Monday night in Hackescher Markt

Had an interesting night tonight. Beforehand we had our first real full day of classes, I had German at 11:00-2:00 and then Berlin Literature from 6:00-8:00 (yes, PM), and after that we all went out to eat, since grocery stores close around 8:00 here and I don't have any food in the fridge.

Speaking of fridges (if I may digress for a moment), I was talking to Rose the other day in the kitchen while she was preparing food and having dinner, and when she was finished eating her rice she just set it down on the counter instead of putting it away in the refrigerator. "Uh, Rose, why don't you put that in the fridge?" I asked. "Oh, Germans don't do that with hot food, they wait for it to cool down before putting it in the fridge cause it takes more energy to refrigerate hot food." And I thought Ithaca was hardcore. Geez.

But anyway, we went to get some pizza around Hackescher Markt, which is full of restaurants and shops and the like, and it is all a pedestrian zone. It's one of the few older areas of the city that wasn't completely bombed out in WW2, so it's still got a sort of classic feel to it, whereas the other areas of the city are much more modern/urban. There are tons of people walking around in the evening, and a ton of street performers.

Strangely enough, we ran into our friend Patty from the program while we were looking for a spot to sit down and eat lunch. Patty is extremely friendly and outgoing. Maybe a little crazy. On our first night out she made friends with a few working-class Germans at a bar on Freidrichstraβe, and on this particular evening she was hanging out with one of the homeless street performers on his homemade bike/carriage. He was pretty damn grungy and was missing quite a few teeth, although the thing that caught my attention were the mutton chops with matching mutton chop tattoos on his cheeks. He has the world's strongest eardrums, and is apparently the world's only inflatable man, and he incorporates both skills into his act, although we didn't get to see him perform while we were there. We sat nearby eating while Patty rode his custom built chopper-style bike around and made friends with all of his friends.

We did make our share of friends at Hackescher Markt though. On my right there was a guy hanging out, drinking a couple of beers (no open container laws here) and wearing a bright green safety jacket. He looked a little worse for the wear, so I didn't talk to him initially, but he eventually ended up slurring some sort of greeting to me, and we chatted for a little bit. He was dirty, wearing sunglasses even though it was twilight out, and didn't seem...completely there. Most of the conversation was in German, but there was a hefty amount of Portuguese, Spanish and English mixed in as well, so I had a tough time understanding him with all the strange words flying around, not to mention the fact that he's got some serious speech problems and has probably wreaked some massive damage on his brain with a whole melange of chemicals. Highlights of the conversation included:

Him: Allendo allendo allendo (he had a thing about saying things three times).
Me: Uh, what?
Him: Allendo allendo allendo, you are allendo.
Me: Um, I'm sorry, I have no idea what that is...
Him: HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! Obama Obama Obama.
He apparently found my confusion pretty damn funny, still don't know what allendo is, or what that even means. Big fan of Obama too apparently.

Me: So where do you work?
Him: qwelrqwermbukjhu-newspapers.
(his speech was also REALLY slurred)
Me: Oh, you deliver newspapers?
Him: No! *sign language, more gibberish*
Me: Um...
Him: dafjlwaeirualkjf-newspapers-asdkfjaowief-magazines in a truck-asdofuhawef-factory.
Me: Aaah, you load newspapers and stuff into a truck at a factory?
Him: Yes! asdflajweoifajwef
Me: That's cool, do you like it?
Him: dfaowejflsdfjoawief!!!
Me: Oh. Ok.

Him: I prefer the cold.
Me: Oh really? I like warm weather better.
Him: No no no, the cold is better. When the warm sun hits my head, everything is broken. I have asdlfkjawoeif, everything broken.
Me: What?
Him: asdlfjasf, the uh-uh-uh-uh, opium, opium yeah? asldkjjhiufwe, everything broken.
Me: Oh, you smoked too much opium and now your brain doesn't work, huh?
Him: *silence*
Me: I'll keep that in mind and avoid it.

He was a nice guy, shook my hand when he departed and everything, but wow. He would be the perfect poster boy for a "This is your brain on drugs" commercial. He was a little less interesting than the guy who taught me the Meth recipe while I was working at the Sundance Film Festival two winters ago, but so far as bums go he was pretty fun to talk to.

After that Ian, one of the other guys in our dinner group, went off to play guitar with a few street musicians he'd met earlier. We camped out in a tunnel that runs through the S-Bahn station in Hackescher Markt and watched him play for a while for the passers-by. It was actually pretty good- one of the guys had a wooden box he was pounding on which made for a pretty convincing drum set, one of the guys rapped (half in German, half in English), and Ian had an amp for the acoustic guitar and everything. It was especially interesting hearing the Berliners sing blues tunes about growing up in Leipzig and moving all the way out to Berlin to make it big. It's quite the lesson in globalization to see a blond haired, blue eyed German performing a rural, black, American art form. I tried jamming with them a little bit, but we couldn't really work up a groove, so I gave the guitar back to Ian and stuck around for a few more songs. We all left around 10:30 or so.

Still on the agenda for the week: poker tomorrow with Ian at a place near his homestay (5 euro buy in, Texas Holdem), maybe a field trip to some locations mentioned in the stuff we're reading for the Berlin Lit. class, learning more German! Stay tuned.