Berlin Diaries #1

[Scrap #1] I still struggle to describe the nature of my relationship with S. We first met over six months earlier when I had just arrived in Berlin. I waited for him at a small Korean restaurant. All I knew about him when he walked in was that he was studying to become a doctor and that he had a tendency to reply to my messages at about three o'clock in the morning. I had suspected that he was not as innocent as his photos would have suggested. We had kept in touch since then, but now it was the evening I was finally taking him out. I tried to play it cool when I saw him walking towards me, but I could feel my eyes filling with excitement. We got a quick coffee and then caught a U-Bahn heading to West Berlin. After stopping by a street art museum, we walked to a bar with its floor covered in sand - this is where, apparently, David Bowie used to hang out during his Berlin years. We ordered two beers while looking over a lady mannequin sitting next to us. She looked like she could make use of a drink as well.

[Scrap #2] After the beers, we proceeded to a Peruvian restaurant, where I continued to dispense my life stories over a plate of ceviche and a very inviting glass of pisco sour. We then moved onto another place, the Green Door, a cocktail bar to which my good friend Ben introduced me when our lives were still careless, and a mid-life crisis was just an abstract term. Ben had moved to Switzerland and has two kids, so I don't see him that often anymore. Nevertheless, I still remember all the good times we had spent together. I'm sure the time will come when we will party in Berlin again, ending the night at KitKat or another similar local establishment. Because of the pandemic, the place was closed, so we found another bar nearby. There, we had two cocktails each (one of the cocktails had lettuce in it) and four (or maybe five) shots of vodka. Eventually, S announced that he had to depart to meet some other friend. I wasn’t overly pleased about it, but I had already accepted that this rollercoaster of excitement and disappointment was just an integral part of trying to become his friend.

[Scrap #3] I woke up feeling hungover, so I tried to remedy it by texting Avi and asking him to meet me for dinner. Avi is a friend of Yiwen and Yiwen is my old friend from London. I only met Avi twice, years ago at a house party and recently when Yiwen visited Berlin. I planned to show up at the dinner place earlier and order a beer to feel fresher when Avi arrived. Unfortunately, as in many places in Berlin, the service was slow, and by the time the beer arrived, Avi had already been sitting at the table. Luckily, he was taking his time studying the selection of schnitzels from the menu. I took advantage of the opportunity and quickly finished my beer, which seemed to have brought me a bit closer to earth. After the food, we walked around the area looking for a place to drink and settled on a small Italian bar. There, we enjoyed a couple of Negronis, which I followed up with a shot of vodka. The vodka put me in the right mood for the night, and it allowed me to sleep through with no major disturbance.

[Scrap #4] I spent the next morning in Factory. I had not had a proper job since Covid started, so I needed to introduce some professional structure to my life. Factory is a co-working place with people full of dreams and unrealised business ideas, so I felt I fitted there perfectly. It is also a place where you can take your laptop and have a coffee without fear of being surrounded by a bunch of crying babies. And the music coming from the speakers is pretty good as well. I spent the evening at Betty F, this time just having a beer and a chat with the bartender and a couple of surrounding guests. Betty F is one of those places to which you always arrive with high hopes only to leave a few hours later, or early in the morning, with a promise never to return. In other words, it is a bit of a shit hole. Yet, I admit that it had somehow become a place where I would gather my thoughts, reflect and plan the next steps for the upcoming days.

[Scrap #5] A much better place, which I had only discovered a few weeks earlier, was a bar called Tipsy Bear. It was just a ten-minute walk away from my flat, and it was where Miko was waiting for me on Friday evening. Miko was also Polish, and we first met three or weeks ago earlier - I was sitting by myself at the table, and he started chatting with me, so we became friends. The bar was holding a drag show that evening and the only seats available were at the front of the stage. I felt a bit too exposed, so I started drinking my beers a bit faster than usual. I suddenly received a message from S. He was also at the bar, sitting at a table around the corner. He was on a date, but that did not prevent me from ordering a round of margaritas for the three of us and drinking together. The show turned into Karaoke, and then everything came to an abrupt end in line with new health regulations and closing times. We stopped by a local Spati to get more supplies and ended up in my place along with a couple of strangers.

[Scrap #6] I woke up at the edge of my bed. The last thing I remembered was drinking wine and talking to someone. I looked to my side and saw that the date was lying in the middle of the bed and S was squeezed in between us. The three of us were naked. The whole situation was slightly awkward and S saved it by getting up and declaring that he needed to attend a brunch. The date followed and after they left, I proceeded back to my bed and decided to simply sleep everything off. I didn’t have much time to dwell on the experiences of the previous night, as I needed to attend another party. I ate a burger and then jumped on the M10 tram, my favourite one in Berlin, heading to Friedrichshain. I ended at another house party that night. It was held in a flat in one of the high rises somewhere near Kreuzberg. Towards the end, I felt so exhausted, that after watching a fifty-year-old woman hypnotically shaking her naked breast to the sound of techno music, I decided to go home. The clock was showing six in the morning when I left the place.

[Scrap #7] I slept through most of the day, and I left my house for a late evening walk, during which I met a young guy standing with his bicycle in front of one of the nearby bars. He observed the police telling the owner to shut down the place as it was already an hour past the curfew. I started talking to him and finally proposed that we should come over to my place to have a drink. To my surprise, he said yes. He seemed different from others. He didn’t drink alcohol, and he was one of those few people that couldn’t wait to get out of this city. He was using his bicycle to distribute flyers for one of the pizza joints, and at the same time, he used this opportunity to act as a freelance journalist. That was why he stopped by in front of the bar, curious about the presence of the police. It was past two in the morning when he informed me that he had to shoot night photos of the new airports. I accompanied him to his bicycle. He promised we would have breakfast someday, and then he departed.

[Scrap #8] On Wednesday, I jumped onto the U2 Bahn and went to Kudam Strasse. I first came to Berlin with my parents, when I was six years old and the wall was still dividing the city into two. I still remember the graffiti on the wall and the bright colors and lights of West Berlin. These days, going back there is like pushing a reset button. Walking out of the U-Bahn station always takes me back to the feeling of excitement when I arrived there for the first time. These days, I can afford many of the things around, so I stopped by a department store and bought myself an eighty-euro sweater. The days had been getting shorter and I could already feel a chill and a slight gloom of an autumn chill. I spent the rest of the afternoon walking around and taking some photos. I knew it was probably going to be a while before I came back there, so I somehow wanted to preserve the memory of those last days. When I got home later in the evening, I put a bottle of Riesling in a bag and took a U2 Tram to attend Miko’s house party.

[Scrap #9] Most of the people at Miko’s party spoke German. At first, I was sitting quietly but after a few glasses of wine, my confidence and perceived fluency of German dramatically improved. The thing is that I didn't know anyone at the party and I didn't really know Miko that much. He just invited me out of nowhere and I said yes. After everyone had left, Miko offered me a cigar and we smoked them while watching some Polish movie. I left his place while still holding a bottle of beer in my hand. Nothing works better for a hangover than a good portion of Ramen, so I took the U-bahn to Kreuzberg to check out the place I was originally planning to take S to. After lunch, I walked along the canals taking in the sights and colours of the now ever-present Berlin's Autumn. I ended up at Tipsy Bear again that evening, chatting with a beautiful Russian guy. We came to my place to finish the bottle of vodka that S’s date left a few days earlier. He had a beautiful soul, so we drunkenly continued talking about life while listening to Chopin's nocturnes playing in the background. 

[Scrap #10] I said goodbye to my new friend at Friedrichstrasse Station and went to Dussman to pick a copy of Alexander Platz, which has kept me a companion ever since I left Berlin. I finally finished packing in the evening and decided to take the U8 Bahn to Kreuzberg to have a last solitary beer at one of the nearby bars. I arrived at Kottbusser Tor, had a kebab and just as I was about to enter the bar, I changed my mind and boarded a bus that had arrived at a nearby stop. It was a dark and rainy evening and I wasn't exactly sure where I was going. I finally got off at Potsdamer Platz and walked towards Mariott Hotel. It was there that I spent a weekend with Flynn a few years earlier. I sat in the lobby, ordered a glass of wine and thought of all the memories Berlin had brought me. Each had been different, but this one had been quite extraordinary. I took an S-bahn back to Oranienburger Straße station and walked home along Kastelene Allee. The streets were filled with tables full of people having their last drinks before another lockdown begins again…