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.

Berliner Raucher Kneipe

The kneipe is a special place in Berlin where you can find a few locals crammed together in corners watching sports on the telly and drinking cheap beer in small glasses.  The wiki translation of 'kneipe' is 'pub,' but this isn't exactly accurate.  To me, a pub is a place where large groups of English or Irish people gather together and drink ales and stouts from LARGE mugs and watch sports on the telly.

Most of the Berliner Kneipe are raucher, or smoking pubs.  Most European pubs have followed the popular trend of banning smoking; England, Ireland and Germany all share the same laws concerning smoking in bars. To whit:  it is not allowed.  In Berlin, however, people just plain don't give a fuck.  They smoke in bars anyway.  Technically, this is illegal, but if a kneipe owner scrawls the word 'raucher' in crayon on a bar napkin and duct tapes it to the door of his establishment, alles in ordnung.

"So, db, why in the hell do you go to the raucher kneipe if you don't like smoke, you California beeotch?"

Glad you asked.  Two words:  CHEAP BEER.  Sure, the beer is crappy, mostly warm off-brands that nobody has ever heard of outside of Berlin.  But I'll be god damned if I'll ever be caught DEAD in the typical over-lit, over-priced, bistro-slash-faggy-slash-dancy cafe-slash-bar-slash-fuckers-I-don't-like-SLASH-em-ALL!!!

Ahem, excuse me.  I prefer dark corners and dark people.  I don't mean the local African watering holes per se, but those would be welcome as well.  I mean, normal people who have no problem with the dual stigmas of being butt suckers and alcoholics.  The lungs and the livers are shot, but these people are REAL.

FALLING DOWN is my local raucher kneipe.  It is practically right across the street from me, which makes it an easy stagger home.  I suppose the name of the place, in the immortal words of Bukowski, 'sort of fondled my scrotum.'  It's not normal to have an English name on a German bar.  And this bar is all German, mostly Prenzlauer Bergers of the old sort: unemployed, hard drinking, DDR-raised people who like cigarettes and beer more than life itself.  The bar is owned by a man of Mediterranean origin.  His name is 'Shefki,' which he told me means 'happy man' in Arabic.  It's true:  the man is happy.  Even when his bar is dead empty, he just smiles and asks me 'where are the people do you suppose?'  Then he rips open a bag of chips and brings the darts out for a game or two.

He opened the pub on Christmas Day "for the lonely people who don't have Christmas today."  I thanked him profusely by eating his chips, drinking his beer and throwing his darts.  I had to ask him about the decision to name the bar 'Falling Down.'  Was it about the gambling machines tucked in the corner?  Does 'Falling Down' mean the falling of coins?  Or is it about the more unfortunate patrons who can't handle the new uber-Captialist economy and the heavy amount of alcohol one must consume to deal with the aforementioned regime change?

To which Shefki replied:  "I think it is the last place people go in the neighborhood.  After they have gone to all the other kneipe in the neighborhood, they come here last and fall down."

Don't be scared.  Please visit Falling Down on Paul-Robeson-str. today.  Sure, your lungs may fall out of your ass from the smoke, but Shefki is a happy man who plays a mean game of darts and peddles a cheap bottle of beer.  Tell him the big American sent you.

Slip Slidin' Away Part Deux: Cars

The Berliners and the foreigners still slide around on the icy sidewalks as the sky keeps on dumping snow and warm spells in equal measure. The snow piles high for days and then it suddenly warms and everything is melted into mush. At night it freezes again and icy sidewalks greet the pedestrians in the morning. The City snow machines can’t keep up and so they don’t even try. Sometimes they just park outside the pub.

Pedestrians compete for the small strips of semi-clear sidewalk that provide the lowest risk. These narrow swatches of pavement contain the least amount of snow and ice and the highest amount of small black pebbles. Often a game of ‘chicken’ ensues; it isn’t always clear who will give way until the last second when one of the walkers takes a chance and veers off onto one of the icy mounds on either side of the safe strip. Invariably the slipping and the sliding starts. Only the children being pulled on small wooden sleds seem to enjoy the icy ridges. But one day their little snow sleighs will morph into motor vehicles and the fun will REALLY begin.

Sometimes a car is wedged in between two snow mounds in its parking spot. The snow from the streets gets pushed into a massive ridge behind parked cars and a second ridge forms in front of the car on the sidewalk side. Over the last few weeks I’ve got to watch many frustrated motorists trying to get their heavy metal out of its berth and on the road. Tires slide and spin and go nowhere. Sometimes whole groups of people have to push and guide the car out into the street. This is the part of the story where I smile at the frustration of others and take satisfaction in the fact that I choose not to drive in Europe. If I had a California highway and a killer stereo in a vintage ride it would be another story.

The other night an Asian woman called out to me from behind a struggling car. I only heard the ‘entschuldigan’ part. The rest I could figure out by looking at the situation. The man inside the car was revving and sliding a bit before he gave up. I looked at the back of the car and the icy mound below my feet. I was well off the safety strip and standing on the Deadly Ice Ridge of Doom. I looked at the beckoning faces of the helplessly stranded. I looked down. I visualized myself pushing the car as my feet slipped and slid away from under me and my brains were bashed out on the trunk of the car. How long would it take before my gray matter froze onto their car? Would they pause to chisel my brains off and be late for the opera? When thoughts like these last more than 5 seconds, I have to stop and admit that I am a paranoid mofo. But I’m sorry: I just don’t want to be that guy who sinks to his icy, watery grave so that one tart can live. That’s just not right.

So something made me grab the back of the car and push. I put some of my own intuition into the push along with the brute force. If you merely push the car forward as the guy revs and spins you will get nowhere. So I applied one part forward push, one part downward bounce push and one part Hail Mary. It worked almost instantly, as if I had owned a car in a snowy place and had done this ritual many times before. I stood there slightly surprised: my brains were safely in my skull and not stuck to the back of the car. The couple grinned and waved and shouted thanks. I stumbled over the ridges and back to the safety of the narrow strip of pebbly/icy sidewalk that led me to the pub.

Slip Slidin' Away

Y'know the nearer the destination, the more you're slip slidin' away.

The Berlin winter hit fast and furious this year with snow and ice and -15C. Today was a mild minus five, but the deadly ice was in place under the Christmas crunch last minute shoppers' feet. I saw two people fall down on the sidewalk today at different times and places.  When it happened--once to a guy and once to a girl--they each winced, shook their heads and got up.  Then they proceeded with their previous walk at full tilt boogie speed.  Damn!  They must be locals.

Each winter, whenever I fall down on the icy sidewalks of Central Europe (Czech, Germany, same frozen winter wasteland, different languages), I twist a knee or an ankle.  Then I sit there for a while cursing and waving my arms around.  Then I slowly get up and proceed to limp for the next 3 weeks.  This is because A) I am not a local; B) I have California legs (I am bloody Barishnikov on beach sand--I don't fall down or NOTHIN'); and C) The bigger you are, the harder you fall.  I am 6 foot 5 inches of donuts and beer.

So today I slid along, shuffling my feet, shifting my weight, staring at the ground.  Every year when I do this, I have to wonder why they put the tiny pea gravel 'anti slip' rocks UNDER the ice.  I can see them there under the thin layer of sidewalk ice, suspended like little black bugs in amber, useless and dead.  Some business owners throw dirt over the ice on the walkway into their shop. This is because having dirty icy mush tromped in all over the shop floor is de rigueur in Berlin's trendiest shops. But every inch of the 50 feet of sidewalk between the shop entrances is an iceberg waiting to sink my personal Titanic. So every winter I slip and slide around Prague or Berlin, flail my arms, hold onto walls and miss the days when I used to drive a car.  In a sunny place.

But at least I finally know the meaning of a White Christmas.

Happy holidays, however you celebrate them.

db