Under the False Pretense of Sightseeing: Berlin

Waking up at 2:30 in the afternoon isn't something I've done in years. Noon has always been the tipping point; you wake up by then, period. But 2:30 was the hour of waking today; my body clock, and the eastern seaboard of the United States thinks it's still 9:30 AM though. The first night in Berlin was tremendous. Rehash: we went to a variety of small bars, talked to people in German and English, got turned away at Panormabar, got into Watergate, watched the sun rise over the rivers of Berlin, and went to sleep at 7AM.

So waking up, we finally shook off the hangover at 4PM, at least enough to leave the flat. We walked around the commercial areas of Berlin near Alexanderplatz, and checked out the German version of Best Buy: Media Markt.

Jon was asked to play for two hours at a hostel right down the street from his flat, so he started around 8PM. I went looking for dinner, as I had only eaten at 6:30AM and a small panini at 4:30PM. 2 kilometers later, I was still unable to find anything that really spurred me to buy it. I went back to the same doner place I went at 6:30AM (there will probably be an entire post about doner, and about German interior design; stay tuned), grabed a falafel doner, mowed down about half of it, and went back to the bar he was playing at. Took a few pictures, and people he knew/worked with started showing up.

We went out for a few drinks because of a coworker of his got laid off recently. After leaving the hostel Jon was playing at, we drank for a bit in his flat, and then left to go find another bar. We drank there until 2:30AM, when we finally left, and Jon, Inti, Max and I left to find an Amercian ex-patriot bar. It was closed by the time we got there, but prior to going there we went to a very special place.

White Trash Fast Food.

Not a cultural statement, but a name of a bar. The upstairs plays 50's, 60's, and 70's American rock music (Elvis Presley, etc.), but the downstairs is "my shit": electrohouse. DJ's spinning with Serato Scratch, two Technics SL1200mkX, and a Pioneer DJM600. KILLER music. It's no Watergate (I really didn't do that club justice, I'll write more on that in my off time), but the music was great for a basement. Shot the shit with one of the DJs for a little bit, and took some pictures of them spinning. We left White Trash Fast Food looking for Hairy Mary's (the American bar); by the time we got there, it was closed. So we started walking back, and when we got to Rosenthaler Platz (the U-Bahn station near Jon's flat), we stopped for Asia Box, or greasy street vendor Chinese noodles. There we discussed American politics with questionably straight Irish and English kids who were hanging out around the area. I usually wouldn't say that the British accents made me think they were gay, but the comment that "if we were oil wrestling, I wouldn't let you go" swayed my usually temperate opinion in a certain direction. Nice guys; they wanted me to vote for Hillary Clinton instead of Barack Obama. I argued, they didn't listen, we ate noodles. Good time.

More tomorrow. Sight seeing, probably.

So now, more pictures...