Saturday, June 16, 2012

Punk Dream: Total Anarchy in a Berlin Market



I left our local pub after 10pm on a Saturday night in order to get some supplies to get us through the weekend.  You see, in Germany, some dumb fucks decided that we can’t buy things on Sundays.  I didn’t have my usual grocery backpack with me when we went to the pub, so I was ill equipped to deal with shopping.  ‘I’ll have to buy one of those plastic bags to carry the shit home,’ I said.  ‘Why?’ she said.  I explained: ‘I can’t be carrying beer, wine, booze and breakfast in my arms through the throngs of punks parked outside of Rewe on a Saturday night.  It’s a gauntlet I’m getting too old to run.’

There were no punks outside the Rewe on Schivelbeiner.  Weird.  Normally they form groups of Mohawks and dogs and beer bottles at each entrance and beat their beggar drums loudly.  They Fuck The System yet take handouts from those that don’t.  Convenient.  Play a fucking instrument and I’ll give you a quarter, you fake-ass white spoiled sons of bitches from upper middle class families.  Rebellion my ass.

I grabbed my basket and proceeded to shop for the German Sunday tornado shelter situation.  Right away I noticed a small flood of water pooling from one of the frozen food containers.  A punk and his punk princess trudged Docs through water, splashing.  Shouts and laughs.  I continued and saw broken six packs of beer bottles lying in the aisles, various smashed soft drink bottles, a pink pool of yogurt oozing from a dropped package and generally no staff members whatsoever interested in the idea of cleanup.  I passed staff members stocking shelves, counting inventory, generally looking bored and underpaid as is custom for unskilled labor in a post-communist, pre-divided city like Berlin.  ‘CLEAN UP! AISLES 4, 5 AND 7!!!’ screamed through the imaginary store speaker in my ex-American mind.  Instead, store jazz/elevator music gave us the grand soundtrack for the Evening of Anarchy.  I made several passes through the aisles of dropped food and drink to be sure.  Nope, nobody gave a flying fuck.

I felt at home, strangely.  I could take my time, walking around and over and through the Deutsch detritus without feeling the usual stress I feel whenever I’m in a crowded, prime time supermarket of any kind, anywhere in the world.  This was a world without care.  Me and my punks and freaks waltzed through the anarchy.  I guess they didn’t hear the elevator music.

We all met at the front in a desperate mass.  There were only two cashiers ready to handle the chaos.  One of them closed his register and skulked away.  Pussy.  There are only 20 or 30 of us freaks here.  We only want our beer/wine/booze/sugar/caffeine/nicotine.  That’s what you do when you have a store full of freaks after 10pm on a Saturday night in Berlin.  You close the fucking register.  I won’t quote everyone in the massive line at the suddenly single register, but the word ‘scheisse’ figured prominently.  That and one dude who kept making horse sounds with his lips.  And muttering ‘Deutschland’ in exasperated tones.  But that could be from the football month going on.

I got to the front of the line.  The single remaining cashier called for help on the store mic twice to no avail.  It was Him vs. The Freaks.  He said something to the aging freak in front of me.  The guy slammed his back pack on the checker’s table and pounded it with his hands.  Then he lifted his arms and slowly spun around in a mock frisk ritual he must have been overly familiar with his whole life.  Beep, beep, pause, beep and the groceries slipped and slid away.

12 comments:

  1. Nice slice-of-life piece. I have two questions regarding the editorial asides, though:

    1. It's great to be able to buy things on Sundays? You don't think the crap, consumerist culture should take a day off?
    2. So all "real" punks die after a few weeks because they starve to death?

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  2. i don't know how i would live if stores in America were closed on Sundays. I love your blog sooooo much :) it is so hilarious and i always look forward to your new posts. i have never been to Berlin but your stories make me want to see it even more than i already do :D keep it up, i am a huge fan

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  3. DHX: Tx 4 the comments. To answer you Qs:

    1) It's great to buy things on Sunday. Every crap, consumerist culture other than Germany does this. This 'no work on Sundays' bollox is more like a fake-ass "Christian work ethic" from the Christian Socialist Party who runs things here. Sunday is just another day of the week for a lot of us, and I work just as much on Sundays as most fools work on Mondays. Germany needs to start working on Sundays for the tax revenue to feed Greece, Spain, etc.

    2) No, all "real" punks died in the 80s of heroin overdoses. These neo punx are just whiners who can easily choose to suck the government tit (if they're not attached at the nipple already) or go back to their middle class parents for a handout. The street thing they do is just fashion.

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  4. Hi Vanessa, glad you like my posts. To demonstrate your fandom, please click the 'buy me a donut link' on the top right. :D I promise not to give even one drop of jelly from the donuts purchased to any punks I see.

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  5. I wish we had punks in Munich. No, seriously.

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  6. I do too, HH. No, seriously. But hey! Muenchen has its fair share of drunken roosters in brightly feathered regalia: Bavarians in lederhosen. Yeah, I know, most of those are probably tourists...

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  7. I remember back in the old days when lots of stores here were closed on Sundays...I'm so glad that's not the case now!

    BTW...really hate the new Blogger word verification...I'm slowly going blind!

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  8. Yes, apparently one function of a decent Capitalist economy is that it doesn't stop 52 days per year on Sundays. But 'some people' prefer the Old Ways, where they stood in commie lines for hours and bought everything from one shop which was open 4.5 days per week. Chumps. Anywho, I turned off the word verification to save the gentle eyes of my senior readers. :D If I start getting all those damn viagra spams again I'll have to turn it back on, though.

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  9. My senior eyes thank you! But I know what you mean about the spam....

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  10. Yes, indeedy. One day without the captcha and already I've got spam from the Dominican Republic. They want me to retire there. They are friendly and helpful, have beaches, all dat and a bag o' chips. Hmmm... do they also supply the viagra to the retired expats?

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  11. "That and one dude who kept making horse sounds with his lips."

    You meet the strangest people in Berlin, eh?

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  12. When you say 'you,' I hope you are referring to 'you' in the third person. I would hate to think that you yourself are missing out on all these strange people and that I am the sole beacon in the jungle.

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