Dancing Barefoot in East Germany
Been feeling the dark edge of freedom: instability.
It's my fourth week here, and that means school is almost over. I really liked it. Our half-days combined written exercises with free discussions about politics, burning social issues, personalities, the world, all in an informal atmosphere. So I'm applying to teach English there as a freelancer. Hey, possible source of income in a nice environment -- could be worse.
The other upshot of school ending is, so's my housing in Schöneberg. Spent some of my third week scrambling for the next step. I have a next-step lined up now in Prenzlauerberg, but it's for ten days starting 21 June, which takes me to 1 July. Still trying to line up something afterward. Meanwhile, I've kind of been riding the Stomach Acid Express. For a couple hours per day I work out the future, which is still pretty complicated at this point, and each day when I'm done, I consciously roll back the thought of the future so that it doesn't overshadow the present. I can feed either fear or joy, and fear doesn't need any help.
Sometimes I wonder why I didn't come to Europe sooner in life, and one of the many answers is: I might not have been able to handle this level of uncertainty before now, either emotionally or financially. Inventing alternate timelines for my own life and ruminating about them seems to be a hobby of mine: the eternal "What-if" brushing against reality, along with all the unanswerable "Why..." questions that a good therapist tells you to discard.
Really, it's better to be in the moment, because that's where birds are singing, and mochaccino tastes best, and the sky is this incredible clear blue that pales off right near the horizon. And outside the window, three musicians stroll by, an accordionist, a man with a trumpet, and a kid banging on a tambourine, playing something Eastern European-sounding, hilarious and sad all at once.
Not that all moments are idyllic. For example, you might be riding down Martin-Luther-Straße one day, thinking "Hot diggity, I might actually be early for class today," and then here's a policeman right in the middle of the bike path, holding up a silly-looking little paddle that says "HALT."
So you HALT, and it turns out that the police in Berlin really need money. They're not having a bake sale, because police cookies don't sell terribly well for some reason. Instead, they're having an open season on people riding on the left side of the bike path, which apparently you're not supposed to, even though everyone does: 15€ fine.
In the fifteen minutes I waited (so much for being early), three other people got HALTed. At 15€ a shot, who needs a bake sale?
If it was my lucky day to get a ticket, at least that morning I had my passport and letters proving that I lived where I said I did. Otherwise I might have gotten a free tour of the police station. So I hear from another expat. Even with the proper documents, there were a lot of polite but icy questions. I gotta say, conversations with police anywhere are squirm-inducing, but conversations with police in a foreign language? 'Scuse me while I change my trousers.
Ironically, that's the first time I've ever been busted on two wheels. If I only had a nickel for every red light I've gone through in New York...
I was going to cobble together some joke about getting nailed like the 95 Theses on Martin-Luther-Straße, but that's really not sporting, is it? Onward.
Das Ministerium für Entspannung
Despite the ominous-sounding name, this is not where I had to go to pay my bike fine, though I did ride there last Saturday night through thickets of fun-seekers. Ministerium für Entspannung translates out to Ministry of Relaxation (rather than Extortion, for example).
The Ministry consists of a low, rickety pale-brown hut on the edge of a bunch of used-car dealerships in eastern Friedrichshain. Yep, former East Germany. I arrived shortly before 1am, paid my 5€, and entered the building through a scrubby little courtyard. The relaxation happened in a living-room-sized space painted black, doused with black light, and decorated with day-glo Jacob's Ladderish constructions of string. Thousands of tiny white paper dots lay like snow over the floor, as if an overzealous office worker had emptied a year's worth of hole-punchings there. They glowed blue, just like snow in moonlight.
Six speakers, surround 5.1, emitted psychedelic trance at perfect levels, neither too hot nor too cold. Most people were dancing barefoot.
I took off my hiking shoes. My socks immediately acquired a white beard of dots. I took them off too and shook the snow off. I dance much better without shoes.
Bliss and blisters resulted. East German floors are not gentle, even with fake snow. We all had fun with that snow, dumping it over each other and flinging it in the air. The DJ stripped down to his skivvies. Some cub ran around spinning a baton and dropping it a lot. I put my shoes back on after someone broke a Prosecco glass. Other people stayed barefoot.
I had a couple half-conversations, though my German was flaccid that night and the music demanded attention. The baton guy came over to chat me up and explain the difference between goa and psy. Well, hopefully he'll post his treatise on the internet.
Physically, I was so tired I was ready to drop, but the music was so damn good I couldn't leave until 5am. When the half-naked DJ finally played something slightly less mind-blowing, I ducked out the door and escaped the Ministry. On the way out, I saw a schedule for the DJs. The party would last until 9pm the next day. Cool, I thought, maybe I'll go sleep and come back. Though I was pretty sure I was finished.
Walked out into broad daylight, which was really surprising, and rode home to Motzstraße, slowly, as my knees were on the verge of bringing a lawsuit against me. Their own Entspannung would begin only when I crawled into bed forty minutes later. Meanwhile, I had a brilliant morning view of the Spree, especially crossing back over the Oberbaumbrücke, an awesome old red-brick bridge with towers. The longest leg of the trip was Skalitzer Straße, overshadowed by the elevated S-Bahn that runs along it. The occasional green park interrupts a series of tall, graffiti-covered iron doors and gates, as well as more than one district's share of Turkish driving schools. Punk Fuckin' Rock, man! ("Skalitzer" does start with Ska, after all...)
Oddly enough, my feet felt fine again within a few hours. But then, I did get up at 2pm.
Trainfoxes
Germany's only about as big as Montana, but Montana's bigger than you think. Found this out when I checked train fares from Berlin to Munich so I could go visit Sarah (rikochan9). "A little under six hours?" I thought. And the fares I was finding tipped dangerously toward 200€. I checked the bus. The bus would still be over 80€ round trip, took eight hours, and only left once a day. I'd arrive in Munich Friday afternoon and leave Sunday morning. Ugh.
Fortunately, my friend Wi. has an awesome travel agent, whose email address translates out to Trainfoxes; they got me a train fare at a little over 100€, leaving Thursday night and going back Sunday night.
German trains are kickass: quiet bullet-shaped jets on velvet rails over the landscape. Nothing rattles. Shatterproof glass doors hiss open automatically for you, and everything -- seats, tables, bathrooms -- stays clean. At night, it's indistinguishable from flying. The train is so fast (up to about 200km/h) they had to bank the tracks. It doesn't feel like wheels are even involved.
On the platform I'd met a kid who works in Sweden but lives in Leipzig ("I want to come home. My Swedish stinks," he complained) and we got to talking. I played him our music -- he dug it. He was going home and helped me transfer in Leipzig. I had the usual unconscionable amount of luggage, as I wanted to record with Sarah. The six hours flew by; I arrived a little before 1am. I found the right S-Bahn in Munich. Fortunately, the rain had left off by then.
Berlin reminds me a bit of New York, and Munich feels, believe it or not, like California in comparison. Not because it has palm trees or beaches, or some wild and crazy youth culture (because it doesn't). But it does have mountains, and something in the air: flowers, a sweet quality. Sarah looks really happy there. Her housing situation is pretty outstanding, and life is coming together for her, especially musically. I went to her concert Friday in the Theatinerkirche (lovingly nicknamed the "Tina Turner Kirche" by Americans) -- she was the soloist for three Händel arias, which she rocked up and down.
Sometimes I wish we could be in the same city again, but I get the impression that Munich is better for classical than electronic music, and that it's quite a bit less punk-rock than Berlin, and that it's more expensive. Also, most of my contacts are here. What can I say; I felt called to Berlin...
In any case, Sarah showed me her old tour route -- she started in Munich as a tour guide. It's Munich's 850th anniversary this year, so there was quite a lot of Bavarian hoopla, Lederhosen, Dirndls, and Bier-swigging when we were out. We passed by the Hofbräuhaus. Dim memories of a family European trip: I know I passed the hotel we'd stayed in, back when Munich was in "West Germany." That long ago... 23 years, if I'm not mistaken.
Apart from Sarah showing off Munich, we had a long, lazy weekend, biked around some, ate a lot, talked. We recorded vocals on something older and a brand-new idea I got last week which is really, really, honestly "dark disco," but then, the last song I wrote that got labeled as "disco" did just make me about $3000, so hey. My dirty secret is: I like music that makes me jump up and dance. I also like Siegfried's Funeral March, but Wagner wasn't really in the business of booty-shaking.
Back to Sarah: it would have been pretty difficult to come here alone. Sometimes she has to remind me to take a deep breath. It's cool and it's exciting here, but it's like standing on a cliff. Friends are a lifeline. Even a two-line email means a lot when you're far away from the familiar.
Normal Freaks
Saturday I'm moving to Prenzlauerberg, right across from the Kulturbrauerei, where Unto Ashes opened for Qntal in 2006. Living with an artist who has an exhibition in the LORIS Gallery in Gartenstraße right now, which I want to catch before it goes away this week.
Then, after I move, I'm going to ride bikes with some friends.
Then, I'm probably going to stay up all night dancing. There are two places to go. Decisions, decisions. One of them is another psytrance thing, so I suppose I could always show up at 6 am and still catch another 15 hours of party, and sleep when I'm dead.
One of my housing requests got in touch tonight. Alt-Treptow. I know the area from that long walk down Puschkinallee. "Wir sind normale Freaks... We are normal freaks," their ad had said. "Three meat-eaters and a vegetarian, and the vegetarian is looking for another vegetarian." Hi! I am also a normal freak. The very fact that I know what that means makes me one. I don't wear gothic makeup to the grocery store anymore, but I kind of don't need to. I haven't been mistaken for normal in years.
I'm seeing the Normal Freaks on Thursday night, and we can compare our respective normal:freak ratios and guess whether it'll work out or not.
It's my fourth week here, and that means school is almost over. I really liked it. Our half-days combined written exercises with free discussions about politics, burning social issues, personalities, the world, all in an informal atmosphere. So I'm applying to teach English there as a freelancer. Hey, possible source of income in a nice environment -- could be worse.
The other upshot of school ending is, so's my housing in Schöneberg. Spent some of my third week scrambling for the next step. I have a next-step lined up now in Prenzlauerberg, but it's for ten days starting 21 June, which takes me to 1 July. Still trying to line up something afterward. Meanwhile, I've kind of been riding the Stomach Acid Express. For a couple hours per day I work out the future, which is still pretty complicated at this point, and each day when I'm done, I consciously roll back the thought of the future so that it doesn't overshadow the present. I can feed either fear or joy, and fear doesn't need any help.
Sometimes I wonder why I didn't come to Europe sooner in life, and one of the many answers is: I might not have been able to handle this level of uncertainty before now, either emotionally or financially. Inventing alternate timelines for my own life and ruminating about them seems to be a hobby of mine: the eternal "What-if" brushing against reality, along with all the unanswerable "Why..." questions that a good therapist tells you to discard.
Really, it's better to be in the moment, because that's where birds are singing, and mochaccino tastes best, and the sky is this incredible clear blue that pales off right near the horizon. And outside the window, three musicians stroll by, an accordionist, a man with a trumpet, and a kid banging on a tambourine, playing something Eastern European-sounding, hilarious and sad all at once.
Not that all moments are idyllic. For example, you might be riding down Martin-Luther-Straße one day, thinking "Hot diggity, I might actually be early for class today," and then here's a policeman right in the middle of the bike path, holding up a silly-looking little paddle that says "HALT."
So you HALT, and it turns out that the police in Berlin really need money. They're not having a bake sale, because police cookies don't sell terribly well for some reason. Instead, they're having an open season on people riding on the left side of the bike path, which apparently you're not supposed to, even though everyone does: 15€ fine.
In the fifteen minutes I waited (so much for being early), three other people got HALTed. At 15€ a shot, who needs a bake sale?
If it was my lucky day to get a ticket, at least that morning I had my passport and letters proving that I lived where I said I did. Otherwise I might have gotten a free tour of the police station. So I hear from another expat. Even with the proper documents, there were a lot of polite but icy questions. I gotta say, conversations with police anywhere are squirm-inducing, but conversations with police in a foreign language? 'Scuse me while I change my trousers.
Ironically, that's the first time I've ever been busted on two wheels. If I only had a nickel for every red light I've gone through in New York...
I was going to cobble together some joke about getting nailed like the 95 Theses on Martin-Luther-Straße, but that's really not sporting, is it? Onward.
Das Ministerium für Entspannung
Despite the ominous-sounding name, this is not where I had to go to pay my bike fine, though I did ride there last Saturday night through thickets of fun-seekers. Ministerium für Entspannung translates out to Ministry of Relaxation (rather than Extortion, for example).
The Ministry consists of a low, rickety pale-brown hut on the edge of a bunch of used-car dealerships in eastern Friedrichshain. Yep, former East Germany. I arrived shortly before 1am, paid my 5€, and entered the building through a scrubby little courtyard. The relaxation happened in a living-room-sized space painted black, doused with black light, and decorated with day-glo Jacob's Ladderish constructions of string. Thousands of tiny white paper dots lay like snow over the floor, as if an overzealous office worker had emptied a year's worth of hole-punchings there. They glowed blue, just like snow in moonlight.
Six speakers, surround 5.1, emitted psychedelic trance at perfect levels, neither too hot nor too cold. Most people were dancing barefoot.
I took off my hiking shoes. My socks immediately acquired a white beard of dots. I took them off too and shook the snow off. I dance much better without shoes.
Bliss and blisters resulted. East German floors are not gentle, even with fake snow. We all had fun with that snow, dumping it over each other and flinging it in the air. The DJ stripped down to his skivvies. Some cub ran around spinning a baton and dropping it a lot. I put my shoes back on after someone broke a Prosecco glass. Other people stayed barefoot.
I had a couple half-conversations, though my German was flaccid that night and the music demanded attention. The baton guy came over to chat me up and explain the difference between goa and psy. Well, hopefully he'll post his treatise on the internet.
Physically, I was so tired I was ready to drop, but the music was so damn good I couldn't leave until 5am. When the half-naked DJ finally played something slightly less mind-blowing, I ducked out the door and escaped the Ministry. On the way out, I saw a schedule for the DJs. The party would last until 9pm the next day. Cool, I thought, maybe I'll go sleep and come back. Though I was pretty sure I was finished.
Walked out into broad daylight, which was really surprising, and rode home to Motzstraße, slowly, as my knees were on the verge of bringing a lawsuit against me. Their own Entspannung would begin only when I crawled into bed forty minutes later. Meanwhile, I had a brilliant morning view of the Spree, especially crossing back over the Oberbaumbrücke, an awesome old red-brick bridge with towers. The longest leg of the trip was Skalitzer Straße, overshadowed by the elevated S-Bahn that runs along it. The occasional green park interrupts a series of tall, graffiti-covered iron doors and gates, as well as more than one district's share of Turkish driving schools. Punk Fuckin' Rock, man! ("Skalitzer" does start with Ska, after all...)
Oddly enough, my feet felt fine again within a few hours. But then, I did get up at 2pm.
Trainfoxes
Germany's only about as big as Montana, but Montana's bigger than you think. Found this out when I checked train fares from Berlin to Munich so I could go visit Sarah (rikochan9). "A little under six hours?" I thought. And the fares I was finding tipped dangerously toward 200€. I checked the bus. The bus would still be over 80€ round trip, took eight hours, and only left once a day. I'd arrive in Munich Friday afternoon and leave Sunday morning. Ugh.
Fortunately, my friend Wi. has an awesome travel agent, whose email address translates out to Trainfoxes; they got me a train fare at a little over 100€, leaving Thursday night and going back Sunday night.
German trains are kickass: quiet bullet-shaped jets on velvet rails over the landscape. Nothing rattles. Shatterproof glass doors hiss open automatically for you, and everything -- seats, tables, bathrooms -- stays clean. At night, it's indistinguishable from flying. The train is so fast (up to about 200km/h) they had to bank the tracks. It doesn't feel like wheels are even involved.
On the platform I'd met a kid who works in Sweden but lives in Leipzig ("I want to come home. My Swedish stinks," he complained) and we got to talking. I played him our music -- he dug it. He was going home and helped me transfer in Leipzig. I had the usual unconscionable amount of luggage, as I wanted to record with Sarah. The six hours flew by; I arrived a little before 1am. I found the right S-Bahn in Munich. Fortunately, the rain had left off by then.
Berlin reminds me a bit of New York, and Munich feels, believe it or not, like California in comparison. Not because it has palm trees or beaches, or some wild and crazy youth culture (because it doesn't). But it does have mountains, and something in the air: flowers, a sweet quality. Sarah looks really happy there. Her housing situation is pretty outstanding, and life is coming together for her, especially musically. I went to her concert Friday in the Theatinerkirche (lovingly nicknamed the "Tina Turner Kirche" by Americans) -- she was the soloist for three Händel arias, which she rocked up and down.
Sometimes I wish we could be in the same city again, but I get the impression that Munich is better for classical than electronic music, and that it's quite a bit less punk-rock than Berlin, and that it's more expensive. Also, most of my contacts are here. What can I say; I felt called to Berlin...
In any case, Sarah showed me her old tour route -- she started in Munich as a tour guide. It's Munich's 850th anniversary this year, so there was quite a lot of Bavarian hoopla, Lederhosen, Dirndls, and Bier-swigging when we were out. We passed by the Hofbräuhaus. Dim memories of a family European trip: I know I passed the hotel we'd stayed in, back when Munich was in "West Germany." That long ago... 23 years, if I'm not mistaken.
Apart from Sarah showing off Munich, we had a long, lazy weekend, biked around some, ate a lot, talked. We recorded vocals on something older and a brand-new idea I got last week which is really, really, honestly "dark disco," but then, the last song I wrote that got labeled as "disco" did just make me about $3000, so hey. My dirty secret is: I like music that makes me jump up and dance. I also like Siegfried's Funeral March, but Wagner wasn't really in the business of booty-shaking.
Back to Sarah: it would have been pretty difficult to come here alone. Sometimes she has to remind me to take a deep breath. It's cool and it's exciting here, but it's like standing on a cliff. Friends are a lifeline. Even a two-line email means a lot when you're far away from the familiar.
Normal Freaks
Saturday I'm moving to Prenzlauerberg, right across from the Kulturbrauerei, where Unto Ashes opened for Qntal in 2006. Living with an artist who has an exhibition in the LORIS Gallery in Gartenstraße right now, which I want to catch before it goes away this week.
Then, after I move, I'm going to ride bikes with some friends.
Then, I'm probably going to stay up all night dancing. There are two places to go. Decisions, decisions. One of them is another psytrance thing, so I suppose I could always show up at 6 am and still catch another 15 hours of party, and sleep when I'm dead.
One of my housing requests got in touch tonight. Alt-Treptow. I know the area from that long walk down Puschkinallee. "Wir sind normale Freaks... We are normal freaks," their ad had said. "Three meat-eaters and a vegetarian, and the vegetarian is looking for another vegetarian." Hi! I am also a normal freak. The very fact that I know what that means makes me one. I don't wear gothic makeup to the grocery store anymore, but I kind of don't need to. I haven't been mistaken for normal in years.
I'm seeing the Normal Freaks on Thursday night, and we can compare our respective normal:freak ratios and guess whether it'll work out or not.