Currywurst!

So the story goes that this German POW returned home after the war raving to his wife about these delicious spare-ribs he had eaten in the States. Being the resourceful German hausfrau that she was, she cooked up a sausage, cut it into bits, slathered it in ketchup, and sprinkled it with curry powder, and a Berlin favorite was born! As you can see, we are enjoying ours with pommes frites and a generous helping of mayonnaise.

What's that you say? How does it taste? Pretty much exactly like you'd expect, only much much better. I mean what's not to love?

When we returned, Ian went back to work, and I tried to socialize in the common room, bu there was something too surreal about being in Berlin watching The Producers, so I went out to play ping pong with some of the other kids. When it got too dark and windy, we came back in and they were watching The 40 Year Old Virgin. Good stuff, but why were there points when Ian and I were the only ones laughing?

The Best Tours in Life Are Free, but I'll still wind up paying.

Somehow this morning I was able to get up, pack, and eat breakfast all in time to meet the tour guide for my Sandeman's New Berlin Free Tour. Not even the rain was going to dissuade me from finally learning something about the city we've been in for three days. Since I'm like the last kid on the block to have been backpacking around Europe, probably everybody already knows about this, but they're in several cities and the deal is, it's a really good walking tour with a dynamic and informative guide who's working for tips. So the tour is free, and they're totally cool if you don't pay (they just ask that you pass the word on) but if you like it, you do. Good deal, huh? (www.neweuropetours.eu) OK, commercial over.



This is Per, our delightful British guide. Behind him there is the Reichstag, which I'll probably get a closer look at in a couple days. After an hilarious and educational survey of German history from Frederick the Great to Gorbachev, all through the lens of the Brandenburg gate, we walked down to the Holocaust memorial.



Now, Ian and I (a couple of goyim if ever I knew goyim) had decided that we weren't going to spend a lot of time commemorating (commiserating?) the big H this trip. We get it, it was awful, we will never forget, but we're on vacation, not pilgrimage, so no concentration camps or tolerance museums. But the Holocaust memorial in Berlin is so centrally located you can't help but see it (part of the plan) and it's so cool I have to talk about it for a second. There's no words, or faces, or symbology or anything like that, it's just hundreds of concrete slabs, all the same length and width, but of varying heights. And the ground kind of rolls and rises beneath it. So as you walk around, eventually you go deeper and deeper until all you can see or touch is cold, gray concrete. You turn a corner expecting to see someone and it's just more cold, gray concrete.



I'm not the kind to be emotionally affected by art, much less art with an agenda, but I found myself overwhelmed. Maybe it was the gathering storm clouds overhead, or having just heard the story of how Hitler was able to trample the constitution and civil liberties in the name of defending us from an insidious and ubiquitous enemy (ring any bells, America?), but I felt it. The loneliness, the darkness, the hopelessness and seeming endlessness all had me near tears. Needless to say, I exited as quickly as I could and rejoined the cheerful tour group.

Next stop was Hitler's bunker, where he spent his last days, finally eating poison, shooting himself, and leaving orders to burn his body. The bunker was bombed and bombed, excavated, then bombed again, filled with rubble, and so on until today it is just a small patch of green where Germans bring their dogs to crap. Fitting?





A bit of the wall that still stands.

There was plenty of beautiful architecture to photograph on this tour, and I did, but who wants to look at building after building? I did want to show you guys this. Do you recognize it?



It's the bank where Lola's father works in Run Lola Run! YAAAAY! It's across the street from Bebelplatz, which is where, in May of 1933, 20,000 books (off a list by Goering) were burned in the square. The monument today is a glass window on the ground, which looks down into empty bookshelves. Just as we can't go back and unburn those books, we can't put books on those shelves. And at night, a ghostly light shines up from the middle of the square. A quote from Heinrich Heine (from 1820) is on four brass plaques in different languages around it. It reads:

That was just the beginning. They that start by burning books will end by burning men.

This is a Kathé-Kollwitz sculpture inside the Memorial for Victims of War and Tyranny. It is a woman holding her dead son. Kollwitz's own son died in WWI, and her grandson in WWII, so this is actually a deeply personal work. Which I think makes it an even more powerful memorial.

I also include this memorial because it is a cool illustration of how Berlin has changed hands so often. Originally it was an anti-war monument, then under the Nazis it was a memorial for victims of war and Bolshevism. But then under the Communists, it was the memorial for victims of war and Fascism.




At the end of the tour Per sat us down on the steps of the Berliner Dom, where he wove the story of the fall of the Berlin Wall. His descriptions of the growing tide of popular movements in Europe in the late-80s, and the reactions of East Berliners learning they were now free moved me so much that even though I had planned to just give a nominal euro or two at the end, I found myself dropping 10! What you would normally pay for a professional tour I was shelling out on the tour I only took because it was free! Well, it was worth it.

When I got back to the hostel, Ian was ready to take our expedition to the new hostel. An S-bahn and two buses later, I was wondering if we were even still in Germany.



This was the abandoned bucolic highway leading up to our new hostel, from whose window I can see foxes and other woodland creatures scurry, and in whose common room I am currently enjoying a Mac while ignoring the Aussies watching Sky High (don't ask). I'm not sure we'll stay here two nights, as we are not only very far removed from, um, anything, but when we do venture out we will find ourselves in the poshest section of West Berlin. Evidently the likes of John Kerry and Helmut Kohl live around here. Neil the desk clerk does assure us we can find a 3 euro currywurst, though, so I'll keep you posted.

Vaterstag

So yesterday was Father's Day, and while I know it has nothing to do with our European vacation, and any other year I would let it pass without a thought, I think it merits a blog mention.

As some of you know, I recently reconciled with my estranged father, after an incommunicative silence of almost twenty years. At first it was just pride that kept us from talking, then it was some kind of need to prove I didn't need him, and then it was just a low priority for me. But both of us have had some personal changes in the last year or so, and it seemed like the right time to talk again.

There was no big, tearful reunion or music-swelling MOW moment ("Don't you see? You always loved that horse more than me!" "Oh, God, no, son! Is that what you thought?") but we had a nice lunch and left it open to future conversations.

In any case, this is probably interesting to no one but myself (and him), but for what it's worth, Happy Father's Day, Dad. Thanks for making my life possible, I've sure been enjoying it.

And now, back to your regularly scheduled entertainment, already in progress...

You mean there's like a whole city out there?

Spent most of the day in recovery, sleeping off the Jagermeister, with only a brief interlude of consciousness (free breakfast). Around 5 or 6, sorry, I mean around 17 or 18, we met up with Tom, a friend of Ian's from Ocean Beach who came here as a drummer on tour last year and then met a girl. Tomorrow he has his final exam for residency.

Anyways, he led us on a bit of a walking tour through East Berlin, pointing out sites I'll probably check out later in the week.



The TV tower again.



Along the River Spree.



Here's Brandenburg Gate.



Fifteen minutes later and we're looking at skyscrapers. West Berlin.



Checkpoint Charlie. More on this later.



After our walk, we came back to Schoenhauser Allee to a place called White Trash Fast Food. It's a former Chinese restaurant, that has kind of been through a rockabilly re-imagining. It's difficult to explain, try to picture weird kitsch paintings where the eyes have been replaced by colored LED lights, a menu that insults more than it informs, and a bar where ZZ Top would be comfortable rubbing elbows with William S. Burroughs. I had the King Elvis Burger, a giant concoction involving bacon, barbecue sauce, sauerkraut and cheese, with a side of Fuck You Fries (sorry Mom, that's what they were called!) and I'm still not hungry 24 hours later. Like most of the cooler places we've been, photography is verboten, so you'll have to make do with my clumsy prose.




I did manage to snap this one of Tom before the scary waitress in the fishnets caught me.

Post-dinner we headed out to Oranienburgerstraße, which we soon found out is Berlin's Red Light District. Of course, that's not why we were headed there, but Ian did get to try out his new approach to warding off whores; he speaks to them in Spanish thinking they will get bored at being unable to close a deal and move on. Unfortunately, as in Barcelona, no matter how much Spanish Ian speaks, everyone can tell he's really a native English speaker and they reply in English. I'll tell you, though, I dunno if it's the legality or what, but these ladies are WAY better looking than streetwalkers in the States, or so my limited experience has shown me. There's just only so many times you can turn down a beautiful Eastern European woman. I feel like James Bond or something.

But enough about that. On Oranienburgerstraße (say that three times fast. Heck, try typing it!) is a bar/club called Zapata, which looks like (probably is) a bombed-out former office building. But before I could buy a button or play with the M-16 on the bar, Ian dragged me out the back, into this incredible biergarten. The whole building it turns out is this kind of art colony, founded by squatters soon after the wall came down. So the backyard has weird art projects and converted military equipment, along with people drinking, smoking and laughing. The Doors' "LA Woman" came wafting across our ears as we were served half-liter beers out the side of a graffiti-covered converted trailer home. We sat down on some giant iron letters that didn't seem to spell out anything in particular, as we watched Berliners lounge about on everything from a car seat on giant springs to a chair that looked like something the mom in Betelgeuse would have designed (long, spindly, organic forms, but wrought-iron). I heard they even used to have a decrepit crashed-down MiG back there.

We chilled there for a while, then when it started to clear out (sometime around 3) we dropped into this after-hours club/bar called Silberfisch which was actually surprisingly mellow. I guess even in Berlin Sunday night ends early.

Back to Belushi's for a bedtime Beck's and some more deep conversation (Ian's really good at that), then off to the land of Nod for another nacht, just barely making into bed before the daylight shone.

Sammertag, and der living is lazy...(plus more hooker-dodging and a little glass-dancing!)

Well, Ian slept through the night, and the next morning, and well into the afternoon. Me, I was just happy to catch some naptime without getting physically or emotionally assaulted, so I also slept the day away. When we finally shook off the sandman, we decided laundry was the first order of business.



Here I am struggling comically to understand der waschingmackerunddrucker. We had a light breaky during the wash, and while I guarded the clothes during the dry, Ian went out in search of some lunch. Turns out, Berlin is the fourth-largest Turkish city, by population, so all he could find was more shwarma. And of course the beer. Have I mentioned how they love beer over here?

Our clothes cleaned, we returned to Rosa Luxembourg Straße to plan out the rest of our itinerary.



Ain't he sweet? We've nailed it down now, and although we sadly won't be staying in the Douglas Adams-themed hostel I'd hoped, we will be staying dangerously close to a forest, and I'm worried my snores might somehow resemble the mating call of the Black Forest Bear, who will be roused from his slumber to maul us all in our sleep. More on that later.

Here's a picture of the "walk" symbol on Berlin traffic lights.



Why is he wearing a hat?

We spent the evening strolling Schöenhauser Allee, enjoyed a bizarre french pizza whose german name I can't recall, and then went back to the hostel to get ready for Sammertagnacht in Berlin. From our room, we could hear the voices of groups of drunken pre-partying Euroteens singing (just the choruses of) such classics as Queen's "We will rock you" and "Hey Hey Baby".

Then we went out clubbing, Mitte-style.



This is der Fernsehturm, a giant TV tower and symbol of Berlin. I'm sure there will be better pictures of this later, but it looked cool at night.




Searching for the perfect night-spot, we came upon this improbably-named street. What are the odds? As we crossed the street, we noticed it had now become:



That's right, Rochstraße. (NB: Sorry about the neckstrain, I am at the mercy of foreign and uncooperative technology. Maybe I'll correct it later.)

Oh, wait, the hooker-dodging. Well, it started in Barcelona, where a young charming American, in the spirit of international goodwill, would smile at attractive females wandering the streets, only to find he had entered into a non-verbal contract which sometimes was only broken with physical removal. By Berlin, we've learned to avoid all eye contact with scantily-clad solo women, although tonight we did witness an altercation between a, well let's just say a lady of the evening, and what appeared to be a local business owner intent on preventing the current transaction from proceeding. Although we don't speak any German, so for all we know it was some sort of marriage ceremony.

We had a several choices in clubland (including a Freak Camp Session of 100% dubstep, and Funk Inc. Summer Camp (big beat, funk, hiphop and disco)), but eventually decided on this place called H2O, which I believe is German for "water", ironic because I came out of there completely dehydrated. Anyways, there's no denying that there's something about rocking out hard to some American hip-hop in a club located under the railroad tracks in formerly Communist East Berlin.



We had quite a start at first when, after paying our 6,50 € cover and receiving our handstamps, the first room we entered had a musclebound black man grinding on a pole, but we soldiered on, and were entertained by the adequate DJ skills of DJ Little Oh & MC Noize (an apt moniker if ever I heard one; why take the music away and rap along? Sure, a long instrumental, you gotta keep the crowd pumped. But do you really think you sound more krunked than Lil Jon?) in the one room, and DJ Merique, who rocked the congabeat, in the other. We got our freak on for a good hour or so, although my sneakers have picked up so much broken glass I can now tap dance. A good time was had by all, but an ill-timed Vodka and Red Bull has left me here at 5 am pounding Beck's and trying to get sleepy.



This picture was taken at 3:41 AM, and already the sky is becoming light. I'm afraid to turn away from this screen now, it will probably be noonish. A scant three hours until the free brakfast, so I'd better lumber upstairs, silently crash around for a bit, and then mash my face into the pillow in an (vain?) attempt to muffle my breaths.

Czech-Out, Berl-In!

Ed. Note: Due to circumstances I won't go into here, the following post was composed on a German keyboard, so zou'll excuse me if a z shows up where a y should be.

This is inside the Prague main post office. Nice, innit? Ian was engaging in some good old fashioned postcard writing. I, of course, have entered the 3rd millenium and am blogging, so everyone from my grandmother (hi, grandma!) to my nemeses (you know who you are) can follow my adventures, and feel that I truly do, wish they were here.

Before leaving Prague, we escaped the suffocating heat and brightness of the Czech midday at a lovely little Italian restaurant near the international bus station called Caffe Theatro. It was the sweetest moment Ian and I have had on this trip *sniff*.



.true but sad It's

The bus ride was long, if uneventful. I slept through most of it, stirring only occasionally to see beautiful swaths of Bohemian countryside


and, Ian assures me, a burnt-out, yet rebuilt Dresden.

Arriving at the ZOB (your guess is as good as mine), we then had to negotiate the U-bahn across the city, a 19-stop odyssey made somewhat more bearable by the many beautiful young fraüleins riding der metro that evening.

After check-in at St. Christopher's, we were about to do our trademark citywander, but a freak thunderstorm kept us drinking until all hours at Belushi's, the hostel bar, discussing issues of great importance, determining not only the nature of the world, but our place therein.

Ian took a Xanax (at this point, we'll try anything), and we turned in, noticing that the Berlin dawn happens well before any that we'd previously experienced. Just how far north are we?

Hasty Hostel Heists

Another night at Miss Sophie's, and Sophie herself would have wanted me dead, so we packed up our gear and beat feet.

Tomorrow we are off to Berlin, so Fearless Leader's (as I've taken to calling Ian under my breath) brilliant new plan was to pack an overnight bag, leave the rest of our gear at the bus station, and change to a new hostel in Zizkov (again, not quite, but you get the idea. Picture little u's above the z's), which is supposedly the drinking quarter of Prague. Not a bad plan, but we had a little trouble finding the international bus station, and lugging our big bags around cobblestoned streets at noon in 35 degree (Celsius? What?) weather wore us out pretty quick.

We eventually got it together, and our new hostel is called The Clown and Bard. As you can imagine, there was much debate as to which of us is which. Eventually I caved, but I want it clear it's the "fool" or "jester" type of clown, not the creepy, face-painted, horn-honking, child-murdering kind of clown.



Since Ian was exhausted by 12:30 (combination of too much physical exertion and an inability to sleep through a cacophony of sino-nasal apnea (Fine! I'll make an appointment for the clinic as soon as I get back to the states. For now we're trying a face down approach, coupled with regular kicks to the gut.)) I headed out exploring on my own.



This is the TV Tower, Prague's answer to the extremely tall structures in other cities. The view is fairly spectacular, but you're probably bored of labyrinthine streets and gothic architecture by now, so I'll spare you. The weirdest thing about it (and you may need to look closely to see them, or maybe click on the picture to see it full-size, I just found out you can do that) is those black baby sculptures crawling all over it. I could find no explanation, other than in the off-color guide our hostel offered, which suggests that maybe they are trying to "nick the radio" (Ah, Europe!).

Got caught in a little bit of rain this afternoon, but as there seems to be a pub every other block in this part of town, I ducked in for a pivo, which is the only Czech word I've managed to pick up so far. It means beer, and it rhymes with TiVo!

I then went up to the Prague Market, which is not so spectacular. It reminds me of Tijuana, only there are Southeast Asians haranguing you in Czech to buy the misspelled knockoffs instead of Mexicans. *shudder*

Ian was up by the time I got back, working working working, so I figured it was my naptime, and later we had more authentic Czech cuisine (potato pancakes, beer soup, croquettes, beer, oh so much beer here) and then headed to our hostel's bar, which we had been promised was one of the more lively in town.

It proved to be so, but as I am learning, hostelry is a young drunk's game, and while the thought of carousing around the city with a bunch of early-twentysomethings all hepped up on Jager shots sounds good on paper, a few beers in the bar quickly convinced me that I'd rather shoot some pool in a bowling alley with Ian.



So that's Prague! Assuming no difficulties with our train passage (HA!) we will be in Berlin by nightfall. Or, as they call it in Germany, "nachtenfallengesamtkunstverkenschmidt".