Dateline: 15.45 22 Aug 1996
Location: Germany, Berlin, Schloß Charlottenburg
Oh mein Gott
it's so Hott
if it don't Schtopp
I will be Tot!
The sun continues to glare down, uninterrupted since Day 1. At
the moment a few cumulus clouds are bopping around up above, but they are
only punctuation in the vast sheet of blue. My piss remains insistently
dark orange despite me quaffing down liters upon liters of liquids daily.
It's hot outside and worse inside. Who needs to buy bed linen at
a hostel when it's too hot to even use it? Regulation sleeping gear
at the moment: underwear, period, no sheets nor blankets, and I would gladly
adopt Marilyn's "Chanel 5" approach if it was up to me. Museums are the
worst, with their heavy Teutonic architecture, walls half a meter thick,
not a window open anywhere, just sweltering halls and chambers full of
tagged, numbered, indexed and archived pot shards in glass cases. Blah.
Oy maybe I'm just spoiled by Louisiana...
Well, well. Yesterday I stumbled into the Turkish quarter
(sixteenth? hundredth?) of Berlin, today it turns out that Preußenpark
is in fact Chinapark. At the moment about half the Asian population of
Berlin appears to be camped here, some with tents and all. Perhaps it's
just some local "go go Zhongguo" day, but there are no stands or stalls
nearby. A shame, I could've dug a nice big bowl of ramen. As people of
tropical climes have long known, hot soup is excellent on a hot day, just
add the necessary amounts of chili powder and let your internal air-conditioning
system kick into overdrive.
I wonder what that tree is called? It's pretty, billions
of small thin leaves, collectively weighing so much that the branches are
dragged down, producing an oddly flumpy look. Factor in the way the lower
leaves are butchered by humans to keep the lower part level and prevent
it from reaching the ground, and the overall impression is like a woman
in a huge antique dress, standing one foot while the campanulate garment
billows around her.
Editor's note: I later discovered the tree was a willow, a
species which does not grow in Finland.
Should I stay or should I go? Tough, tough. There's
some kind of mini-rave at Suicide Club, where I could hang out from 00-06
and then hop aboard the train, but six hours of house... yipe. Or, if I
get a bed for the night, I could sleep, chill out during the day tomorrow
and then go to the Real Thing at E-Werk at night. Decisions, decisions...
had I left early today I'd be going to Praha's Radost FX - such a weird
thought! - but no. It's odd, a city of over 5 million people, one of Europe's
biggest, and yet I'm starting to get a bit bored. Tomorrow will be OK,
but I wouldn't want to stay here for longer. And it's not that there's
anything wrong with Berlin, it's a clean and, in its own industrial
way, beautiful place... but it's not a particularly touristy one, prices
remain high (albeit less than København) and poor souls like me
who can't speak German run into communication problems too often. The bigger
the country, the more insular it is, and splat here - surrounded by former
East Germany, too - who needs to speak English anyway? Oh well,
too bad for little old me. Dealing with Czech will prove interesting.
One item keeps popping up in the oddest places: ultraviolet
(UV) lights. OK, maybe they have a special little place in my heart due
to the several odd adventures I had this summer looking for them (too long
a story to be told here, I'm afraid) but nevertheless, already I've seen
them at...
-
at discos, raves and the like, in use for their "hey, your shirt looks
cosmic!"-value.
-
at the FOREX booth, used to check for counterfeit currency
-
in the toilets of København H, so IV drug users can't find their
veins. Now how's that for a statement on a country's conditions to a tourist?
Then again, I imagine that finding a dead druggie in a toilet booth might
not be terribly good PR either.
-
in the tunnels of Berlin's S-Bahn and possibly once in the U-Bahn as well,
always on the east side of town. Reason: No clue. Against druggies? Unlikely,
almost all of the tunnel is lit with ordinary light. For the yuks of maintenance
workers and bypassing Berliners? They cost too much for that. Against counterfeit
money? No comment. Best file it as yet another episode of Unsolved Traveling
Mysteries. Tune in next time for "Why Doesn't Travel-Size Deodorant Exist?"
The day's budget
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