shortcuts.

Once upon a time I had an apartment on Leipziger Straße for a summer, so many years ago.  It was a wonderfully tough time in Berlin for me – living + being left alone made the experience utterly mine, but it took quite a bit of work to have any sense of social life.  I would buy a round of beer for a table of Germans, I would leap into conversation with overheard English, I would basically put myself out there as far as it took, just to have the chance to talk with other people.

I feel like I’ve taken a major shortcut on this visit and have been immediately thrust into someone else’s social stratosphere.  I initially saw this as a possible problem – the pressure of “hanging out” when I didn’t want to, outings and events and the general act of juggling other people’s strangers in a strange world.  What I’ve realized since landing is that this simple “in” peels back a significant layer of inhospitality, showing me a side of this city that I was completely unable to witness on my own.

Monday could have easily been an example of a fun evening I would have had back then.  A really great performance by the Foals inspired Mr. Hat and I to brave the cold and re-enter the night.  First we investigated a smoke-filled “punk” bar called Clash (with TWO pinball tables OMG!!!) – band posters and anti-Nazi propaganda plastered the walls, the servers had all the right saturation of black outfits and black eyeliner, but you couldn’t quite take the influx of hostel-tweens very seriously.  Even the alcoholic pros sitting at the bar looked like they wondered why they kept coming back.  But there was pinball, and holy fuck I love pinball.  The fact that these tables only threatened to Tilt made it that much sweeter.

After leaving Clash I tried to convince Mr. Hat that a goth club on a Monday night would be far superior to the fluffy bed that awaited him.  It might have been the influence of Astra but he syccymbyd to my darque ynqury and we found ourselves mystified before a thick locked door emitting the slightest oontz shortly before 1am.

Around 1:30am we find the buzzer that lets us in and I was immediately transported nearly 6 years into the past.  I’m going to be blunt: Germans over the age of 25 can’t dance – lucky for me the guys still dance 20x worse than their female counterparts.  It’s incredibly easy to feel suave if you can consistently shake any part of your anatomy.

There I was - drinking until the sun came up, smirking and spinning and re-living an incredibly positive, lonely time in my life.  Mr. Hat had wisely left after an hour or so but I was out for destruction - at 5:30am I tossed my half-filled pilsner aside and stumbled out into the bright chilled sky.

Tuesday was the revelation that this trip could never be that one.  One of my elderly Chinese roommates has several friends in the world of acrobatics, and I was fortunate enough to be guest listed by one of the performers into Chamäleon – an incredibly popular venue in an incredibly touristy bit of Mitte.  This show “Versus” featured quite the impressive display of human form pushing, pulling, accepting, and rejecting one another - hitting the heart a little deeper thanks to the soundtrack by Antony and the Johnstons.  A few Pils with a juggler-turned-writer and meeting our talented benefactor was a fantastic way to end the evening.

All of the nights since have all been a series of drinks with a series of new people - from the embedded Tea Party journalist who just returned from midwest America to the large-scale sculptor off to cast in Siberia to the photo exhibition of an elderly Chinese now-ex-roommate running her own gallery on a budget of nothing.  I’ve met an incredibly wide range of personalities from all over the world within mere weeks and this would never have been possible if I had gravitated towards my own leanings of just, being, left… alone.

Opportunity is a beautiful thing, especially when it doesn’t involve money.