I made juice early in the morning for Oma, Zane and myself. Oma came down just as I was leaving to Armin's to help him make beer, Zane was lost somewhere in the depths of his mind, curled into a ball, half exposed and half buried beneath the blankets. I left the juice on his night stand and took the car to Armin's without waking him.Armin was having breakfast when I arrived, he was happy to see me, "Lisa and Manuel are still asleep." He said with a laugh. "Yeah? Is that normal for them?" "Ohh yes! Happens most of the time." I had a mango and some water then helped him carry some pots and equipment into the garage. A short time later Lisa and Manuel came down for breakfast as well. They were quite surprised to see me. "Aren't you tired after last night?" "Not really.. But I was lucky" I said, with a rather humorous tone, then I joined Armin again in one of his many man caves, spread throughout the kit house he built himself. I've brewed beer a few times myself but Armins methods are far in advance of those I've used. It was a pleasure to see him work, and actually get to know him much better. We drank beer that he had previously made and talked about all kinds of things he's into. The five hours I spent making beer with my Uncle Armin is the most time I've ever spent with him alone, before that it was probably only 20 minutes! Crazy!!Before the batch was ready to poor I had to leave to buy Veggies from Edeka and return home to make more juice and get Zane for a meeting with Luisa Green a good friend of mine that I was introduced to through my mom. Luisa has had dyed green hair for over 10 years, is a huge Doors fan and is very skilled with baking. Her dream is to open a bakery in Amsterdam and live there. I can't wait to go their when she opens it up. Louisa's mom and my mom have been best friends since they were in Kindergarden here in Beitighiem, they both ended up in design. She's a clothing designer and my moms a website designer. Zane and I walked over to Luisa's place and chilled out, listened to the Doors, talked about travel and ordered up some Pizza from the local delivery place. Louisa had just gotten back from Amsterdam with her friend, who has had blue dyed hair for some time as well, they were both tired from their journey so we took our exit que and walked home. The next day we had a very early 2pm dinner at Armin's with Dani's father Ludwig, whose nearly blind, mostly deaf, and loves to talk about the past in terms of how it should have been the future. "Back in those days we knew what needed to be done, not like now, then we knew, now we've forgotten. We should be like we were then." The past really does have a long hand into the future. Living in the present, free from the clutches of the whats come before, or whats to come. It's a freedom few enjoy, fewer still for very long, but some have mastered it, we call these people enlightened, and rightfully so!After dropping Ludwig off at home, where he lives alone despite being blind and deaf, Zane and I watched Strange Days, a very interesting science fiction film with Ralph Finnes, written by James Cameron, that has aged without loss of credibility or interest from the passage of time and advancement of technology, as most dated sci-fi films seem to do. Tomorrow we leave Beitighiem and head for Austria, were Zane's girlfriend Zuzka will pick us up and take us back to her home of Bratislava, Slovakia.
Party In The DDR
At 0600 we checked out of WoW hostel and sat on the bench outside smoking the last of the pot. We still had magic mushroom truffles with us but didn't care to risk them on our flight to Berlin, thus we simply left both containers and their instruction manuals on that same bench, and headed for the airport. If a hostel full of hopped up party animals can't make use of them, Im sure the janitor, who saw us leave them there, will have a nice little giggle with them while performing his daily tasks. Although I can just as well imagine him using them for more nefarious purposes, or simply throwing them away, we may never know.Once on the flight Zane put down his food tray and covered it with a jacket then laid his head down over it. He stayed in this position for the two hour duration of the flight, even as the person in front of him repeatedly slammed back in their seat attempting to recline, which would slam Zane's head each time in the process, but didn't phase him.Meanwhile I was nodding off back and forth in delirium. Which is the least beneficial, rest wise and the most damaging to your neck, but since I find it incredibly difficult to sleep sitting up, it would have to do. Once we landed we bought 3 day, all public transport passes for 29 Euros each and took the train to the outskirts of Berlin where our couch surfing host Annika lives. After exiting the station we walked a ways in her general direction, passing what seemed like whole city blocks of derelict buildings, which they probably were, this is the old East German portion of Berlin after all. The first building we went to was the wrong place, which itself ended up being an abandoned manufacturing plant of some kind. The second try was the correct one, we rang the bell and were let in by her roommate Thomas.Thomas was very courteous and helpful, open too. As he smoked a rolled cigarette and drank Hell beer, he told us about how him and Annika had started out as roommates then became lovers. Which despite what everyone else in the flat thought of, they went with anyway. "Which of course ended badly," he said, yet they still remain as roommates even now. After telling us this story he showed us the flat, which was not at all what you'd expect from the outside. It had a huge bubbler jacuzzi in one of the bathrooms, which didn't work but was just as impressive to look at, with a toilet, bidet, urinal, two basin sink, and a large marble shower room with rectangular plates on each corner that shot out water, it was a full body shower room, like being sprayed with a fire hose from all sides. Then there were four very nicely decorated and spacious bedrooms, and yet another bathroom with a normal shower, sink and toilet. Thomas said we were welcome to the food in the fridge and gave us the keys to the house before leaving to do some errands in town. Zane and I decided to grab a bite to eat, so I looked up a place on yelp that was close to us and we walked there together. The place was called Masala, the menu was all in German and the waiter was Indian but spoke no English. I ordered something Vegan and Zane went with the lamb curry. My meal was basically vegetables wrapped in leaves and smothered in Chinese sweet and sour sauce. It wasn't bad, but good isn't the right description either. Zane was happy with his choice though.Back at the apartment we both passed out for several hours until Thomas and another roommate, as well as two Israeli friends of Annika's showed up. The drinking and smoking began, but we had no supplies, so we went to the supermarket and bought four tall cans of beer, which was a shame, as Thomas put it, since they weren't in glass. To top it all off we got a 5th of Captain Kooks rum with a 1.5 liter bottle of Freeway cola, lol. All of which cost us something like 11 Euros. Once Annika and a few other people showed up the plan was to pregame (get drunk before the main event) at the house and go out to a club later. But the clubs don't open in Berlin until at least 11pm and the best time to go is 1am, or so we were told. In any case, after finishing the rum between us and a few beers, Zane still had his heart set on going to the clubs, but our hosts had other ideas.Annika & Thomas, Tal & Peter(the Israelis) Simone & Caroline(German girlfriends of Annika) Vincent(the French roommate) Zane and Myself all walked into the night and entered an old theater that had been abandoned immediately following the break up of East and West Germany. As I walked through this time warped piece of history I felt as though I was walking through the halls of the Titanic, had it been used extensively for 30 years and then simply been left to rot in dry dock for a half century. It really was spooky in a lot of ways, the grand red curtains torn upon the stage, hanging in tatters, old wooden chairs rotting into the floor, the hallways still lined with posters from the postwar period, faded in perfect hues of white and gray mold. We had split up into two groups while in the ballroom, Annika, Caroline and I went through the theater, along the aisles and up on stage, to the back where a wooden ladder led to the fly gallery above(where the ropes and cables are operated from above the stage) from there we squeezed through several tight spots and around a few ancient winches to the sky port access. We climbed up that and opened the hatch, where Zane and the others were already waiting. They had taken the stairs, which was the easy, but much less interesting way to reach the roof. From the top we could see lights reflecting off of the river that separates Berlin into two main areas. East and West. One side with new and brightly colored buildings, and the other with a quagmire of monotone miseries held together by lack of need or desire, to see them live, in any capacity other than pigeon coops once more. It was a fine time up on that roof, but by 4am not even the liquor could keep the icy wind from drawing us back to the house. And so it was. We returned to the comfortable confines of the apartment. Some of us continuing on till dawn, others fading into drunken slumber as soon as they got back, myself included..