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.

Sucking the Jelly Out of the Berliner

A provocative title indeed, one which suggests either:

A)  I've been too busy to post because I have embarked on a lucrative career in the Poor But Sexy city of Berlin, one which precludes any rants on counter culture and/or general annoyances on the lack of proper salsa for my boo ree toes.

B)  I've finally given up my creative dream and have begun a career of sucking.  Something or someone.

To answer those 23 of you who have followed my scratchings thusfar:

NONE OF THE ABOVE.

Still here, still doing The Thang, but less of it.  I did in fact suck down drei pfannkuchen mit kirsch last week; it was the first time in months.  Apparently I'm too fat.  My wife keeps telling me that.

Oh yeah!  I also got married on Thanksgiving Thursday, November 28, 2013 in Gibraltar.  I didn't pick that date.  They did.  We took it.  We're thankful.

Coming to the end of another apartment lease, I have to wonder:

A)  Has our time come?  Have the hipsters and yuppies/yummies finally got a stranglehold on all the available rentals left in Berlin?

B)  When you ask for a reason why you can't renew your lease, your landlord replies "It is a free market.  We can rent to whoever we choose," do you think there's some sort of underground conspiracy going on?

C)  Should I get medieval on some asses?

D)  Where's the next city/country/haven?

I don't care that they blame the hipsters and creatives for ruining Berlin.  Hell, I do the same damn thing on every other blog post.  I do a sticky-sweet donut post, then I do a sour, bitter rant to balance it out.  Maybe that too is a conspiracy; one which plans to lead my very few readers on a bittersweet up and down rollercoaster ride which ends in them clicking on the bipolar pill advert on the right.

Oh yeah, they kicked me off the ad program for foul language.  Well, at least I kept my fucking dignity.

I can't say much more except to say that someone has said it all before--and better--than my humble self.

One such example of How Things Got Fucked in Berlin:

http://thebaffler.com/past/sacking_berlin

Read it and weep.  Or come here and buy a fucking condo.  Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn.

db

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!

Scheissedorf

Or the Beginning of the End?

Gentrification wins.  I give up.  After 1 year in Friedrichshain and 3 years in Prenzlauer Berg, the fuckers doubled the rents and drop kicked my donut ass out into the Niederschönhausen hinterlands where, literally, the streets have no name.  A few blocks down from my row in the cemetery of dead suburbanites are streets number 97 and 101.  I haven’t ventured to find the ones in between because it would remind me that I too have become a number.

I always knew my time here was limited.  More than a year, less than five, I figured. A million ‘creatives’ (mostly bullshit hipsters and trust fund babies) fucked up Berlin; they came, they saw, they drove up rents, they left.  I bought some of their furniture on their way out.  I suppose it was folly to move to a place where all of my education and years of professional experience add up to a medium pot of piss in a sea of wannabes willing to do what I do for beer money.  I still did it, hell yes, and I did it My Way, mutha fucka.

I’m not gone yet, but it feels like it out here in Schiessedorf, the name I coined for the Shit Village in which I now reside after the fallout from leaving the overpriced barn I rented from the Polish farm animals in P’berg.  I ALMOST got a flat right down the street from where I was.  I had all of Zee Papers and shit, and then it all fell apart.  The fucker didn’t meet me at the bank for the deposit transfer (he didn't want my 1500 EUR I guess) nor did he answer phone calls or emails.  Let’s just call him König Deutschbag. Plan B: Scheissedorf. It fell in our laps like a cold beer.  After one month of daily searching, we got Scheissedorf.  I’m only here for three months.  Then…?

It’s peaceful out here in Scheissedorf if you are a corpse type looking for that sort of thing.  There are about 5 restaurants and bars within 10 square kilometers of here and two of them have boards in the windows and for sale signs outside.  I could be already dead.  People cross the street when I shamble down the broken sidewalks.  I look and feel ghastly and ghoulish most of the time.  I saw a couple of androgynous Goth individuals in long black coats gliding down the street.

BUT HEY!!! I’m a digital nomad.  I’ve just decided.  I don’t have to stay in Berlin, learn German, compete with all the low waged locals AND get rampant discrimination from Zee Paper Nazis.  Nosirree, Bob! I can do what I do from anywhere in the world with an internet connection.  I write. I do websites. I take purty pitchers n stuff.  So if I can’t find a flat in a decent area of Berlin during my Scheissedorf limbo, I’ll just take my camera, laptop, my trusty donkey and lance, and take a flying fuck at the next windmill.

Because that’s what you do.

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

Ouzo Uber Alles! Greek Food with a Kick

Asteria Greek Restaurant (Schönhauser Allee 143, U2 Eberswalderstr.) is my one of my favorite restaurants in P’berg.  Not because they serve grilled meat dishes smothered in sauce and cheese, not because the happy waiters defy all bad Berliner service stereotypes—but because they keep bringing you free Ouzo shots from the time you walk in to the time you stagger out the door with a bloated belly.

Portions: massive and heavy.  Prices:  reasonable considering all the free shots.  Location: just far enough walking distance to stretch the legs before dinner and walk off all the meat, cheese, sauce, wine and Ouzo streams on the way home.

Did I mention they like to pour you free Ouzo shots all night?  Achtung!  Broke artist wannabe types and hipsters not welcome.  If people like them start showing up for the free shots, it will ruin it for the rest of us.  Hint:  don’t order raisin salad starters and glare at the waiter with beggar’s eyes.  Your Ouzo will flow in accordance with the tides of the liquor universe.  Order food and the shots will come. I don’t know what that means my damn self.  You just have to drink it to believe it.

I don’t like Ouzo (last time I mention Ouzo...maybe) normally, but hey, it’s free, frosty and served by a jovial Mediterranean man who shouts ‘yia mas! (Greek for Prost!)' after each pouring.   I quickly learned this phrase (it was written on the napkins) and proudly proclaimed it after each shot.  I was either trying to be more multikulti or priming the pump for more shots.  One of those.

I like Asteria because the food is rich, delicious and flavorful (not the usual German bland, salty, greasy/sloppy/ketchup/curry bollox), served in portions large enough to choke a bull moose (and God, I know, I am one).  Dunkin’ Berliner recommends ™:  Number 83.  I don’t know what it is called because I am STILL full of Ouzo as I write this.  Also, their website is down.  And my semi-furious Googling of words like ‘souklaki,’ ‘souflakis’ and poopacrapaplopolis’ yielded nothing.  Just order number 83, trust me. They bring you a hot iron skillet with 3 massive grilled, ground pork patties smothered in smoky, creamy orange (Metaxa?) sauce with melted cheese on top.  Side of rice and salad included for around 12 E’s. This is my favorite type of food on general principle:  smoky, grilled, saucy and cheesy.  I hate dry food and this dish is the polar opposite of my hate (That would be LOVE for you hippie-dippy types).

You just won’t find food this good and service this friendly anywhere in Berlin.  The donut gods know I’ve tried.  When you finally ask for the bill it comes with (wait for it) more Ouzo shots.  And espresso.  Gratis.  I love you, Asteria, and I’m still trying to find one of the many Greek words for love to describe my overall feelings for you.  I’m thinking a bit of philia, a bit of eros and a whole lot of agape.

photo by Gabriela Sarževska

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.

The Last Bukowski Book

 I finally found the last Bukowski book I haven’t read yet:  ‘Hollywood’.  There it stood high atop a hill of books, a shining beacon into the dull, smoggy haze of my valley.  It was right up there on the top shelf and a ladder climb was necessary to reach the damn thing.  I asked the clerk at St.George’s Bookstore in P’berg if customers were allowed to climb the ladders and rummage through the top shelf books.  ‘Break a leg’ he said.  ‘Great,’ I thought, ‘at 260 lbs. I bloody well might.’

I climbed down the rickety ladder clutching ‘Hollywood’ in my cold, clammy palm (it was minus 5 outside and I sweat anyway.  That’s how one gets cold and clammy palms.)  I couldn’t believe it, so I had to say it out loud.  “Wow!  I finally found the last Bukowski book I haven’t read!  I’ve been looking for years in every English language bookstore in Europe!’  The clerk flashed me an unimpressed smirk.  Perhaps he was waiting for me to fall off the ladder to add some Vaudevillian amusement to his quiet bookstore wasted English degree life.

‘Hollywood’ was written by Monsignor Bukowski, the High Priest of the Low Life (I just made that up and I expect it to soon be added to his long list of titles, right under ‘The Drunk Poet Laureate’) while he was writing the screenplay for the biopic film ‘Barfly’ about his drunken life as a writer or his life as a drunken writer, not sure which.  It’s a bit hazy (heh).  I have always idolized Bukowski and the film ‘Barfly’ is considered by me and several of my closest friends to be the All Time Best Movie to Pass Out Watching After Drinking.

The book was also in the used section, which is unheard of for Bukowski books in the English language bookstores of Europe.  Usually you can find a Bukowski book or two (usually ‘Ham on Rye’ or ‘Women’) for the nicely marked-up premium import price of 20 or 30 EUR per book.  So I was doubly pleased to find ‘Hollywood’ at the nicely marked up, premium USED import price of only 6.50 EUR.  Sure, that’s triple what you’d pay in any second hand bookstore in the States, but hey, we’re not.

Once I asked a Prague English bookstore clerk why I could never find any Bukowski, Kerouac or Hunter S. Thompson in the used section.  And why they had only new ones hidden behind the counter, requiring me to ask about them every time and thereby looking like some kind of drunken wannabe writer stereotype.  He flashed the international smirk of the wasted English degree clerk and said ‘Cuz lowlife mutha fuckas kept stealing them all.’

So now I have it in my grasp, the Holy Grail of Holy Shit, what promises to be a great mix of the bacchanalian excesses of one of the most famous modern writers and the cocaine-and-hooker-fueled corruption of the California Casting Couch.

I can’t wait.  I’m almost afraid to crack open the damn book.  Because the mother fucker just might be in Deutsch.

The Best Spaeti in Berlin

When you want to buy things at night in Berlin, you go to the spaetkauf (late shop), or spaeti for short.  In short order you get your fix:  caffeine, nicotine, alcohol.  The best spaeti are open 24 hours for your addiction pleasure.  Some spaeti are open round the clock, while others tow the line and close at a more respectable midnight.

In order to have a Best Spaeti you must necessarily have a Worst Spaeti.  The worst ones are on the main streets and have internet cafes and telephone booths inside.  This is great if you happen to be completely without internet connection in the 21^st century or like to make phone calls inside of sweaty wooden boxes.  That’s ok if you do.  I’m not your judge.  These bad spaeti charge double for the same beer you would buy at the good spaeti. And it's piss warm.  Even the ones in the back of the fridge.

The Best Spaeti in Berlin is on a side street off of the four streets junction in Northern Prenzlauer Berg.  The four streets meet and change all in one intersection:  to the North, Schoenhauser Allee becomes Berliner strasse; from the West, Bornholmer strasse hits the intersection and moseys on into Wisyber strasse proper.  This rare occurrence of major streets meeting and changing names is referred to as a Deutschenklusterfick.  Just as was depicted in Scorcese’s “Gangs of New York”, four gangs met at a crossroads to fight it out:  The Shoenhausers, the Bornholmers, the Real Berliners and the Wisbyers. The leaders of each gang all died in the muck and mud of the intersection and...

After the battle the men were mighty thirsty.  The survivors drank beer at a spaeti around the corner.  This historical spaeti had a cardboard cutout of a fine young damsel holding a beer and sign which read ‘160 brands of beer.’

To this day you can find it.  This is my favorite spaeti because you can get Bavarian monk beer in devilishly strong varieties.  If you’re feeling a bit peckish you can get warm German and Russian food made by a guy with a mullet and a greasy apron.  I won’t tell you the name of the Best Spaeti in Berlin because A) I may not remember the name; B) the responsible blogger doesn’t lead the tourists to The Good Shit.  But you’ve got the history, the intersection, and, hopefully by now, a powerful thirst.

Prost!

(hint: you walk down Schoenhauser Allee until it becomes Berliner strasse.  Then you take one of the side streets nearby.  Look for the cardboard chick with the beers.)

Get in Line

The only thing I will get in line for, EVER, is Siebert’s Berliner pfannkuchen mit kirsch. The line (‘queue’ for those who don’t speak Yank) outside of Siebert Bakery and Konditorei in P’berg is brutal.  They sell the best baked goods in the known universe out of a shop smaller than my bathroom.  Really, more people could fit inside my bathroom than inside the Siebert shop (not that I’ve tried it).  So don’t let the line of a dozen people or more standing outside fool you.  They simply cannot cram everyone inside all at once.  But if you would really like to experience a pre-1989 communist bread line, go to Siebert on Saturday morning.  They close at noon on Saturday and do not re-open until Tuesday.  And since they mix crack cocaine into their flour to ensure a growing throng of junkies outside the shop at all times—you’d better wake up early on Saturday if you want your donut fix before night time.

Today I woke up at 9am.  This is the earliest I will ever wake up unless somebody is paying me to take photos at this time.  It had been at least two weeks since my last donut fix and I was getting awfully twitchy.  I was getting the DTs (donut tremors) and it was high time I had my high. Really, they put crack cocaine in the flour.  I’ve seen ‘em do it.  A cold wind chill bit at my ears; the Berlin winter is coming fast.  Which most of us would agree is unfair as we had no fucking summer whatsoever in Berlin.  Mother Nature is robbing us blind.  Bitch.  I got in line after peering between the first two bodies near the door—I needed to check the window display for my drug.  Someone sneered at me.  No, dear Deutschbag, I’m not trying to cut in line.  I’m doing inventory.  Get over it.

Twenty or more people were in the line.  I stood there watching the back of the neck in front of me.  Dark gray jacket and light gray scarf.  The pale skin of One Who Resides under Gray Skies.  Once again Berlin reminded me of the foggy city of San Francisco., where two things are out of place:  Cowboy hats and sun tans.  They wore a lot of black and gray in that city as well when I was living there.  Except for the god damned hippies.  Tie-dyed and bushy tailed tofu eaters.  Rainbow people.

Someone once told me they didn’t have the same kind of communism in the DDR—that the infamous bread lines only existed in the Eastern Blok countries under communism.  I always thought that all commies lived solely on canned meat, vodka and potatoes. Period.  History and urban mythology, traditions. Siebert Bakery has a century-long tradition. And a fierce logo:  Two fire-breathing lions are cutting coffee beans and carving pretzels with broad swords.  Then they present them to the king.  And they’ve been doing this since 1906.  Uninterrupted?  I wonder. Eastern Germany and East Berlin were walled off from the West for nearly 50 years.  Surely they didn’t get donuts and free flats AND free Trabants under communism.  I’ll be sure to ask the nice bakery lady to clarify that.  And if it’s true, I’m officially quitting capitalism and joining the communist party.  Tomorrow.

Siebert Backerei / Konditorei

Schönfließer Straße 12, Berlin - Prenzlauer Berg

STERNI UBER ALLES!!!

The following conversation takes place entirely in German.  You are reading the translation of the notes which were pried out of the cold, dead hand of the witness.

Give me a Sterni, asshole!

Lick my greasy Mohawk, Deutschbag!

C’mon!  I begged most of the money!  All you did was flirt with the chicks walking into the store!

Both of you are fucked!  It was MY dog that made us get all the change for the beer today.

Shut up, bitch!  Your dog ate my fucking homework!

Oh, right… when was the last time YOU went to school?  Were there cars, or did you suck dick on horseback?

Shut up, fake punk bitch.  Your parents TOTALLY bought you all your piercings and tattoos. On layaway.  Your shirt says ‘Fight the system’ but you couldn’t fight a sprinkler system.

Look you idiots:  I was out here for like, HOURS and the bitch with the dog just got here.  No WAY is she getting my Sterni.  I’m just sayin.’

We got 4 euros in 4 hours…that’s like 10 Sternis.  Three of us.  Uhhhh…. How many do we each get?

I don’t have a fucking clue.  The bitch’s dog ate my fucking homework!

Both of you guys can suck my dog’s dick!

Oh, you’re soooo cool, Punk Rock Girl. I think some asshole wrote a song about you.  It sucked more dick than YOU!

All right you two, either fuck or fight, but for the love of GOTT, give me my fucking STERNI!

I want to break something!

Break open a STERNI!!!

Sternburg bier aus Leipzig ROCKS in ways I cannot begin to explain!  It’s like a malty, amber microbrew—only DIRT CHEAP! Like the people who drink it!

You said it.  All this anarchy is making me thirsty.  STERNI, anyone?

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. 

Germany Inefficiency and Lazy Berlin Delivery Men

Or:  "I Got Yer Package:  RIGHT HERE."

I just had to tell a Deutschbag to go fuck himself.  Yes, I tend to over-react emotionally in all sorts of situations where most normal people would simply keep a stiff upper lip and bend over and take the sheisse.  But I'm not normal people (scroll down through the past posts and say "yup").

By now we all have figured out the Berlin is not Germany; it's more of an island of poor in a rich country, a chaotic, spastic lily pad in the otherwise still lagoon, and many more metaphors I have yet to think up.  So flush your stereotypes of 'German Efficiency' right down the no-standing-while-pissing shelf toilet and hitch a ride on the inefficiency express.

Enter:  delivery deutschbag.  "Package for Herr Hasenpfeffer."

db: "Not here.  Note doorbell.  Not Hasenpfeffer."

dd: "But do you know where HH is?"

db: "No, sorry."

dd: "Then can you take this package for him?"

db:  "Ummm.  Just said I don't know the fella.  Why in HELL would I take a package for someone I don't know?"

dd:  "But I can put a note in his mailbox and you can bring it to him."

db:  "You know where his mailbox is, know he's in the building, and want ME TO DO YOUR JOB FOR YOU?"

dd:  "JaWOHL."

The dialog above has been slightly fictionalized for theatrical purposes, but this rant/spleen vent/whinge is all to say that there seems to be a serious problem with Deutsche Delivery Dudes in my 'hood.  I understand that in an uberefficient world, there would be flat numbers, floor levels and colorful maps next to each name on the buzzer/mailbox.  But after about 44 different DDDs from a half dozen delivery companies asked me to hold their plain, light brown, sweaty packages I just had to cry 'BULLSHEISSE!' and let slip the dogs of db.

I'm thinking that there's only a dozen flats in our building.  I'm also thinking that it would take the DDDs all of 5 minutes to investigate all 3 flats on all 4 levels to find their Herren and Frauen.  Lazy fuchsen. Better yet:  HEY!  Here's an idea:  your company delivers to this building every single business day of the year. WRITE DOWN THE NAMES OF THE PEOPLE/FLATS AND GIVE IT TO YOUR FUCKING DRIVERS FOR FUCK'S SAKE.

End of rant.

This particular DDD today happened to be the last in a long line of lazy fux who ring my bell, dragged me away from my kung fu theater flix and hit me with their deutschbaggery.  I had to yell at him and tell him to go fuck himself, this is true.  But in my defense, this occurred right after I politely refused to hold his package and he stormed off muttering in a pissed off tone. THAT's when he got the business end of my foul mouth.

db