A Rolling Donut Gathers No Moss

Dunkin' Berliner's Last Few Weeks In Berlin

The time has come. This is The End, my friend. Leaving Berlin. There, I've said it. I'm not the first and I'm not the last. Every year I proclaim This Is My Last Year and then I stay. Six and one half of them have come and gone. 1492 donuts have gone down my tubes (probably more, I don't really count) and I am none the wiser. Perhaps donuts aren't brain food after all. I'm waiting for the pendulums of science and medicine to swing in my favor, much in the way that in one decade they declared that chocolate and wine will kill you, then turn right on around and say the same killers will now feed your brain and libido and you will live and love long time. Science is a fickle bitch, so I wait for her to tell me to eat three donuts per day.

I haven't posted much recently because I saw The End coming and I was numb. Mostly from drinking wine and waiting for the veritas. Haven't found much. Gentrification sucks, as always, mainly because the rents go up and the wages do not. What was once a cheap, barren, sandy beach for feckless, creative nomads (like me) is now fertile soil for money trees. Trustafarians and hipsters take the places of the old guard. They are multiplying and growing to fuse into one large beardbeast. There are now even subgroups within the hipster underworld, the most hilarious of the bunch being dubbed Lumbersexuals. Those are the ones, usually German, who wear blue jeans, hiking boots and red plaid shirts in addition to the ubiquitous big black glasses and beards. I'm guessing that Lumbersexual is a mashup of lumberjack and metrosexual. Perhaps they were cut out of the Woody Allen Sexcapade film featuring the room with the man getting it on with a large rye bread. Perhaps the Lumbersexual was next door having rough sex with rough wood. Splinters are not for everyone (ouch). Bollox. I call them Lumberjackoffs.

The Bellevue Saints

Today I was riding through Berlin for several hours on S and U bahns doing my weekly photo job for a tour company. Every Friday morning between the hours of 10 and 11 in the Ay Em, The Saints get on the S7 at the Bellevue Station stop. You will know them by the trail of dead lyrics. A band of gypsies with a beatbox on a hand cart and 3 guys playing trumpet, saxophone and accordion launch into the worst version of When The Saints Go Marching In you will ever hear.

"AAAAAAAhhhh Win da sints

Gah Martian inn,

Aaaaaaaah win da sints

gaa Martian inn,

Uuhhhh wah wan

Beeeee end dat numm-zah

Win da sints gaaaaah Martian inn!

Evvy botty nah!"

Then they clap and dance and shake their fucking cups in your fucking face. JAY zus. In over one year of seeing the same fuckers doing the same fucking song on the same fucking S7, not one coin goes into the cup (nor do they learn the lyrics). People stare forward in apathy, even when the gnarly McD's soda cup is shaken so vigorously under numb chins that soda crust and tobacco lint fly with the coins. And they do not. Change. The tune. They play exactly one verse, badly, then get off at Tiergarten Station. When they venture too far from Bellevue, their halos begin to tarnish. The trains run back and forth. The broken record spins, hiccups, repeats, repeats, repeats...

If that ain't dedication I don't know what is.

Dueling Douchebags

In the crux of the tunnels under the Berlin streets the accordions squeeze filth through their flapholes. With the unholy mantra of the Bellevue Saints still echoing through my early morning brainfog, a new earworm wiggles through my auditory canals. Yes, you guessed it: Dunkin' Berliner hates accordions. Not because the accordion isn't a real instrument, not because they are only played by drunken gypsy polka rejects in the dark tunnels of Europe—but because they are simply the most cheesy instrument on the planet. Even the shitty plastic recorders played by first graders high on Cap'n Crunch don't hold a candle to this shit. In the dark annals of history, someone glued a tiny piano keyboard to a fucking bellows, handed it to a gypsy and said 'Go forth!' (read: get the fuck out of town!).

Two accordion players plied their sleazy/cheesy trade. What is worse than an accordion? Two. One played 'rhythm' MEHHH...muh....MEHHHH...muh while the other lounge lizard's greasy fingers were slip-sliding away over yellow plastic keys. Sweaty armpits pumped away. I wanted them to stop, face each other, and give challenge. Yes, I wanted them to stop torturing commuters with dungeon dreck and start the duel. Like the scene in Deliverance with the guitar, the banjo and the Tard. I believe that when two hideous, backwoods instruments come together, they must duel. Dueling douchebags on accordions. Now THAT's entertainment. Maybe next year they'll even rise from the bowels of the U bahn, ride high over the city on S rails and topple The Bellevue Saints.

Building A Shorter America

Dunkin' Berliner Observation: Amis are getting shorter by the year. Each season when a new gaggle of Ami chicks pours out of the planes, trains and automobiles, I notice the shortness. The voices are still loud, and the ubiquitous LIKE has been newly adorned with UM and RIGHT? But they are losing an inch every year; the batch I saw today must have been around 5 feet 4. Last year they were 5 feet 5, the previous years 5 feet 7—you get the idea. So how is America breeding smaller people? Science (that fickle shit) tells us that tallness is a sign of a country with a high standard of living, and that the Nordic types are the tallest. So what happened to the standard of living in the U.S.A? Where are the Amazons? Sure, a lot of short-assed Mediterranean types dumped their genetic ooze into the American genepool, but there just aren't enough of them to shorten the entire population. Maybe it's the diet. I blame the kale.

Wild, Drunken German Yoots

One thing hasn't changed in all the time I've lived in Berlin: drunken teens on public transport. Passing through Hauptbahnhof today, a group of them were so loud in their drunken shouts, hoots and sieg heil—uh... hoorahs, that the entire train could hear them through closed windows. I'm guessing that they had just graduated high school and were letting off a bit of steam. There's where I envy the Europeans: a dozen boys barely old enough to shave board the S-bahn, drop a case of beer on the ground and begin the festivities. In the States the cops would be legally authorized to call in SWAT and hose 'em all down. One of the yoots is a boy of about 5 feet tall, whith a curly green mop on his head (maybe he's just finished a breeding tour in the U.S.). He hooks up a little amplifier to his phone, the beat rages, and the whole group joins in drunken falsetto: EVERYBODY DANCE NOW! And they do, as jiggy as their wobbly legs will allow. Green moptop looks a bit green in the face as well, and slumps back into his seat until the next chorus of EVERYBODY DANCE NOW strikes up.

How will I find such entertainment in one day anywhere else? Where will I go next? Stay tuned.

Happy Happy. Joy Joy.

 

I’m happy to live in Berlin.  Sure, I rant and rave about gentrification and rising rents on my various Blogs, but I am still proud to be living in a city in the midst of change. Yeah, the old hole-in-the-wall joint I used to eat/drink in has become a yuppie hellhole of yoga and whatnot.  But there are other holes in other walls.  Later they will become assimilated by the Yogaborg, but at least I WAS THERE. BEFORE.

Sadly, this is also the hipster mantra: ‘Um, like, I did this stupid ironic thing that I’m doing, like, WAY before it was, like, cool.’

As much as I hate hipsters and yuppies, I do realize that whenever an area in any given city is cheap enough, cool enough, and available enough—it is doomed.  So I might as well enjoy it while it lasts.  I am REALLY surprised that I have lived here this long.  Every year I take inventory of my meager accomplishments. Every year I get drunk and proclaim to all my (few) friends that This is the Last Year I Will Live in This Yuppie Shithole.  Then we all have a laugh and we all have a drink.  I am STILL amazed and the breadth and depth of my hypocrisy.

Still I am here.  Still, like a beat-down, son-of-a-middle-class-bitch, I rise.

Orifices

Two Little Assholes and One Big Mouth

Berliners will crash into you on crowded public transport without a single fucking ‘entschuldigung.’  Get used to it.  Fuck knows I’m trying.  You can blame the big city and you can blame the stars and Mars and whatever.  Dump a heat wave on a slow moving tram, jam it full of people and shake it.

I’m not the asshole who stands in the doorway of the tram with a large suitcase blocking people trying to get in.  That would be the Deutschbag.  Me, I try to move further into the tram with my big suitcase in tow.  I am not always traveling with a big suitcase, but if I am it is most certainly full of Berliner jelly donuts--or camera gear going to/from an out-of-town photo shoot.

I had just spent the last 6 hours on a sweltering hot train trip from Prague which should have taken 5 hours and most definitely should have been air conditioned.  All of the previous train trips were (air conditioned; most certainly not on time).  It was 11pm in the hottest and most humid night I can remember since 1966 when I was stuck in a Saigon hell hole and received a bamboo shank in the neck which facilitated my rebirth into yet another level of hell.

I digress.  Enter asshole number one:  German female pushing her way onto the tram (normally I wouldn’t refer to a female as an asshole, but what issued forth shortly after our chance encounter can only be described as a load of scheisse being forced out of a very spastic orifice), pushing ahead of the crowd.  Seeing her impatience, I tried to move my large self and my suitcase deeper into the sweltering tube of crowded hell in order to make room.  My efforts were repaid in kind by two hands beating my sides like Rocky training on a side of beef.  I turned to survey the impatient Deutschbagette.  “Where are you going?  There’s no space!” It was true.  If I moved one centimeter forward I would be tip deep in someone’s ass.  And a dude’s no less.  She kept pushing on my back.  I told her to chill out.  She wouldn’t.

“I don’t want to chill out! Fuck you and your fucking koffer!”  She then jumped up on my suitcase, walked over the top of it and dropped down on my feet in front of me.  Clearly this woman was mentally ill.  I was exhausted and about as close to a heat stroke as a 286 lb dude can be without a rebirth or a reboot.  I tried on my best Berliner Schnauze in the face of obvious insanity:  “Are you ok?  Alles gut now?”

“YES!!!” the crazy bitch screamed.  “I doubt it,” I replied.

Enter Asshole number two:  “THAT’S MY GIRLFRIEND!” in an American accent.

Me: “OK.”

Asshole number two:  “SHUT THE FUCK UP!!!!  SHUT THE FUCK UP!!!”

(German tram youth echoing):  “Shut da fuck up, shut da fuck up.  Hee hee.”

Me (to self): very funny, German yoots, but you are not helping.

Asshole number two:  “SHUT THE FUCK UP OR I WILL FUCK YOU UP!!!!!”

I gave him the smirk I give to every Chihuahua who barks at the Big Dog.  It was kind of sad.  Asshole number two was about 5 foot 9, 50 years old, scrawny with long, grayish hippy hair.  The only thing this pussy could fuck up was his morning joint roll.  I was exhausted and in shock.  His retarded girlfriend had just beat my sides and jumped over me to be close to her asshole.  I am not one to interfere with assholes in love, so I let it slide.

I stood there on the 100 degree tram stewing in my own juices (literally) and thinking about what needed to be said:

Dude, clearly I understand the situation.  This here ugly, mentally retarded bitch of yours is all you can get and you are lucky to have her.  I got between you and your stupid bitch and you needed to monkey up and howl at me.  I admire the fact that you spun around and never stopped screaming at me even though you MUST have seen that I am double your size and could crush you without even half trying.  You are only following your simian psyche and I suppose I can respect that. But what you don’t know is that I’ve been taking shit from bigger assholes than you my entire life.  As I got older, the assholes got bigger.  Some of them gathered in threes in London alleys and jumped me.  Some of them jumped me from behind and kicked my legs out from under me in the Prague snow and kicked my ribs in while I was down.  Others, a select few who were brave enough to look me in the face, got my full wrath.  One of them got a broken nose with a geyser of blood.  Another (your exact size and weight) was lifted off his feet and bounced so hard off the ground that he slid-slammed into a door--I thought I was in a cartoon.  Bitches didn’t get up.  Word.

I resisted the urge to bounce-flip your dumb ass because I understand. I got between your monkey ass and your spastic girlfriend.  You have to protect her; this is hardwired in the male DNA.  I even stuffed down my shock and rage and apologized for getting in between such simian love.  It was all I could do to apologize.  For three stops I fought the urge to say ‘Exit next stop, fucktard.’ To this day I think of picking your scrawny ass up and slamming you into your ugly, retarded bitch.  If only to make me feel like I didn’t suck up all the shit in the world for nothing.

And if only to keep another pair of stupid Berlin monkeys from breeding.  But I suppose you already have.  Enjoy your Hartz IV careers, assholes.

American Refugees

‘I have an idea that some men are born out of their due place. Accident has cast them amid certain surroundings, but they have always a nostalgia for a home they know not. They are strangers in their birthplace, and the leafy lanes they have known from childhood or the populous streets in which they have played, remain but a place of passage. They may spend their whole lives aliens among their kindred and remain aloof among the only scenes they have ever known. Perhaps it is this sense of strangeness that sends men far and wide in the search for something permanent, to which they may attach themselves. Perhaps some deep-rooted atavism urges the wanderer back to lands which his ancestors left in the dim beginnings of history. Sometimes a man hits upon a place to which he mysteriously feels that he belongs. Here is the home he sought, and he will settle amid scenes that he has never seen before, among men he has never known, as though they were familiar to him from his birth. Here at last he finds rest.’

 -W. Somerset Maugham, "The Moon and Sixpence," Ch. L

I posted this quote in the beginning of the rollicking tour de force that is the Dunkin' Berliner Blog.  The only thing I have to add is this: you can also remain an alien in whatever land(s) you settle in..  All you have to do is shut the fuck up and not talk to anybody.

Yes, I'm an anti-social fucker.  I prefer the companionship of jelly donuts to most of the people I meet. Misanthrope?  Maybe.  I think 'we who have lived outside our native countries for many years' (expat, shmexpat--I'm a refugee, mutha fucka) are tired of other expats most of all.  At least I am.  I stumbled into the Prater biergarten last night around 10pm and the joint was hopping.  Every table was occupied and you could barely hear a German word spoken.  If Al Qaeda wanted to rain down any of their monkey religion savagery on "Western Infidels", this would be one of the places (only not when I'm there.  If you read this and do that shitty thing you do in the name of your stupid fucking made up 'god' I will personally arrive in your afterlife and sew up all 72 virgins so you will have to remain a total jerk off for all of eternity.  No Sand Monkeys in MY fucking biergarten.  You've been warned.)

I digress.  I joined a table with an expat friend.  The Questions immediately ensued.  Which brings me to the point of this blog post:  What is the expat question you hate the most?

A)  Where are you from?
B)  How long have you been here?
C)  What do you do?
D)  And do you actually make money with that?
E)  All of the above.

The winner of today's poll will receive my personal accolades, personal mention and I'll hit the like button on yer fb page, even if it is some hokey New Age Bollox like yoga n shit.

Word.


This blog was brought to you by the Fund For Angry White Guys Abroad and the Navy Seals.  "Navy Seals:  Opening Up Economy Sized Cans of Whoop Ass since 1961!(tm)"

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.

Ich Bin Ein Berliner

Some friends made it clear that they'd never heard of Dunkin' Donuts or possibly even JFK. Poor, wretched, huddled masses. Never had a Jelly Donut or a President who was shot. For my homies: