a daz. Iäm currentlz tzping on a computer in an internet cafe three blocks from mz apartment. Itäs a weird German kezboard, with three kezs different than thez are on the American kezboard, which I am too layz to correct. Can zou guess which letters thez are?

But seriouslz, Berlin is prettz cool. At first, I was shocked bz how wide the streets are, between the streets (mz tinz little allez is wider than Avenue B) and the enormous squares, the whole place feels reallz low rise, even though most of the buildings are at least six stories. Nevertheless, zou feel like an ant. It's also rather cold here, and Steven and are constantlz getting lost.

Our apartment is reallz large, and mz room (which onlz I live in) features two beds, which is good news for all zou fuckers planning to crash at mz place. Beer is verz cheap (I just bought three 22 ounces of good beer around the corner for 1€50. And Euros look like monopolz monez, even if thez donät spend like them. Steven and I wandered all over Central Berlin todaz (which is cold as FUCK). We went to Alexanderplaty, which has has that big Space Needle Christmas Tree Top looking TV Tower. Itäs basicallz German Times Square, and in true form, is so not crowded at 1 in the afternoon on a Saturdaz. Seriouslz, this whole citz feels eerilz emptz for how big and important it is. We ordered the official Berliner food, currzwurst, which basicallz is a cut-up hot dog dusted with a tinz amount of currz powder and covered in ketchup. For this we came across the world? HOWEVER we bought a beer and we drank it on the street, and the vendor was also offering vodka. Can zou imagine washing down a vivisected hot dog with four ounces of cheap, lukewarm vodka. Apparentlz the Berliners can. God bless this citz. We also bought a cocktail shaker, so now Iäm emotionallz at peace.

Iäm in the Turkish neighborhood of the citz, which is reallz weird. For instance: in the internet cafe, Iäm smoking a cigarette. Everzone else is too. Turkish girls are prettz, but I know their brothers would cut off mz legs if I look too hard at them. Before I came, I was thinking about how it would be the first place Iäd ever been where I couldnät at first glance at least pass as a native, but I actuallz look waz more appropriate in our döner stand-strewn nabe than all the German-looking kids on the trip.
Bze for now,
Nick Riyyo

T-minus 53 hours

2006-02-01T09:52:00.000-08:00

It's somewhat trying to read everyone's exciting descriptions of life abroad while still remaining in New York. Luckily, I know that I'll soon be a stranger in a strange land, albeit a land less strange than Anna's or Casey's. I've been living with Shannon for the past week and a half, which has been absolutely wonderful, except for the fact that she's currently "sick like dog". She's at work today anyway. Poor girl. I am lying in her bed trying to finish Tony Judt's Postwar, which is unbelievably long, but astoundingly, terrifyingly good.

Later: I just walked into her kitchen in my underwear, and looked deep into the eyes of a half-dozen workmen on the scaffolding of the building next door. I'm going to miss New York. Tonight, I'm going to Corner Bistro to eat my last hamburger until I go to, er, Hamburg. (Thank you folks, and remember to tip your waitresses!) Then I travel out to Brooklyn, to Justin, Mike, Nick, and Byron's, where there will be a going away party for myself and Steven. All are invited. As you've no doubt guessed, I just discovered the link function fifteen minutes ago, and am completely enthralled with it. Bye for now.

Still in New York

2006-01-17T19:55:00.000-08:00

I don't leave for another two weeks and I'm bored. That is all.