Its Rainy Season

ok. I'm writing another blog. Hopefully, this wont take me three days like the last one. I'll go until I draw a blank, how bout that?

hmm...

Ok, I'll try again. And I'll make a real effort this time to conjure up the thoughts and ideas and events from the past 10 or so days.

Right, so pretty much Berlin was amazing!! Ich habe ein Bissen Deutsch gelernt! I left the day after Christmas via Eurolines, the european coach bus, around 1045. I caught a bus coming up north from Madrid. the bus driver spoke to me in French with a strong Castillan accent. It was an extremely muggy wednesday, with a heavy fog.

Immediately when I got on the bus, I got that feeling again. The one where it feels like my mind is exploding. My heart beats uncontrollably; vibrant images flash through my head as I visualize myself in another foreign country learning yet another language. Another culture to experience, more food to eat. I was ready to get down. I was ready to party.

The first stop was Paris. There was an older black man sitting behind me mumbling to himself. I had a brief feeling of displacement right then. I felt as if I were in New Orleans, or somewhere down in that deep south. As it turned out, the man was a paraplegic. It looked as though he was missing up to his left elbow as well as his left leg up to the knee. I couldn't tell if he had his right leg in its entirety, but he had a full right arm. There was also the two dirty looking North Africans who threatened to fight the paraplegic. Oh man... Paris!!

There was really bad music playing, and my battery on my mp3 player was really low so I had to suffer. I mean, it really hurt too listen. "Total eclipse of the heart," some Barry White earlier, "No more I love you." WOOF!!! Only the biggest mistakes of the 90's.

Can I just say I had a couple odd encounters while I awaited my bus. I arrived around 1300. First odd encounter: I was standing in the line for information because my departure time wasnt listed on my ticket. And two girls just walked up to me and started asking in english me about their tickets and checking in. It threw me off guard. Then they began to try and speak french because they thought I didnt understand. I just had no idea how to help them! The second encounter was in the bathroom. A girl came in and I needed a 20 cent piece to use the toilet and all I had were 2 dimes. She didnt speak french, so I said it in English and she helped me out. Of course, I would choose the toilet with shit all on the rim and without paper, so I asked her if she had paper. She either didnt hear me, or once again, she didnt understand. I half wanted to ask her in German, but I gave up and improvised with some things Id packed in my suitcase.

There were pigeons walking around the bus station. Really bad lighting. That place was just the most aesthetically displeasing place Id ever been in. Internet was something like .15cents for a minute. which means, .75cents for 5 minutes. I'm used to 40 cents for a half hour!

So I finally left hells waiting room and caught my bus around 1930 to Berlin. The ride over night was a long one. Each time we crossed a borderline I received a text with the new rates outside of France. 11pm we reached Belgium. 234am we entered Deutschland. We made a couple stops: Bruxxels, Antwerpen, Hanover... The driver stopped announcing after Hanover. It was neat driving through the cities at night. The language evolved before my eyes on street ads and billboards as we made our way from the southern, more French influenced part of Belgium and intot he North, Flemish/Dutch side. We made a total of three stops for breaks. From Bruxxels to Berlin was about 11 and a half hours.

I also noticed the extreme amount of fog in the countryside. There were windmills stretching abotu 50-75 ft, but only the bottom 15-20 was visible to the eyes.

The graffiti also evolved. Paris was damn impressive. Within 20km of Berlin, i noticed more stylistic burns and fewer shitty throw-ups.

(yes, I realize im going back and forth between metric systems, and military/normal time. im an american living in europe and im out of my mind confused.)

My first night in Berlin...
well it took me 2 hrs to find my friends hotel once i got off the train because the guy at information didnt speak english and didnt know berlin very well... seriously. which brings me to my next complaint, NOT EVERYONE IN BERLIN SPEAKS ENGLISH!! which is what every single german told me prior to my trip. skool, luckily im a nerd and learning languages is more fun than wii for me. well, maybe not wii bowling. im pretty good at that. and you get to design the players so they really kinda look like you! haha. its so much fuN!...

that night we were out until maybe... 3am. because we thought the trains started working around 3. no, they stop around 2. on the weekends, they run all night. but we caught a cab with an extremely informative cab driver who told us what to check out and where to party new years eve.

let me tell you about my trip to berlin in a nutshell:
first of all, I couldnt have gone with any other two homies except stephanie and michael.
i love these two. they made me the happiest i was in the past 3 months.


Museum Island- student price for 3 day pass to all the museums- 7.50euro
I saw the bust of Nefertiti ^_^.




Oranienburger street- where to go for all the drugs you w ant. you can find anything in the first5 minutes once you step off the metro. no joke..
notice in the picture on the right how the english translation of the warning is much more direct than the german. "Do not deal drugs. this is an arthouse!! dont fuck it up. Drug dealing supports mafia!!"
as opposed to, "Dealing destroys this Arthouse..." in german.


Alexander Platz
Pathetic Guggenheim museum. I was really disappointed. that was the only thing that disappointed me. that, and the german accent in berlin is so damn hard to understand.
Potsdamer Platz
Christmas markets
Bratwursten
Chinese food
getting high in public places
our monumental new years, spent sitting on top of a monument.
and on my last day, it SNOWED!

we ran out of time to see everything. we werent able to do the checkpoint charlie. but we did see the wall, and where the wall would have been. I was also astonished by the number of hitler mustashes i saw drawn onto advertisements. i felt a little unsure how to take that.

OH! and did i mentions germans are racists? i mean, not all of them of course, but more so than the french. the first time in my life i ever experienced what it felt like to be discriminated against for being black. can i also say that only cowards are racists??? No one on this earth has the right to make another human feel guilty for something thats out of their control, and SO IRRELEVANT! I actually felt bad afterwards!!! and Im a nice person!! i dont deserve that bullshit!! thats fucking oppression!! society as a whole becomes more enlightened the more it becomes enlightened. ignorant people contribute dead weight to humanity.

I hate 2/3 of my teachers at one school. They talk down to me, one likes to call me out in front of her students (she has fucking camel toe everyday too. I cant take her seriously. I have that much less respect for her), the other likes to try and correct my english. bitch, dont you know my favorite subject in grade school was grammar??? I want to just tell them both to get off my nuts, but i dont have nuts, but it sucks that girls dont have an equivalent phrase because that is EXACTLY what i am wanting to tell thim right now. and "get off my back" is too softcore. but i believe it was my german neighbor thang who said it first, so i will follow in my buddys footsteps and just say "Je m'en fiche". "I dont give a fuck."

I've just been hangin lose since I got back. Bout to go pick up some fire ass weed from Pascal. I totally shouldnt. I have 4 euro in my french bank account, and probably only about 50 in my american account, and still another 12 days before I get paid. haha. Well, the only thing i HAVE to buy the rest of this month is food. tonight, imma buy some weed and get a free meal. thats how i work. nah, its only cause this stuff just arrived from amsterdam. dont you love my logic? but thats real fucked up that id buy weed with my last 50 bucks instead of food. maybe i have a problem. maybe my job just sucks so hard that id rather eat ramen everyday and be high than have to tolerate my teachers. yes.

its cool. my parents still support me financially. but not for much longer, haha. but actually, i told my dad last night "dad, I think I might be going to New York in May." Maybe it was the word choice (going, instead of moving), the deleted information (to live with a boy), and the random timing at which i called (130 in the afternoon). but he said, "ok". So i will avoid the topic until they bring it up again. and when that time comes, i will defend my decision until they disown me.
Ive planned a second trip back to Germany, to Mainz to visit a friend for a week. As well as a trip to amsterdam just before. Thats in a month.

I better go. I have to go have dinner with my buddies. Eleni is already at the bus stop. I told her I was on my way down, but I really still have to get changed. Its raining though, so now I feel like a horrible person. And I'm still writing... let me stop. Ill write again soon.

joanna