And the Winner of Best 404 Error Goes To...

Vitamin D

A Wicked Game Indeed

You Had Me At 'Bacon Donuts'

Even though I left Berlin after 6.5 years (hipsters drove me out) and now live in Prague as a Wide Body Jetsetter, I STILL miss mein dunkin' berliners.  Therefore, I will continue to post about All Things Donut. Because once a Dunkin' Berliner, always a Dunkin' Berliner.

Attack of the Killer Donuts!

It was only a matter of time...

 

Donut Worry, Be Happy

Donuts: My Ball and Chain

Mmmmmm.... Donuts

This Is The End

The desk fan goes whuppa whuppa whuppa in the humid Berlin bog.  I take my donuts in my left hand and prepare to leave the place where thousands have come and gone before.  I stuff them in my mouth, verily, one at a time, in remembrance of Berlin.  The thousands first, then the donuts.  I am voracious.

Where?  The Next.  The next cheap place where creative people go to piss about and throw fairy dust at the sky while waiting for the wrecking ball. We won't be assimilated.  There was a respectable time in human history wherein one could live and die in fields or coal mines.  Now there is only the sad promise of a sad cubicle in a sad office space.  Moving up?  Nosir.  Moving down.  Give me black lung disease, motherfucker.  At least my body will die before my brain.

The Next Place will have donuts.  Yes, they will be the death of me, but I choose a glorious, deep-fried, jelly-filled sugar coma.  Alcohol will be my anesthesiologist.  He's the only one I trust.  I will go there, to The Next Place, and start another blog.

Maybe it will be titled something like Notes of an Old Fart.  I'm pushing 50.  It would be a good time to give up the donuts and go for the laxatives.

This is the end, my friend.

But only of my life in Berlin.  In the past 20 years in England, Ireland, Czech Republic and Germany, it has always been a bit unsettling when The Big Change comes round. Then I settle in.  Then I move on.

There will be other lives in other cities.

Danke. Dankeverymuch.

A donut donation from The Honourable Husband at Deutschland über Elvis caused the Dunkin’ Berliner to buy a whole box of donuts, dress up like Elvis and stuff those tasty puppies into his Viva Las Vegas face.*  Buh-huh huh.

Achtung!  The following blog post contains excessive food porn. And Elvis impersonation.
You have been warned.

A well my hands are shaky
and my knees are weak,
I can't seem to stand on my own two feet,
Who do you thank when you have such luck?
Thanks, Honourable Husband (burp),
I’m all sugared up.

Buh-huh huh. Ooh. Yay-uh-yeeaaaaah, yeah!

I created a donate donut button (TOP RIGHT. Can you see it? Dontcha wanna press that puppy RIGHT NOW?) on this site.  That little hound dog takes PayPal and/or credit cards.  In the blog post introducing my donation button (called Blog Whore or something), I stated that “If you send me some donut money (like a buck or two), I promise to stuff it in my face and start a fresh fury of feverishly fluff filled blogging that only a man with hypoglycemia and too much time on his hands can unleash.”  Or something like that.  I have received a few donut donations (mostly from my mommy, Thanks, ma!) over the years and I am very thankful that people care enough to reward this barely employed writer/photographer.

I’d like to up the ante and state here and now and for all to see:

Any and all blog donations will be met not only with the aforementioned fresh fury of feverish fluffery, but in addition, you, your name and your website will be named, thanked and linked.  Maybe even in that order.  And I will take photos of me stuffing the very donuts that YOU BOUGHT for me into my face.  I might even wear a costume.

Today’s thank you goes out to:

The Honourable Husband, whose blog Deutschland über Elvis is not really a blog about Elvis at all, much in the same way that my blog (JFKFC for the Masses) is not about Kentucky Fried chicken or JFK conspiracy theories.  I just like the mashup of JFK and KFC.  Waitaminit.  I started this paragraph thanking someone.  How did it get back to me?

Anywho, I’d like to thank the Honourable Husband for his kind blog donation of exactly enough money to buy a whole box of donuts.  You are a gentleman, a scholar and a cunning linguist.   (Ahem. At least when he talks about tits. ;)

 

In the immortal words of Private Elvis Presley stationed in Munich:

“Danke.  Dankeverymuch.”

Buy a sad Elvis impersonator a donut today; save an old lady from a purse snatching tomorrow.

-----

Elvis impersonator:  Me, aka Dunkin’ Berliner, aka Melvis.  Melvis is my karaoke stage name.  Buh-huh huh.

Costume:  Some Czech chick; probably named Jana or Petra (Hey, it was along time ago, man.  I forgot).

Photography:  Gabriela Sarževská

*Ok, I didn’t eat the whole box at once; whaddaya, nuts?  That could kill a Bull Moose elephant.  I divided the box into two 3-donut dances.  Oh yeah!

Every superhero has his origin story.

See my other blog, Wide Body Jetsetter for more Melvis action.

National Donut Day 2013: GIMME ONE!!!

Of course I chose to live in Europe, wherein they celebrate the weirdest of holidays.  Berlin, May 1: National Kreuzberg Car Burning Anarchy Day and Molotov Cocktail Olympics.  The night before that they burn witches in parks.  Hard to imagine there are any witches left.  The rest of the time they are celebrating some person or event nobody has cared about for 500 years.  Once it's on the calendar, it can't be taken off without burning more cars/witches and/or throwing more Molotovs.

I'm a pacifist.  Make donuts, not war.  Sure, the sugar of 3 or 4 juicy Berliner jelly donuts makes me as giddy as a schoolgirl, but I am a 6 foot 5 inch tall man (ubergrossenmensch for y'all Deutschers) and that would be funny to see.

THEY DON'T CELEBRATE NATIONAL DONUT DAY IN GERMANY.

Yes, I considered reaching for my pistol, but they took it at the airport.


The only thing left to do (other than inserting bullets manually into my head) is to beg.  That's right, I'm on my hands and knees ovah heah.  Gimme donuts.  There's this button on the top right that says DONATE!   Buy Me a Donut!

If you do that I will love you.  Long time.  And hurry, please.  My knees can't take kneeling much longer.

If you send me a donut donation, I will take a picture of myself stuffing donuts in my face holding a sign with your name and/or website on it.  Think of the power you could wield with one click!  If you DON'T help me out with a donut, a not-so-young man may wind up committing crimes for his fix.  And that's just ugly.

De-whored by Google

Google AdSense Threatens Dunkin' Berliner, Gets the Sticky Finger

I have de-whored myself.  I've cleaned up my act and will no longer be showing ads on my blog.  You may go ahead and scroll down my large, ample, glazed body of work to see that I am free of all ads, crabs and STDs.  Not because after only one year displaying zillions of ads I got only 7 dollars, not because I have no Ho Sense, but because they sent me a threatening email.  Bitches:

Hello,

During a recent review of your account we found that you are currently displaying Google ads in a manner that is not compliant with our program policies:http://dunkinberliner.blogspot.com/search/label/Confused%20Berlin%20kids

VIOLATION(S) FOUND: ADULT/EXPLICIT TEXT: As stated in our program policies, AdSense publishers are not permitted to place Google ads on pages with adult or mature content, including sexually explicit text.REQUESTED ACTION: Please make all necessary changes in the next 72 hours. If the violations are corrected within the aforementioned time period, ad serving will not be affected. If changes are not made and/or other policy violations are encountered during the review process, ad serving will be disabled to your site.

YOU CAN’T FIRE ME, I QUIT!!!

Google, you can take your seven bucks and change and
cram it right up yer cyber-pooper!

I wonder how many millions of bux these fux made by serving ads on peep’s blogz for years, then, oh, gee, my o my, gosh darn it, YEARS later find an F word or two.  It’s a scam.  The exact same kind The Rich have been pouring down the gullets of We Poor for eons.  How do I know it’s a scam?  Because Google crawlers cache results after a few months, then you can find me in 0.03 seconds if you don’t have a 56k modem.  I know this because I look at the charts.  No, really.  I have WAY too much time on my hands.
So now I've disabled the ads, thrown away my potential for pennies.  I won't change my content for anyone; kinda defeats the purpose of having a blog if I can't drop F bombs every time I have a brain fart.  If that's the case, I might as well get an internship writer's job at a weekly Amish newspaper (printed by hand, no machines).  So this old whore is hanging up the high heels, getting off the ad crack, saying goodbye to his Google pimp.  You won't see me peddling my ass for pennies and pizza delivery any longer.  I'm now an uptown ho, a right proper call girl.  The only way you can pay me is to click the Exclusive 'donate donut' button at the top right of this blog.  I'm more discreet, no more random ads peddling their wares on MY street corner of cyberspace—but I'm still a relatively cheap ho.  I mean, how much can a donut donation cost?

Choose Your Haircut: Skinhead or Hitlerjugend

Bitch Week at Dunkin' Berliner continues with today's installment: "Waaaah!  I'm in the Hitlerjugend!"

I believe you can only get two haircuts in Berlin:  The Skinhead and The Hitlerjugend.  I know this because no matter how many times I have gone in to any hair salon in Berlin and no matter how much German I’ve tried to learn or how much English the stylist spoke—these are the only options. I want the cut faded up the sides and back and neatly short—but not jarhead—on top.  I couldn’t explain it to them no matter how hard I tried.  Even when the stylist spoke perfect English, her clippers would slam to a halt at my occipital ridge at the back of my skull.  The scissors were picked up and a hard line between neck and crown formed. The result was the infamous look of the 1930s Hitlerjugend.  If I deigned to complain about this, they would abruptly slam the scissors on the table, pick up the previously-discarded shears and proceed to buzz cut me into skinhead land.

After a while I grew tired of this.  Colored people and foreigners were suddenly crossing the street or diving into the suicidal Berlin bike lanes.  I thought it was because I am large and scary, but my friends laugh at the thought of me scaring anyone.  I started wearing caps and hats until the hair grew back.  Eventually I bit the bullet and bought a buzz cut machine of my own at Rossmann.

The guide marks on the clippers I bought show 10 marks.  But you already know there are only two (even if you didn’t read ahead).  The ‘medium’ marks don’t cut anything and neither does any mark above the medium level.  I tried to shear the back of my own head in the mirror and the only setting that worked was the skinhead setting.   This means that if you continue over your entire skull, you will be branded a skinhead, be invited to shop at Thor Steinar and have Nazi cops buying you donuts (well, this could be a benefit for a Dunkin’ Berliner I suppose).  My clippers slammed into the occipital ridge again.  I didn’t want to go further out of fear of total skinheaditude.  So I stopped.  The familiar ridge formed on the back and sides of my skull. Jahwohl, you guessed it:  I looked like something between a Hitlerjugend and the Pope.  My friends commented on it.  I gave excuses and blamed the Skinhead-o-Cut 2000 machine I used.

Today I went back to the same hair salon I had been before.  I decided to give them another chance.  There was a different woman there:  60 years old, piles of poodle hair, jowls and a look on her face like she was shitfaced drunk.  Or DDR communist.  Or both.  I sat down in the chair.  I had spent an hour on the internet locating and printing a picture of the cut I wanted.  She laughed and told me to put it down.  She had everything under control.  The clippers slammed into my occipital ridge so hard I think chunks of dandruff and skin must have flown out.  I let her continue.  She buzzed the edges of my ears and hit my head several times with the scissors as I held my eyes shut.

I can’t show you a picture of me in this blog.  I am not quite Hitlerjugend, not quite skinhead, but worse:  some kind of mutated mole who was in a fight with a hedge clipper.  I will be wearing my hat again so the nice colored people and foreigners won’t have to dive into the treacherous Berlin bike lanes as I walk down the street.

The Sum Total of Human Knowledge on Strike

I was just now going to wikipedia, as one does when, well, you know.  I was probably looking up some factoid to include in the non-bullshit segment of the Dunkin’ Berliner Blog, just to make sure I had my facts straight, in order to keep this here blog from tumbling into the Abyss of Total Bullshit (or bullscheisse as the locals say).  I got the Wikipedia Blackout Page.

And it started off as such a good day:  9am, down to the donut pusher; drei pfannkuchen mit kirsch, bitte, chuckles from the staff at my lousy pronunciation, me clearing my throat and throwing such a DRRRRRReeeiiii at them that the staff and customers had the biggest chuckle that this here one man donut theater has ever witnessed in the presence of fresh donuts; back to the flat to push the last bit of code over the cliff and launch my long-awaited (mainly by myself) new photography website into the cyberwaves; bowl of Turkish coffee Czech style, throw a fistful of espresso and boiling water into the biggest fuckoff coffee mug I could find at the Boxhagener flea market for under ein Euro, a veritable Cornucopia of Christian Crank, as it were; chase out the cobwebs and become the productive human I always knew I would be; last bits of website done by noon, all contacts in address book spammed profusely by 1pm.

Met my photographer buddy for tea and crumpets (I don’t even know WTF a crumpet is but it looks good when I write it); discussed the downfall of Western Civilization and/or the need for more work in the barren Berlin wastelands; went out for Vietnamese food; returned home...

BLACKOUT.  I couldn’t get The Knowledge.  Instead, I got the stark blackout page announcing a protest of some dumbass legislation in Amerkkka about the internet.   I’m not going to analyze it overmuch; I’m just an educated hick from Sacramento with a penchant for deep fried lard pastry and too much time on his hands.

For the record:  I tried to contact my Congressman but I don’t have one; if I did I’d surely be on his hit list.  I wanted to fb the hell out of it, but I was thrown such a shit storm of illegible captcha that I thought the Black House was taken over by Sharia law.  Try this:  hit refresh over and over in the captcha form.  Watch it degrade into a bigger and bigger mush of squiggly lines.

 

“And they were singin’ bye, bye Miss American Pie, drove a Chevy to the levee but the levee was dry.”

“You can have my [insert sacred item here*] when you pry it from my cold, dead hand.”

[Fade to black]

*suggestions:  donut, gun, internet, brain, money, doobie, booby, crucifix

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

Dunkin' Berliner is a Big Fat Whore

Yes, ladies and gentle readers, I have officially placed my ass on the auction block. To whit: I have turned this here free word smithery into an ad-ridden neon hell hole.  And my hole is for sale to anyone who clicks on any of the ads on this page.

Why in the flying fuck did you do it, db?  Well, in two years only two people clicked on the 'buy me a donut' button (thanks Mom and Old High School Buddy).  I was starting to feel unappreciated.  Even the comments were becoming fewer and farther between.  The economy is rough.  The devil made me do it.  I blame the boooooooze!  From now on, you will see 'relevant ads' splashed all over this blog like bodily fluids in a bar toilet.

I did it for another reason:  comic value.  When I write a post about donuts, I should expect a Dunkin' Donuts ad to magically appear below my post, beckoning my followers into her glazed and sparkly den of donut iniquity. But since most of my posts are about Deutschbags, sheisse and generally heinous humor, I can't wait to see the resulting 'relevent' ads.  Deutschbag posts should be followed by Deutsche Bahn train promotions and sheisse posts should be followed by some equally shitty advertisements.

Either way, click on an ad and make this whore happy.  I get a penny a click or some dumbass amount, so if you can't afford to send me a buck for a freakin' donut, by all means, pay a whore a compliment and click me, baby.  Click me REEEEEEEAAAAALLLLLLL GOOOOOOOOOOOD.

db

Eating Berliners in Grand Style

I'm sorry:  2 months since my last blog post.  I blame the total lack of Berliner jelly donuts in my diet.  It really is difficult to get my fix:  wake up with bars of light burning through the slats in the window shades into my red eyes.  Check the clock:  DAMN.  Missed the window.  If you don't hit the window of donut opportunity you are SCREWED.  Nothing worse than walking bleary-eyed and bed-headed several blocks to your donut dealer--only to find they are completely out of Berliners.  This happens sometime between 10am and 11am.  Bastards.  "Would Herr Berlinermunchenmensch like a piece of cake instead?" the nice donut lady might ask.  "Would you like me to rip your lungs out through your NOSE?"  I might reply.  No, really:  if you are hooked on Coca-Cola (or some other evil chemical substance), would you settle for DIET?  Didn't think so, Sunshine.

So without my donut panacea to sooth my violent tendencies, I've fallen into different/normal patterns and rituals.  Like work.  Suddenly, as if getting up before 10am mattered for an Artiste, I suddenly got a pile of photography work.  And by a pile, I mean one of those types of months wherein I work every day without pause for a donut day off.  Hence the lack of my favorite drug.

So you can imagine my surprise when, upon finishing the morning sessions of a Berlin conference in a fancy-shmancy hotel (Grand Westin), I saw a beam of light pierce the hotel skylight, miss my bleary red eyes and light up the biggest slice of Heaven a donut muncher can behold:  pristine plates FULL of little mini-Berliners.  Sure, this was a French company holding the conference, but NO, the hotel wasn't going to give them croissants.  When in Berlin, do as the Berliners do:  roll up them there sleeves and dig into the donuts.  Yes, in the photo you may see some OTD (other than donuts), some kinda Fancee Frawnch FrittAIRS or something, but fret not:  the Berliners outnumbered the fritters 2 to 1.

While these hotel mini-drugs weren't the same as the lard peddled by my local pusher at Siebert (There are no better jelly donuts on the planet.  Really), at least I could take as many as I wanted for free and not be forced to stand in a queue and be told that there was No Joy in Donutville and have to be jailed for ripping a nice woman's lungs out through her nose.

I'll try to get back to y'all soon with more violent, drug-and-donuts-addled stories soon.  In the meantime, I also got paid to write about Berlin beach bars.  Well ain't that a hoot?

Douchebags and Donuts: A Little Leary

I am now chock full o’donuts and coffee.  I always want my goddamned donuts on Monday, but the Deutschbags at my favorite bakery (Siebert Konditorei, the finest bakery in P’berg and possibly Berlin, reviewed by my damn self here) like to close for THREE FUCKING DAYS.  Saturday, Sunday and Monday there is no joy in Donutville; the commies take a long weekend.  So on Tuesdays I overcompensate, jamming about 3 of those tasty fuckers down my gullet, washed down with a SECOND large cup of Turkish coffee.  And let me tells ye:  I make coffee strong enough to kill an African Bull Elephant on crack.  It is basically 4 heaping spoons of the strongest espresso I can buy, thrown into a bowl-sized cup with boiling water; stir thoroughly.  Et voila:  productive human.

Well, wired and goofy anyway.  I just watched the latest episode of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart; Denis Leary was his guest.  He was double plugging his new toilet reading book AND his upcoming stand up special “Douchebags and Donuts.”  A man after my own heart, I must say.  Not because I am a donut muncher of clinically dangerous proportions, not because his use of the words ‘douchebag’ and ‘donuts’ together is strangely similar to a Dunkin’ Berliner rant about Deutschbags and donuts (every other blog post, really), but because I happened to be munching on my donuts while watching him do his shtick.  Not planned, just one of those random moments of epiphany; a moment of clarity that donutoholics refer to as ‘total fucking coincidence.’

I am curious how Leary’s latest rants will be handed down to us mere mortals.  After a decade of his bad self getting famous ranting on the joys of cigarettes, on being an asshole, and being accused of stealing Bill Hick’s style and stuff—I just wanna see if donuts are the new cigarettes.  Cuz, y’know, I’m curious like.  I would like to imagine loads of people clicking on the ‘buy me a donut’ link (above right, hint hint) so much that my local commie bakery would be FORCED to stay open all weekend AND Mondays just to keep up with the new demand.  I would also welcome many stories of donut addiction, treatment centers, condolences on my ‘affliction’ and spam about a miracle cure to donutoholism.

But really I’m just hoping someone will say “HEY, LEARY!!!  You stole your routine from Dunkin’ Berliner!”

Not Ready For Prime Time

The beauty of a blog is that nobody edits the damn thing but my damn self.  Whatever sticks in my craw—be it donut, schnitzel or sauer krauts—gets processed through my donut-and-beer-addled brain and onto my blog so that all 12 of you can enjoy it.

Enter:  editor.  Recently an editor of an expat website solicited me (for free) to write a story about getting around in Berlin.  She said she had read my blog and thought I could contribute a few words (for free) to her expat website, because after all, being an expat in Berlin, we are all whores of the most humanitarian kind:  the kind who work for free.

Below is the rejected article.  “Why was it rejected, db?” you ask?  I don’t know, you tell me.  In the commissioned (for free) piece, I took out all the usual F bombs, donut references and deutschbag rants which would normally appear in any Dunkin’ Berliner blog post.  I put in some actual info that can be of actual use.  The next time I get contacted by a publication to write for free, I’m going to INSIST that they read my ENTIRE blog, not just the Cliff Notes, and cite at least 3 references to donuts, deutschbags and defecation.  Read the fucking ingredients, editors.  It’s JFKFC for The Masses, containing 25% comedic rant, 25% parody/satire, 50% bullshit, 0% faggy poetry.

It does exactly what it says on the tin.  Word.

  

Getting Around in Berlin

 By Craig Robinson

 

You’ve just moved to Berlin. Nothing is happening where you have just moved.  You need to cross town to get to The Cool Kiez (neighborhood).  Do not panic:  this is normal.  Go to the BVG website and plug in your destination.  Don’t worry if you don’t know the address.  BVG is your Personal Hey Zeus! in the Land of Pagan Hedonism known as Berlin.  You can type in a station stop, an address or even the name of a landmark—Beevee got yer back.  In nanoseconds you will have your course in front of you and you can Kiez hop all night long.

Sometimes it even works out just the way you saw it on the interwebs.  But this is Berlin, the city that never sleeps, never stops reconstructing itself, and never, EVER tells you when your ordinarily-ueber-efficient transportation experience will suddenly come off the rails like that proverbial crazy train:  constant station reconstruction, detours, random service interruptions and poorly-marked station signs are your new friends.  Learn them.  Know them.  Love them.  In the two years I’ve lived in Berlin, I have never used the same route in my neighborhood for more than a few weeks.

It’s a wonder that anyone can get to work.  But since Berlin is probably the unemployment Capital of Europe, who needs to?  Most Berliners only use public transport to get to parties.  That’s why it is open all night long.  They’ve even got a monthly ticket called ‘Wide Awake in Berlin” for those who only use public transport from 10am until 3am.  You even get a discount.  I am not making this up.

Things you will NOT see much of on Berlin’s public transport:

1)      Suits

2)      Cops

3)      Sobriety

Things you will see in ABUNDANCE on Berlin’s public transport:

1)      Punk rockers

2)      Drunks

3)      Students with beer and wine bottles

4)      Touts, beggars and buskers

5)      Tourists just trying to have fun

In my first week in Berlin I must have been lost at least a dozen times in the maze of U-bahn, S-bahn, M trams and M buses.  I finally got the urge to accost a couple of beer-swilling Berliner youth at a Friedrichshain tram stop:  “Hey, guys, I was wondering about the rules for alcohol on public transport—I mean, this is Europe, everyone walks down the street swinging a bottle (Praise Zeus), but is it legal to drink on the tram in Berlin?”

Drinking Jugend #1:  “Technically it is illegal to drink on the trams in Berlin.  But nobody will stop you if you do.”

Drinking Jugend #2:  “NO!!! He is WRONG!!!  If you are in Berlin, you MUST DRINK ON THE TRAM!!!”

Perhaps the locals know something I do not.  I cannot count the times I have been lost on public transport in Berlin.  I still get lost regularly, usually when I hastily jump onto a train whose number I didn’t see as it pulled in (they’ll have 5 or 6 trains in a row going to OPPOSITE parts of the city).  Eventually I just started carrying a bottle of beer with me at all times and BAM! the magic connections began:  the brain train’s synapses fired, failed to fire, stuttered and started, lurched and finally took me away.  Not really.  Some of this is satire.  It HAS TO BE.  This is Berlin.

PRACTICAL INFO:

BVG website:  www.bvg.de

TICKET INFO:

Buy your tickets from U-bahn or S-bahn station machines or certain news agents and validate the ticket with the punch-stamp machines located almost everywhere but where you will actually be able to see them.

Plain-clothes ticket inspectors (who really wanted to be STASI or KGB agents under communism but couldn’t quite cut the mustard) will occasionally and suddenly flash a ridiculous Cracker Jack box toy badge I.D. at you and ask for your ticket.  At this point it is a good idea to have a valid ticket.  Or a Mohawk.

TICKET PRICES:

Day ticket (Berlin A/B central zones):  6.10 EUR

Single ride (up to 2 hours in one slightly-weaving direction):  2.10 EUR

Short trip ticket (up to 3 U-bahn or S-bahn stations or 5 bus/tram stops):  1.30 EUR

Fine if you get caught with none of the above:  40 EUR

Major train service interruptions due to reconstruction (subject to change upon a BVG whim):

-         U2 line from Senefelderplatz to Pankow:  indefinite.  Hell, they’ve been working on that thing since the very DAY I moved to Prenzlauer Berg Over a year ago.  It’s a conspiracy.  Use the ersatzverkehr (replacement bus service) instead.

-         Ostbahnhof S-Bahn station:  constant construction that makes you walk down many, MANY muddy, fenced in construction tunnels like a rat in a labyrinth.

Habituation

"I have become comfortably numb."  - Pink Floyd

No, I am not loaded as I write this (for a change); but I DID have a donut this morning (go figure).  It's coming up on my 2nd anniversary in Berlin (January) and the process of habituation is nearly complete:  I no longer see Berlin as 'Ooh! Wow! Neato! Lookit!' and have become just another expat specimen consuming and excreting with Berlin as a fuzzy backdrop.

This affects my blogging; I was just talking with Lady Snooker about how I used to blog once a week--which slowly faded down to once a month.  Has my creative mojo gone?  Has my donut filling finally dried up?  No, I suspect that Old Rascal Habituation has done its thang on my eyes and ears.  It's happened to me before in other exotic locales:  London, Dublin and Prague.  Right about the time the traveler settled in to the routine; the study program (London), the jobs (Dublin and Prague) and the rent payments, the Buzz decreases, the new becomes familiar, then routine, then Old Hat.

I have noticed my best photographs of a location are generally taken within the first few months of living in a new place.  After that, things that were extraordinary become, well, ordinary.  This is a psychological process which allows us to protect our senses from the onslaught of new experience, disregard the mundane, and keep a lookout for new stimuli.   The wiki article on habituation mentions that soon after a human wears clothing, the sensations wear off.  Can you imagine if you could constantly FEEL the cloth chaffing you as you moved around?  I believe we would be batshit in about 72 hours.  Or city traffic and street sounds would make a New Yorker insane (scratch that; New Yorkers are NUTS) in weeks.

But what is basically psychological protection is damned inconvenient if you are a writer or photographer.  The details we pick out as unique and noteworthy start fading into the background.  So this is when we need to focus more.  Berlin is pegged as an ever-changing city; a city evolving before our eyes. Fortunately, if you look hard enough, you can see the paint drying:  the constantly shifting street art, the ever-changing rotation of festivals, events and goings on.  I now have more time on my hands than usual (my slow season for work), so my lack of money coupled with my excess of time gives me the perfect opportunity to slow down and observe.

I would like to also point out that many of the things I mention on this blog are cheap or free: Karaoke in Mauerpark (see: Return of Melvis) only requires a bit of nerve and/or liquid courage (and in Berlin, liquid courage is 60 cents per bottle).  Taking snaps of local street art is free if you shoot digital.  I have been following certain Berliner street artists and noticing their styles.  So when the background just starts to get a bit fuzzy, sometimes a new stencil, poster, or art piece will appear in the cacophony of color that is Berlin.

So let me throw out some ideas and we can all be comfortably numb in Berlin--with or without the chemicals.

If you have any ideas for free/cheap things to do in Berlin that Google doesn't know about, please comment.

Festival of Lights photo by Craig Robinson Photography

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