Nostalgia Ain’t What It Used To Be

The other day I took a stroll down memory lane.  Don’t ever do that, I’m telling you.

The familiar old neighborhood of Prenzlauer Berg was home to me and my lovely wife for 5 years before we were banished to the Berlin hinterlands.  I only mention that my wife is lovely so you will feel sorry for us when I tell you how we got railroaded right on out of there by the gentrification scumlords.  If it were just grumpy old moi, myself und ich (or me and an ugly wife) who lost a place to live, you might just think ‘GOOD! Get rid of the grumpy old ugly fucks and let the new Rich but Sexy Berliners move in!’  As one does.

I initially went down to my old Helmholz kiez (Danziger-Duncker-Prenzlauer Allee) to pick up some second hand lights for sale.  A nice, waiflike couple was sitting in their empty commercial space waiting to sell me their old lights so they could embark upon their new voyage of their new image in their new commercial space.  I still don’t know what in the flying fuck they were selling. There was a counter, a mini espresso machine and some dishes.  And a cat. Their website is just as mysterious. Apparently that’s all you need in Berlin if you are a Trustafarian. The lights weren’t as advertised and I couldn’t use them.  So I thanked them for wasting my time (I did it in a very smooth way, I’m telling you.  The couple looked fragile and earnest, and this combo can still the harshest of tongues. Even mine.) Off I went.

I passed the closed Café Lyrik and remembered the spell cast by the Witch.  Free ‘music’ (using the term loosely) with overpriced drinks and a performance sounding something like a steel kitty in a blender (complete with metallic screams and feverish, glass scratching death knells), followed by a donation cup shaken so vigorously in our faces that everybody had to stop drinking and stare to see how much we WERE NOT putting in.  Apparently 15 EUR was NOT enough for the avant garde scheisse we were watching.  The Witch told me so.  And the Deutschbag at the next table scoffed out loud when I refused to give more.  I won’t say don’t go there.  If you are NOT a brain dead, self important Trustafarian with delusions of grandeur, you probably already have the good sense not to (Dunkin’ Berliner flash mob idea: everybody cram into that tiny ‘art/music’ space, don’t order a damn thing and then dump a sock full of pennies into the collection plate.  Smack those bitches up).

I continued my walk down memory lane (aka Danziger strasse) and passed the empty windows of the Fuss-feti-fisch.  This is a place where you can stick your feet in a fish tank and have swarms of little fish eat the barnacles and toe jam right off your sunken feet. There are aquariums in the windows full of feet sucking fish, lights and signs and benches with towels, but that place is NEVER open.  Meaning: MAFIA MUTHA FUCKAZ.  Don’t go there either.  Hell, if you need your toe jam eaten, let me know.  I know poor artists who will eat your toes out on a stage for loose change, I’m tellin’ ya.

No trip down Memory Lane is complete without a visit to your old flat, the place you used to call home, the place where some yuppie fucks are now living.  Gentrification is a BITCH.  I wanted to see the type of quality human beings who could possibly replace my loser ass, who could possibly be a better tenant than me, who in the HELL would want to pay more than 600 EUR for a studio apartment.  It couldn't be yuppies; they only live in large lofts, not studio apartments. This I already knew.  But I tend to read ahead in the script, so it was no surprise that the new tenant was just a number:  my old buzzer simply read ‘60’.  In fact, most of the flats in our old building were now part of the growing scourge of holiday rentals in desirable hoods. They weren’t even hiding it.  A large banner now hangs above Dunckerstrasse 90A and proudly proclaims BERLINER LEBEN HOLIDAY RENTALS.  Nine of the 12 flats in our building were already owned by Das Leben when we moved in. When we lived there, I do recall an ungodly amount of suitcases thumping up and down the stairs and late night screams in Mediterranean languages.  We were happy to endure it as proud members of the multi-kulti Berlin life (aka Berliner Leben). But we were forced out.  When our contract was ready to be renewed, they refused us (after paying rent on time every month for a year), saying in writing “It is a free market.  We can rent to whomever we choose.” Harsh words from harsh cunts. Why have regular tenants at a fixed rate when you can kick them out and charge 70 EUR per night as a holiday rental?  There is now only one of our original neighbors left in our building:  Riewoldt (pronounced ‘revolt’).  As I recall, the door to his flat had been kicked in a few times and there were blatant splinter/spackle/patch jobs done on the door.  Fight da powah, Herr Riewoldt.

There is a growing resistance to these types of predatory rental investors (scumlords, et al) and laws are being drafted as I write this.  As I was doing my due diligence (Googling), I discovered a fact that would be shocking if I were able to be shocked at this point.  The busy-bodied little man who dogged us the entire time we lived at Dunckerstr. 90A (saying he was the hausmeister) was in fact the very agent provocateur behind the Berliner Leben tenant ousting: Marcus Buthmann (whom we called Buttman) was talking seven shades of scheisse to the press about his proud holiday rentals.  That’s right: the same Buttman who helped us out the door; the exact same cocksucker.  And that’s not libel—the man does indeed suck cock.

http://www.thelocal.de/20140801/two-thirds-of-berlins-tourist-flats-now-illegal

In a city that changes as much, as often and as constantly as Berlin, nobody seems to notice that a very large rug is being pulled out from under our feet.  Sure, sluggish student paralegal interns are rising from their hangovers to wave the flag.  Too little, too late.  The scumlords are winning.

I crossed the street with the mixed emotions of knowing I was right and being powerless to do a damn thing about being wronged. Skinny old American fucks in suits talked on phones in lofty voices while a German teenager in hip hop attire trudged by in high swagger mode, oozing anger in his neo-yuppie hell.  Even the small courtyard recreation area across the street from my old digs was being torn up.  The ruins of the ping pong tables we used to play upon were lying on the ground beneath the plows of the machine.  CAT operators smoked and laughed in the midst of the mayhem.

I switched to high swagger mode and trudged past the usual sushi bars, trendy cafes and yoga holes of Yuppie Central.  Even my old hole-in-the-wall kebab joint had been renovated and neon-ensconced. Dunkin’ Berliner truth: the smaller and grungier the hole in the wall, the better the food.  The bigger the space, the more neon cacti, the more bland the food, the more yuppie it is. Period. This area used to be commie, punk rock, artist, drifter, and dreamer.  Now it is just another non-threatening place for yuppies and breeders to take root and grow money trees.  Because that’s what gentrification is all about: rip out the old, plant the new, harvest the money crop. We who choose to live our lives in pursuit of something other than money are not worthy of living in a cool neighborhood.  We don’t stand a chance. Because we have neither money nor power; nor do we want anything to do with any of that shit.  So They win. Again. Always.

Maybe one day, one of us will snap.  Necks.

The Milky Way

I’ve managed to survive pretty well in the Age of Political Correctness.  I’ve been threatened, cajoled, derided and ostracized.  And that was just for using the word ‘chick’ instead of ‘womyn.’

Jesus F. Christ, bitches:  GET OVER YOURSELVES.

Good.  Now we can get back on track: the tenuous and tricky thang we call human relationships. We’re all in them, donut and non donut munchers alike.

The other day, my lovely wife called upstairs to ask for my help.  She was playing with the Social Media and I was playing with the Video Games.  I hit pause.

She:  Some chick (Heh. I taught her well) just wrote and told me how I shouldn’t use the word ‘tit’ and furthermore I am some sort of bimbo.  She said she had the right to breast feed her baby any damn where she pleased and how dare I use the word ‘tit’ instead of ‘breast’ and so NYEAH.

Me: Honey Bunches of Oats, may I formulate your reply?  Good.

Dear Earth Mama,

We understand that Berlin breeding hutches like Parentslauer Berg, Wedding and Neukoelln are home to all sorts of uppity cows who think they can roll their prams over people’s feet and scream at them for saying ‘boo.’  You also feel that you can haul your bloated breastages out and schluck your leechy bambinos on right then and there in public.  And we’re supposed to forgive that shit; hell, enjoy it as well.

BTW: my wife is not a native speaker of English.  How dare you call her names just because she used the word ‘tit’ instead of ‘teat?’  In your case, I’m sure she meant to use the word ‘udder.’

She:  No, that seems a bit strong.  I think she will be offended.  She said I should just avert my eyes.

Me:  So she can offend you and call you names, but…?

She:  I don’t want to start a war of words.

Me:  I DO.

BREEDERS: you choose to have babies.  Big fucking deal.  You are nothing special.  You are an open-legged receptacle for the baby batter of a monkey man.  Nothing more.  You want to celebrate the joy of creation; I get it.  But you also want to foist it on everyone else.  WE. DON’T. CARE. Your baby is ugly, shriveled and red.  JUST LIKE ALL THE OTHER BABIES.  But you are all hormonal and shit.  And you would like to kill me right now.  Take a deep breath.  Realize you are a hormonal cow.  Then get over it.

CHOICES: I’ve seen cafes with names like Milch Bart (milk moustache/beard... EEWW) in P’berg full of milk mädchens just like you.  Everyone’s got the udders out and all the babes are tapping that shit in broad daylight.  I averted my eyes when I walked by.  That wasn’t my turf.  But when you CHOOSE to bring your little milk vampire into a RESTAURANT during DINNER hours:  How dare you?  Are you white trash?  Were you born in a barn?  A trailer?  What gives you the right to spoil my dinner?  That’s right:  seeing a breast feeding mother in public turns my stomach.  I would really like to be more tolerant and shove my coffee mug under a lactating teat and get the cream of the crop.  But I can’t.  I like my coffee like I like my President: strong and black.

Earth Mama:  Fuck you, male chauvinist pig.  I can’t believe you are intolerant of something as beautiful and natural as a loving mother sharing the milk of her bosom with her darling angel.

Me:  Yes, breast feeding is a natural biological function.  I will take back everything I said and apologize for any offense, IF: you will allow me to urinate in a bucket under the dinner table while you watch.  Biological function and all; fair is fair.

Earth Mama:  PIG!!!

Me: Oh yeah!

LiederLauschen

An Open Air Loony Bin on Helmholzplatz

Now that summer is behind us, I can whine about how the warmest Berlin summer in recent years just wasn’t long enough.  I really miss my sandals.  Really I do.  Toes previously Free To Be are now crammed into shoes designed by tiny, foot-binded Chinese to torture the footloose and fancy free Western Capitalist Pig Dog (and in so doing, procure a tidy sum, naturally); no wiggle room for my little piggies.  I digress:  Berlin open air events.  Like most of cold, gray, dark, depressing Europe (and I’m saying that like it’s a good thing), Berlin suffers from about 300 days of mleh out of 365.  So when the Berlin summer hits, you’d best get your ass outside and do anything and everything under the sun.

Prenzlauer Berg: a gentrified district of East Berlin wherein the previous punk-and-social-welfare-case people get to yell DIE YUPPIE SCUM (in German no less) to the gentrifiers who scream GET A JOB, LOSER back at them.  It’s great to live in a former punk quarter which is slowly turning yuppie, hipster and foreigner and get to absorb the vibe of something old, dirty and skuzzy cleansed by something cold, antiseptic and sterile.  Perhaps sterile is the wrong word, as Prenzlauer Berg packs in so many new families that it is now referred to as Parentslauer Berg.

Helmholzplatz:  a green park in one of the trendier areas of Prenzlauer Berg.  When I first moved into the kiez (‘hood), I recall strolling through the middle of the park and being accosted by a rather inebriated fellow who started shouting at me and my girlfriend as we passed his bottle-strewn, piss-reeking turf.  Yes, Mr. Intoxicunt, clearly we are The Threat.  Together we work to make about the same money as you get for free on social welfare.  And your flat is bigger and you get to drink outside and wax drunken philosophical all day long as your means of employment.  I’m jealous.

LiederLauschen:  some kind of cockamamie music event contrived in the last days of summer to squeeze the last few Euros out of those who would soon retreat behind the thick walls of their altbau (old building) flats and enjoy cop show marathons while pining away for the summer.  I don’t know WTF LiederLauschen means and I’m too lazy to Google it.  As One of Those who is too lazy / refuses to learn another language (read: American), I’ll wager a guess that it means Punk / Parent Mixer, because the usual drunken suspects were greeting the stroller wielding breeders in a one stage, one bar affair.  I was hoping for a riot with beer bottles flung at breeders and a demolition derby of strollers rolling over the scrawny legs of the punkies, drunkies, junkies and other members of the disenfranchised.

A dozen benches held the butts of those who wanted to warm them.  Just behind the last row of benches, one of the indigenous park dwellers was burning a pile of paper while sitting cross-legged with a ghetto blaster on his shoulder.  It was turned all the way up--and apparently had been for some time--as the speakers spewed nothing but flupping, flapping distortion.  Or maybe that was the band.  I’m too square to ever solve that mystery.  The fire burned on and people walked by.  The distortion reached a crescendo and Chief Squatting Bull began bashing his ghetto blaster against his skull in arrhythmic blunt beats.  The passersby passed by.  What the fuck was this guy gonna have to do to get some attention?

The first band was warming up.  One of those folk diva types sat on a stool with a loosely slung guitar around her shoulders.  Some others held their instruments.  I can’t go into details. I’m not a music critic, though the music sounded about as bad as I expected it would.  She finished her mewling and caterwauling and bowed out gracelessly.  Another band got up on stage while I went to the spaeti to avoid buying overpriced event beer.  I took a swig and looked around.  Chief Squatting Bull’s fire had burned out and his tape had ended or was destroyed by the skull thumping.  Behind him, small squabbles broke out with the harsh-voiced demi-homeless bench punks.  A park drunk cadged a fag from two young ladies seated in front of us. One of the girls gave him a cig to pay her dues and make the bastard go away.  Of course he would not.  He then began hitting on them—both—in an attempt to slur and wobble his drunken way into their hearts.  They got up and left.  He cursed at his knees and I got up to support the bar for a couple of beers for the event.  I was being fully entertained and the stage had little to do with my amusement.  Upon my return with our beers I noticed a completely different drunk had plunked his ass down next to my babe.  I gently placed my hand on his shoulder and said that he was in my spot.  I’m trying real hard to avoid conflicts.  Especially since they seem to fly into my face like a crank-addled Vegas lap dancer.

The drunk swung his hand out and pointed my way to sit at the end of the bench.  You see, he needed to continue hitting on my girlfriend.  This was completely understandable due to both the quality and quantity of the chemicals sloshing around in his slushy melon. My babe quickly slid down the bench away from Drunkenova and I plopped my ass in between them.  Undaunted, the Bishop of Bad Breath heaved his amorous airs directly around my head until finally, breathless and feckless, he slowly got up and left.

We took a break from the chaos and left the area for more beer.  Upon our return, the very bench of my babe’s erstwhile seduction was taken over by a new threat:  babies.  A prime example of the Parentslauer Berg tribe was having her attention span stretched so far that a cesarean section would be necessary to cut through:  one child jumped up and down on our abandoned bench while another hung around her scrawny neck like a monkey and the one in her belly kicked in time with the music.  She sat behind our abandoned bench and watched with utter apathy as the bench came crashing down and the bouncing baby boy landed in the midst of beer puddles, cigarette butts and broken glass.  The mother said nothing, as is perfectly normal for German parents with spastic howler monkey progeny screaming and bouncing off the walls.  Ordnung uber alles my ass.

Perhaps butt cheeks generate their own kharma, and chaotic, free-spirited ones such as mine must attract all manner of anarchy.  After the breeder brood had left and someone had righted the chaos bench, it came crashing down yet again as we were trying to reclaim it.   It was the fag cadger, heart breaker, bench flipper.  As I helped him out of the beer/butt puddle, he glared through drunken slits at my face.

We were out of there.  We stopped once more for beer. As we left the circus, the bench flipping ciggy bum was curled up in a fetal position on a small stone wall near the path out of the park.  I told my babe that he still had his bent cigarette sticking out of his mouth.  She looked back at the snoring figure and immediately set me straight:  ‘You’re blind.  That’s not a bent cigarette, honey bunches of oats (she calls me that sometimes).  That’s a big ole snot worm.’

O the snot-nosed drunks and babies of Parentslauer Berg!

C-I-L-L. My Land....Lord

Maybe the smarmy little fuck saw us paying for our sumptuous Greek meal at Asteria with a 50.  We were sitting by the window and I swear I saw him slithering by.  Can’t let your landlord see you spending money.  Because then they will think they can milk you for MORE.  It’s in their nature, just as the parasite in your intestine is only trying to survive in a shitty tunnel.  Poor, smarmy little shitsucker.  He is only doing his caca duty in the Capitalist World:  property owner, parasite, pain in my ass.

The greasy little bastard is everywhere:  in line in REWE at 11pm with his fancy black wool overcoat thrown slapdash over stained blue satin jogging suit—the kind only Eastern Europeans wear.  The man is a Pollock by birth, Berliner by accident, money grubbing parasite by choice.  Who gives these people property, really?  Didn’t earn it; no fucking way.  He slithers through the park, letting his greasy hair grow long while his baby mama grows fat.  He is a breeder, so he gets the dole as well (the government pays for his girlfriend’s flat, they share another flat, and he rents us her flat for double what they pay him, cash under the table).  He throws his head back, smirks and gives me a condescending little ‘hi!’  I nod and silently shoot needles out of my eyes into his empty fucking skull. 

‘Ach!  Mein kopf!’ he would say whenever I asked him to do his legal duty as a landlord and fix the fucking dump.  That or ‘Morgen! Ein hunnert procent! (Tomorrow! 100%!)’ Ask this empty-headed white trash slumlord for anything and you get bullscheisse.  I ended up repairing everything in the flat myself at my own expense—only because listening to his bullscheisse one more time would result in me caving in the aforementioned skull with the nearest blunt object.

These warm feelings of death and destruction weren’t assuaged by his demand for more money.  Yup, one day I brought them the rent--just as I had done for 3 years--and they demanded 600 EUR per month instead of our usual 500.  For a small, one room flat. Tried to raise our rent 20% he did.  He even threw his arm in the air and said ‘600 pro monat oder RAUS (600 per month or GET OUT)!’  Strange how the Polish can imitate the Heil Hitler pose on demand.  Monkey see, monkey do I reckon.  Naturally, as an American, I don’t give in to terrorist demands. Nor do I take kindly to the cattle prod of gentrification.

One day The Weasel was in my flat.  He weaseled past Gabushka at the door—real sneaky like—and I found him fumbling around in my bathroom.  I was eating in the kitchen and really pissed off (because I had to drop my food).  I believe in a previous (Texan) life I shot bastards like him.  For LESS.  My German is scheisse and I don’t give two flying fucks.  So as I’m asking him between chews WTF he is doing in my bathroom, he spouted off some Germo-Polish crap about checking the meter.  I escorted him out of the flat.  Said to him (with a small degree of satisfaction I might add) ‘Morgen.  Ein hunnert procent.’

Then The Cow sent me an eviction email.  Gawd dammit, I miss the old days when printed eviction notices were nailed to the door, Martin Luther-like.  Cow and Weasel are lovers, breeders and my landlords.  I sublet under these stupid farm animals because that’s what We Foreigners have to put up with in Deutschland Uber Alles.  They don’t want us here, it is clear by the shitstorm of paperwork required to do ANYTHING here.  So The Weasel was pissed off when I asked him to leave.  He yells at The Cow (who speaks a few words of English) and she swings her udders over to the pc and bangs her hooves on the keyboard.

Now we are moving out.  It got so bad that they were trying to come into the flat every other day.  I refused every time.  I’m already out; they’re not getting in.  I changed the lock. Then they tried to move up our eviction date from 40 to 30 to 20 days.  Then, for the first time in this here donut muncher’s life:

I lawyered. The fuck.  Up.

You’re looking at a dude who never thought he would say the words ‘my lawyer’ from outside of a jail cell.  Lawyers are for people with money.  Or people in accidents.  The Polish farm animals made it easy.  They started a shouting match via email because they were too cheap to call me.  Stupid fuckers.  Now MY LAWYER (heh) has the transcripts.  24 hours later, MY LAWYER called me to say that I would no longer have any problem with these grubby little white trash fuckers (or German equivalent; maybe weißmüll scheißkopf ?).  He even got us another month in the flat while we look for new digs. Now there are no knocks on my door, no new email threats.  The Cow even wrote ‘please’ when she emailed to ask me to let the heater maintenance man in next Friday.

And I haven’t seen hide nor hair of The Weasel since.

Next episode:  A Rolling Donut Gathers No Moss

The Baby Farm

Moving to Berlin - Prenzlauer Berg, the breeder capital of the known universe, was a complete accident.  For someone who is completely anti-reproduction (I mean c’mon—look at all the global overpopulation, shitty governments and lack of food and work for the existing people), being surrounded by the squeals and squalls of infants all day long is some sort of existential hell on a Sartrean scale.

Foreigners in Germany don’t have a lot of options as to where to live--unless they are the typical yuppie manager transplants working for an uberconglomerate company (or trust fund hipster douchebags). Most of us just take our chances with the real estate riff raff; most of the time we are lucky to take whatever we can get.  I have been told both implicitly and overtly that I was not welcome as a foreigner: “Too much hassle, paperwork, credit risk, yada yada sieg heil yada.” It could be worse:  I could live in one of the cheap shitholes passing themselves off as the New Artist and Hipster Hoods; neighborhoods with names rhyming with Schmeukoelln or Schmedding.

So we took a flat in ubergentrified Prenzlauer Berg, where prams push us off the sidewalk and into traffic (with sneers). In warm weather we open windows for air; ahhh, the fresh smell of shitty diapers and screeching newborns. We’re so lucky to be part of the swirling cosmic cacophony of creation.  In P’berg they shit out new babies every month and leave them by the open windows to screech their little lungs out.  Just when one baby stops crying, another scheissmaschine in another fenster takes its place.  Rarely are they ever synchronized.

Rather than complain (too late?), I decided to do a bit of research.  Apparently, German parents are privy to die neue Schule of child psychology, which simply states:  ‘Let them cry.  Do not give in to the child’s every whine and whim.  Leave them alone for hours and they will be better citizens for it.’  I believe the child care professional they follow is Dr. Josef Mengele.  He too chose to ‘test’ an infant’s resolve, its alleged need for parental attention, by leaving it alone for days at a time.  His research proved that, left alone long enough, an infant would stop crying altogether.  He was a groundbreaker, that bastard.

It seems pretty obvious that Berliners are being paid to breed.  I can’t figure it out otherwise.  I personally don’t see using my down time and underemployment as an opportunity to bring a screeching little mini me into this fucked up world.  But Berliners do.  They get paid to breed, and no number of children seems to be too much for the system.  Sounds like a government think tank at work:  solve the massive Berlin unemployment problem by PAYING PEOPLE TO BRING MORE FUCKING UNEMPLOYED PEOPLE into the picture.  I hate U.S. government policies, but Jayzus, Europe seems to be willing to throw the baby out with the bathwater when it comes to social and fiscal policies.

‘But db,’ you might ask, ‘what makes you think that these P’berg parents are merely white trash breeders out for a quick government baby buck every nine months?  What if they are middle-to-upper class working parents with single moms on maternity leave?’  Glad you asked.  Well, the simple answer is:  the middle class is too tired and worn out to breed; upper class yuppies don’t breed anything but more material possessions.  The parents are both too career driven to think of having children and too stressed out after their stupid, meaningless jobs to procreate.  Procreation takes time.  It’s a full time job.  You’ve got to try every Kama Sutra position from morning til night to guarantee progeny payload every nine months.

And who has that much time on their hands but the unemployed?

The Yellow Cigarette Man

You’ve seen them standing around, listless, shiftless, feckless.  To me, the lone Asians standing against the walls on every other block in Friedrichshain (and later in Prenzlauer Berg) stuck out like sore thumbs the first few times I saw them.  I was thinking to myself ‘now what the fuck is THAT guy doing standing there against that wall every time I walk by—without a grocery store behind him or a cigarette in his mouth to keep him occupied?’

Then I saw The Exchange: a middle-aged mullet sauntered up, looked the Asian up and down.  The Asian shot glances up and down the street (DRUG DEAL! I thought) and proceeded to produce a small yellow packet of cigarettes.  Money slid from palm to palm and the yellow cigarettes slid into the pocket of the mullet.   I don’t know the significance of the yellow packets of cigarettes (Asian brand?), but I quickly figured out that What Was Going Down was the sale of cut rate, no tax, non-German-government-sanctioned ciggies.  What we in the States refer to as ‘bootlegging.’

The Yellow Cigarette Man disappears whenever a cop car rolls past.  I’ve seen the guy standing there one minute—then vanish.  I’m going to assume he’s clinging to the bottom of the mini van parked to the left.  We had the same Yellow Cigarette Man on our green, leafy, breeder-ridden, P’Berg street for months.  He was around 60 years old, with the kind of weathered face seen only on Himalayan Sherpas.  He was there 6 days a week (heh. NOTHING runs on Sundays in Germany.), 12 months a year.  When the weather turned to ice the Yellow Cigarette Man was still standing there alone, with only his parka-ensconced face and the warm glow of Capitalism to keep him alive.

Then one day the Yellow Cigarette Man was gone.  I had gotten used to seeing him on my daily dog walks and/or shopping hauls.  I checked under the mini vans on the street:  nothing.  I was starting to worry that the mullets wouldn’t be sucking cheap fags on street corners in Berlin any longer.  Or that the Actual Man had applied his merciless Jack Boot to the ass of our friendly neighborhood alternative business executive.

Then the Yellow Cigarette Woman appeared one fine spring day.  Just as the first leaves of spring sprung from the buds on the old P’Berg tree branches and the newest babes of welfare pushed their way out of the white trash wombs, she appeared.  ‘HALLO!’ she said, smiling at each passerby.  A young, 20-something Asian girl had replaced the leather-faced Sherpa to which I had grown accustomed.  Maybe the Old Yellow Cigarette Man wasn’t fast enough to evade the ever-prowling Police Eye, or maybe he could no longer cling to the bottom of neighborhood mini van.

Now there is a regularly changing cast of Cigarette People on our street.  They no longer sell the yellow packets of cigarettes—my last stolen glance spied a different colored packet.  There is only ever one cig peddler at a time, either a young woman or a young man, both Asian.  I’ve never been there when there was a changing of the guard.  One day there is the young HALLO! woman, the next day a young man.  I’ve watched them pull entire cartons of cigarettes out of the most unlikely of places—from under moped rain covers, and even those long, narrow sidewalk street gratings you see near building walls.  Hell, once I even saw one of them prize a carton off the bottom of the mini van parked on the street.

Jesus H. Christ on a Bicycle

By owning a bike in Berlin you are issued a notarized, stamped (in triplicate) License to Be an Asshole.  You and your overpriced, faggy little bicycle are now the King of the Road.  Fuck motorists.  Fuck pedestrians. Fuck yeah!  There are naturally numerous regulations in Germany regarding the rights and behavior of cyclists.  Cyclists seem to have all of the former and fuckall of the latter.  If there are any rules for cyclists in Berlin I certainly haven’t seen them.  They have their own bike lane on most sidewalks.  This is the officially designated and holy bike lane reserved only for Bicycle Believers.  Heathen infidel pedestrians are not allowed to set foot inside.  You must leap over it and pray you aren’t given a shower of “SHEISSE!” screams and shaken fists. You could be struck and killed by a cyclist going 50km an hour and you wouldn’t have a case in German court.  Even if the cyclist was out of The Zone and weaving in and out of pedestrians like traffic cones in a racing course. In fact, German law states clearly that the cyclist has the right to urinate on your lifeless body before tying it to his bike and dragging you through the streets of Berlin.

“Case 10439: Jesus H. Christ on a Bike versus Feckless Idiot Pedestrian”

J.H.C.B.: “Your honor, I was minding my own business on my bike when F.I.P. stepped in my way.”

Judge:  “Did you ring your faggy little bike bell?”

J.H.C.B.: “Religiously.”

Judge: “Did you attempt to slow down?”

J.H.C.B.: “Good GOD no!”

Judge:  “And after you struck and killed the 80 year old woman, what did you do?”

J.H.C.B.:  “Got off my bike and checked for damage.  The old bitch’s dentures were stuck on my 1260 EUR racing frame!  So I yelled at the body.  Then I spit on it.  Then I felt the uncontrollable desire to urinate on the corpse.”

Judge:  “Did you drop a load of sheisse on the corpse?”

J.H.C.B.:  “Good GOD no!  I’m a religious man!”

Judge:  “Fair enough.  The court orders the F.I.P.’s grandchildren to pay for J.H.C.B.’s bicycle damage. Case dismissed.”

Ok, maybe I should graduate from blogging to writing plays.  The dialog just flows out of my keyboard like butter on hot Georgia asphalt.

I digress.  Assholes.  They are a protected bunch of spastic, muscular orifices.  Every time I witness a red-faced Deutschbag on a bike screaming at some hapless elderly couple for straying into the Sacred Bikeway to Heaven I can feel them moving up on The List.  Right before I eventually leave Berlin permanently I will tally up all of the names on The List and provide you with the name of the Biggest Deutschbag and publish it here.  Cyclists are crawling up The List all the time.

Cyclists are heavily protected by law.  The city of Berlin rarely bothers to make a separate bike lane between street and sidewalk—a sensible solution embraced by the rest of the world.  Instead, recently a fresh splash of red other than the blood of some of the slower pedestrians hit the bike lanes:  Corner-to-corner painted lanes all along Schoenhauser Allee.  This only encourages the bastards and gives them more balls than their carefully-selected cycling shorts.  Today I witnessed a proud, arrogant, sweaty pair of these neue ballchen in action.  An installer’s work van had to stop suddenly while turning right on a side street.  Another motorist was pulling out of a parking space and the van had no choice but to use the brakes (unlike Berliner cyclists, who pay up to 2000 EUR for bikes with faggy little child’s bike bells and no brakes whatsoever).  This unfortunate motorist did not get out and paint a caricature of The Prophet on the side of his van, but his sacrilege was the same: his van sat motionless smack dab in the middle of the newly-painted bicycle crosswalk (fuck, I wish pedestrians had those). A Berliner cyclist blowing along the sidewalk like greased lightning hit that corner at 50 km/h, expecting to see pedestrian and motor vehicle part like the Red Sea before his Mosesian ass.  When this didn’t happen, His Royal Mounted Deutschbagishness slammed on his bike brakes (apparently for the first time) and spewed forth the kind of Deutsch screeching that made Hitler famous. The profanity began to fly.  The cyclist, who resembled one of those scrawny, nerdly Moby males you see all over Berlin, proceeded to bang on the side of the van with his open hand.  In an alternate universe (maybe NYC), the van doors slid open, the workers selected their lead pipes and beat seven shades of sheisse out of the cyclist.  Here on Planet Berlin, however, the van simply burned rubber getting out of the way of the nerd on his scrawny metal steed.

I live in the breeder capital of Europe:  Prenzlauer Berg.  I read that there are nearly 400,000 bicycles on the streets of Berlin.  At the same time.  And given that P’berg wombs push more screaming little payloads into prams and into streets than half of the Third World combined, you can imagine the inevitable daytime soap opera just waiting to pop:  The screaming cyclist meets the waddling mother-and-pram.  This is what scientists refer to as “Unstoppable force meets immovable object.”  I bear witness to this law of nature. Once I saw a Cyclist vs. Breeder smackdown on the same corner mentioned above. The screams flew from breeder and cyclist alike.  Nobody moved.  I had time to go up to my flat, pop some corn, butter and salt it, and return to the scene of the drama, which was still in progress. 

A 911 Day Spent With Beer Guzzling Czechs in Berlin

Editor's note: db has decided that some readers may be confused as to which part of a particular Dunkin' Berliner blog is 25% satire, which is 25% comedic rant and which is the 50% bullshit.  In order to make it easier, db has decided to italicize and colorize anything slightly bullshitty.  The rest you have to figure out yer damn self.  Oh, as per usual, 0% faggy poetry.

I packed up the girl and the dog and headed into Neukoelln for a Czech street festival at Richardplatz.

I know what you're thinking: 'yer an American.  It's September 11.  You're thinking of all the pain, death and mayhem when the towlies took down the Twin Towers.  Yer goin' to the kebab 'hood to kick some camel jockey ass, AINTCHA?'

No, dear reader, that would be politically incorrect, vile, violent and offensive.  Not to mention I would need a MUCH BIGGER POSSE in that area of town.  The real reason I went was because my girl is Czech and she dragged me there to meet her Czech friends.  And there was Czech beer on tap.  Reasons enough.

I remember thinking I should bring my camera, but this insane little buzzer goes off in my head whenever I am about to go to any event which will consist largely of heinous bier abuse.  I don't want to have anything happen to my fancy-shmancy camera, the least of which could include:  damage due to droppage, damage due to beer droolage, damage due to pukage, loss due to theft, loss due to drunkenness or loss due to me suddenly at the last minute snapping into post-traumatic-9/11 redneck mode and swinging the camera wildly into Turbanated heads.

So I left the camera at home.  Which turned out to be a pity, since this wasn't just a collection of heinous bier abusers standing around and/or staggering into trees.  There was actual hootenanny style action with groups of people rolling giant bales of hay around the square for prizes and bier.  It was a very photogenic moment sadly missed due to reasons listed above.  Now I'll have to try the thousand words method.  Fuck.

My girlfriend mentioned before we got there that people would be 'rolling in the dry grass,' which I thought was just Czech code for 'drunken, boorish behavior #243.'  No, what she meant to say was 'rolling large bales of hay willy nilly around the square.'  I was immediately tempted to teach her one of my redneck English lessons ala 'y'know what a Roll in The Hay means in English, dontcha?' but I opted only for a slightly confusing reference which would leave her slightly confused.  Damn, I could've parlayed that cowboy cliche into some actual action later on in the evening.  Damn you bier, damn you to hell.  Then again, maybe not.

I did note with some degree of smirky-educated-white-trashian satisfaction the sheer insanity of these folksy, redneck style games.  I mean, to whit: 1) There's not one stick of hay occurring naturally ANYWHERE in the city limits of Berlin, 2) Neukoellners are NOT farmers, nor have they EVER been farmers, rolled in the hay or rolled hay down squares historically, and 3) one of the bales of hay nearly ran over a breeder and her progeny which were standing oblivious in the middle of the road in a manner typical of Berliner breeder menschen, like 'oh, I've managed to shit out another kid on welfare look at the little blond bastard ain't 'e cute? looks just like his unemployed, drunken welfare-suckin' daddy and don't you dare bump into me with bike, foot, or Gott Verbot a giant rolling bale of hay.' She had to run for cover with baby in tow. No bullshit. I smiled smugly. Fucken breeders. Heh.

So there I was, mid baby hate, mid buzz and mid redneck English lesson, when it occurred to me that these type of games were probably being performed this very 9/11 day in some backwoods, dried-up farmville in the YEW ESS of FUCKIN' AY with actual rednecks, pissy beer and thoughts of 'God damn YEW, towel jockey, yew fucked us REEEEEL gooooood, but today we YEWnite as WON and YEEEEE-HAWWW drink us some pissy swill, bitch about the towlies and roll us some hay bales n try to roll us a cowgirl in actual hay, and HEY! if that don't work, we'll form a posse and look for camel jocks and if that don't work, well God Dammit we'll just hafta cornhole us a drunk.'

The Czech Svijany beer on tap was tasty and came in two varieties: pilsner and unfiltered pilsner.  We tried both in slightly-less-than-heinous quantities and were satisfied.  I like the fact that the small town of Svijany can peddle its liquid luxury in Big Ole Berlin.  It makes me happy that the little brewer can still compete with the Big Corporate Beer.  But I suppose that's fairly easy as Berliner bier is sheise.  I prefer Bavarian bier, anything with a monk on the label.  Or Leipzig bier, anything with a punk on the label. Sternburg aus Leipzig.  Mmmmm.  Sternburg.  Not just for drunken punx! (tm)

In conclusion I just have to say this:  Nine years after some fools crashed into some big buildings and plunged us into another godawful long-ass war for all the wrong reasons, it's good to know that we could all just meet in Berlin and hold hands, Czech, American, Berliner and Neukoellner alike, and get our collective buzz on.  No bullshit.  Except the hand holding.  That was figurative.  Do you think an American would actually hold hands with a....

Photo by re-ality, taken from Flickr after I read that it was ok to do so.

Prenzlauer Berg: Don’t Drink the Water

They said Prenzlauer Berg was a yuppie hellhole. They said it was gone, lost to gentrification and exorbitant rents. They said only “certain types” of people lived there. For the record, all of it is lies. I was afraid of The Prenzl, mainly because of what ‘they’ said. I fear gentrification and its effects on average people. So I swallowed the lies and lived in Friedrichshain for the bulk of this year. That neighborhood, my friends, has been sold to The Devil: Yuppie be thy name. F’hain is the doomed ‘hood, the one which is being sucked down the pipe by the real estate demons who lurk beneath the slimy surface of all that purports to be, ahem, ‘hip.’ But what I found when I left The Hain to move into my new P’berg flat was that the people in Prenzlauer Berg were not yuppies and not average, they were worse: they are all a bunch of God damned BREEDERS.

I don’t know why every other person in P’berg is a mother pushing a stroller. I can’t figure out why the only entry for Prenzlauer Berg in the TTG wiki has no actual information about the neighborhood except that it is “fertile.”

http://www.toytowngermany.com/wiki/Prenzlauer_Berg

Perhaps it is in the water. P’berg water is lukewarm from the tap even after being run for several minutes. If city water isn’t icy cold from the tap in October I just don’t trust it. If it doesn’t come from deep enough in the earth, it’s as if it’s been circumvented, redirected, adulterated and redelivered. Or maybe it isn’t a PROconceptive agent released into the water, but more of a psychotropic substance which, when applied to the water supply and the bloodstream of a healthy female P’berg resident, causes sporadic and unnatural advancement of the biological clock. Skip the prom, the drugs, the fun; go directly to motherhood. Fuck. In. Ell. I hope my girlfriend’s birth control can hold out against the chemical onslaught.

Or maybe it is in the System itself. I can’t verify the figures, but I get the distinct impression that the German government pays people to breed. Yes, there is this thing called social welfare, or Hartz IV, and some people say it pays punk rockers to party, while others say it is a much needed antidote to the Berlin economic sickness. In layman’s terms: no work, no worries, the rest of Germany pays.

It doesn’t matter to me personally what the wymyns choose to do with their uteri, or what the German Government does with its peoples’ tax money. But I will go on record: the next white trash bitch who slams her stroller into me and shouts at me to move will have her progeny ripped from the pram, weighed, measured, processed and barbequed right there on the sidewalk. Turkish kebabs ain’t got NOTHIN’ on my baby back ribs…