March 2010

we awoke to the inevitability of sam a-cooking, make that much more intense by the fact that the three of us are attempting to start a fire American Indian style, by excitably grinding our legs together.  Lovely lunch with mr Von bock, a great friend from central American ages past, chatting on largely anecdotally about the past 3 years we’d not seen one another.  I have been a somewhat healthy eater during this trip – it seemed like germany with it’s less than stellar sausage, soda shops and ultrapasturized milk that needed not the crutch of refrigeration – was a perfect opportunity.  I fall off the wagon spectacularly into the waiting arms of a bk double bacon burger that sits in my stomach like a renunciant Buddha for the remaider of Berlin.  We get a budget 8 euro train ticket back to hamburg that extends the usual 90 minute trip to just over 5 hours of scenic darkness, arriving rainsodden and just minutes late for the last tube.  15 euros flayed from our irregilious posteriors and we arrive at the aparment for a late night, heavily be-pillowed game of who’s on my face?

The wander concludes with further gaming, and I triumph with my undying cache of spirit amazons.  We all decide in the kitchen, that despite the unyielding cold, we must brave the frigid cobbles this Halloween, don the raiment and Sally into the aged evening.  We got out of the house eventually, and I was well liquored and thereby warmer than I thought.  The party, feenfest, is the best stocked dungeon ever, replete with stables and stretching racks, and unfortunately shoulder high candled wall sconces, which improved on christianes heavily hairsprayed coif by setting it ablaze.  She manages to extinguish herself, as the rest of us are so pissed we can only point and slur firrrrey!  We all dance spastically and thank the gods for Berlin weekend all night trains, hasten back to bed where the 3 of us do our best to frustrate each others sporadic advances.  Sam is after all, asleep on the undulating air mattress on the floor, failing to stop the leak with a bit of orange chewing gum, which ironically does taste a lot like I imagine rubber cement and a bike patch might, if properly packaged and dipped in citrus furniture polish.

I return to pergamon museum, but this time I receive an audio guide to the treasures, vastly enriching the experience and the concurrent foot aches associated with standing for so long in a spot.  Brilliant to realize exactly what the goddess wields on the frieze, the name of the vanquished giant and the half mortal Hercules, the battles fulcrum.  We wander through museum island, and have soup after a prolonged ogle at a soviet whiskey flask.  Sam continued his foray into food, a welcome crepery waking to the birthday of robekkahs, and doling out a mighty portion of birthday dry humps, circus style.  Christiane and robekkah have deputized my stomach their personal portable central hand heating device to my dismay, which speeds mu reflexes some…chris did point out a goodyear blimp floating outside the window and duly thrust her hands under my shirt when i turned to see.  Turns out berlins a bit thin on blimps, or theyre the disappearing kind, because i saw nothing beyond the dust dry foliage and buildings fecund with grafitti.

He once drove across southern Germany, towards Berlin.  The frost Advanced alongside, and the leaves, ageing and turning at different intervals, lent a gauntly 3 dimensional vista to the scenery.  Even the sky took up the plot, as flocks of birds more legion than a locust swarm, in relief against the gathering slate sky.  They flew overhead in v’S, meeting line, so straight that he appeared to look at 2 dense birds, fanning out like a deck of cards as they slowly and inexplicably turned towards the silouhuetteing sun.  Choose.  Pick a card, and tear it in pieces, and in the scattering I’ll predict it’s origin.  I will divine us from the oracular birds, and found a city underneath your body.

took a carpool to Berlin after waffles to visit sam, played board games all damn night drunk on scotch that I poured into my fruit bowl, and huddled courageously, the three of us under a single size duvet, while sam wrestled with his own recalcitrant inflatable.  What is it about German air filled things?  I’d hate to own a pool in this place, because it’d be frozen right now anyway, so I’d have crap uninflated rafts and a giraffe on my pool shaped ice cube, and  I’d wear a speedo that, due exclusively to cold, would appear rather uninflated as well. 

Germany seems to hearken towards a blitzkreig form of advertising; there are maybe 3 ads repeated almost infinitely on every billboard and bus stop; my current favorite is one featuring Alice Cooper for germany’s version of Best Buy, leering sociopathically behind his pointed finger.

We walked through the immense town hall and I obsessed over these amazing, tiny dioramas depicting the progress and eventual destruction of the Berlin wall.  Stayed in that night, and gave the inflatability of the bed a real challenge by adding a third party and an awful lot of wriggling.  I slithered over the girls and out of the indentation, plugging the pump back in and cheerfully resurrecting our playpen.

we ran all day around hamburg like stung and dutiful tourists, shivering and wiping and moaning amidst the gunmetal grey inevitable sky.  It’s cold here, trims our eagerness somewhat.  We took a glass elevator up 700m above the city, in the spire of a bomb wrecked cathedral.  The plaques were all about the carnage of hamburg during ww2, but each ended with an apologetic admission of germanys guilt in starting the conflagration in the first place, the allies blasted us into bits, and you’re in the only bit left of our great cathdral, but our bad, we invaded Poland.

After the abysmal sleep, I experienced this new city by way of a 4 hour nap on robekkahs inflatable bed, that rebelliously deflated 2 hours into it.  Sleep on the airport floor was an inevitability, I fear.  The apartment was adorned with decidely angry taxidermied ferrets and foxes, one dyed the blue of football colors, framed images of hairless cats and grand and immaculate vintage castle grayskull atop it all.  It reminds me of limitless childhood hours spent against the odor of newly opened action figures, my collection of motley he-man avaters doing battle and switching allegiance on my bedroom floor.  I remember the trapdoor in the castle, and tumble into my ten yearold self.

I stupidly booked our tickets to hamburg too early for the first train to stansted, so we take a bus tonight and plan a delightful soujorn in the airport for five hours until departure.  The airport resembles a youth hostel, people curled against the walls of arrivals, spilling over their suitcases, or propped up in chairs like marionettes.  We found a fitful spot next to the mens room and set about pretending to sleep.  By the time 4am rolled out, we were both delerious, christianes condtion exacerbated by the lack of corrective lenses, her delerium enhanced by the blur of lights from the duty free.  We arrived the following morning and bore witness to the deep inexorable nature of german precision; each flight to lubeck has it’s own bus to hamburgs main terminus, and there were too many of us for the one.  Another was ordered, and in the meantime those of us on the bus waited an hour before leaving, because all passengers were required to arrive in hamburg simultaneously.