We thought we would head out to Potsdam today so we took the train out there (about 40 minutes). Since I was still a bit hungover from the night before, we stopped at a place that sells Doner kebabs and I got one to eat. A Doner kebab is similar to a gyro, but the meat tastes a bit different and I have to say I’m not a fan. I also came to the realization that the entire hostel smells of Doner kebab, most likely due to the fact that there is a 24 hour Doner kebab place around the corner from the hostel.
As soon as we stepped outside the station, it proceeded to pour down rain. We waited around for about 30 minutes, but once it looked like it was going to stick around, we decided to get back on the train to Berlin.
Since I got these super blisters from all the walking we did the day before, I thought it might be a good idea to maybe buy a new pair of shoes, so we stopped in a Kausthof Galleria (a large department store, similar to a Macy’s but with a grocery store on the ground floor – also similar to the Corte De Ingles stores in Spain). I found this pair of shoes that seemed to fit the bill of what I was looking for -more on this in a later post.
Arvin finally got in contact with his friend, Steffi who lives in Potsdam and we arranged to meet up for dinner and drinks later in the evening. We then decided to take it a bit easy and read and relaxed until we met up with Steffi.
After meeting up with Steffi, she took us out to Prenzlaur Berg, which is an area of East Berlin that apparently is currently in the process of being gentrified. We ate dinner at this Napolitan pizza place called I Due Forni that was pretty packed. The place was decorated with a bunch of pictures of Che and Marcos and had a bit of a socialist vibe. The walls were covered with autographs of a bunch of rock bands like Bad Religion, Bloc Party, Coheed and Cambria, Thursday, etc. The pizza was okay, but the service was super slow, but apparently that is the norm for most restaurants in Berlin. Also, like most restaurants throughout Europe, they don’t bring the check until you ask for it and if it is not uncommon for people to sit and talk at their tables hours after they have finished their meals.
After having dinner, we walked over to the Rosenthaler Platz area and had a few drinks at a bar, whose name I cannot remember. It was a relaxed loungey sort of bar.
I made a tactical error on our first day. Since I had not yet totally figured out the metro system, I thought “hey, let’s just walk to the Brandenburg gate, it’s only 2.3 miles, no problem!” Well, since I hadn’t really tested out my new shoes on a sustained long walk, I managed to get blisters on the heels of both of my feet (I am writing this on Saturday, and they are a little better by now).
Added to this, you can see the Siegesaulle (angel tower statue from Wings of Desire) from the Brandenburg gate, but when you actually walk over towards it, you quickly learn it seemed far closer than it actually was (it was more than a mile walk). After this we decided it would be much wiser to use the metro system. I found it to be fairly easy to figure outand we ended up riding around on the metro for the rest of the afternoon getting off at random stops to see the city.
(I wrote the next section after getting back to the room after the night out).
Thanks to a gang of English folks we met at the Wombar I can honestly say I’ve experienced the Berlin nighlife (I know whoda thunk coming from me?). For once my encyclopedic knowledge of British pop culture has paid off (success!!!!). After a long day of wandering around Berlin, Arvin and I were hanging around the Wombar on the terrace and we met a group of people from Manchester, UK. After Arvin struck up a conversation we both managed to get ourselves invited out onto a night onto the town with these cats (and I surprisngly at least got to experiene the quintessential Berlin nightlife – it being 3am when I’m writing this – Arvin wisely decided to cut his losses and tucked in at 1:30am).
Just a word about these english cats (Harshal, Kulbir, Jenny, Sonya and Dan), the nicest people I have ever met, totally accepting of our Americanness (I’m sure helped by our total self-deprecation). I’m pretty f-in wasted as I write this right now, but I at least wanted to get something down before i forget anything.
Awesomely enough Harshal, Kulbir, Jenny and I totally got into a pretty serious discussion about Anglo-US politics and culture and due to my Extensive knowledge on the subject matter I’m sure i helped endear myself and Arvin to them.
I love Iceland. It has to be the most efficient country I have ever visited (although from what I’ve heard Germany may give it a run for it’s money). We landed at 6:30am and even with a minor mishap with Arvin’s bag, we were in our rental car driving away from Keflavik at 7:30am, the time I had optimistically planned (I thought with immigration and getting the rental car, we would have been off by 8:30am).
Apparently I am pretty awesome because I still remember my way around Iceland from when I was there about 2 years ago. I drove us straight to downtown Reykjavik and after walking around a bit we found an open coffee shop sorta place to get lunch. Luckily for me, Arvin is the talkative social sort so it helps counteract my off-putting surliness. Arvin struck up a conversation with the gal running the place and after hearing we we backpacking Europe she regaled us with stories of her Europacking (new shorthand? We’ll see what else I come up with) trip 8 years ago which ended up with her and her friend dreadfully ill in Greece. It was definitely a good idea for us to have rented a car because it gave us the freedom to drive around and go where we wanted instead of being attached to the less than flexible bus schedule. Going to the Blue Lagoon again was totally worth it.
Going to see that show at the Prophet Bar was an incredibly bittersweet moment for me. Having seen some amazingly great bands play at the Gypsy Tea Room (Postal Service, Minus the Bear, Beulah, I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness) not to mention scores of others in the Ballroom, seeing what has become of the Gypsy Tea Room pains my heart. All the past show flyers and artwork are gone, replaced by some lame generic paintings and random biblical quotations, apparently related to their namesake. I’m not sure if they changed out the sound system, but it definitely sounded different. The Gypsy Tea Room was probably my favorite venue of all times because I always knew no matter who was playing, the sound would be turned to 11 and broken off, but it would still sound amazing. Now it was kinda loud, kinda blah, pretty disappointing all told.
Deep Ellum as a whole appears to be a pale shadow of it’s former self. There weren’t even the random bums walking around, it was practically a ghost town. I know I saw some shit in the past about how the city was basically wanting to gentrify Deep Ellum and it looks like that is way it is going.
It’s like Martin Blank says in Grosse Pointe Blank, you can never go home again. One last nail in the coffin of me ever moving back to fucking Dallas.
Even though it kinda sucks driving out to Pomona, at least the Glass House is a pretty kickass venue. The last few shows I have been to there haven’t been that full making for a nice listening/viewing experience. We managed to get to the Glass House about 5 minutes before Russian Circles came on, pretty fucking perfect timing if you ask me. For once the sound was just right, fucking loud. The last couple of shows I’ve been to (Metalocalypse and 65daysofstatic) the sound was not loud enough for my taste. I mean c’mon, one of the main reasons I go to see bands live is for the blistering loudness of their playing over megawattages of speakers. If I wanted to listen to music without the necessity for earplugs, I would just stay at home. Anyways, I digress. Russian Circles were pretty badass. The drummer as always rocked the fuck out. I think J or C made a comment about how when a band goes to see Russian Circles, their parting comment is always “where can we get a drummer like that?” I also noticed that he had a little fan on his kit, so that was pretty funny to see.
Fucking awesome! Ira deconstructed how they put together an episode of This American Life and spoke about how they get ideas for each show. He ended his talk with an awesome story about the Arabian Nights and mentioned a playwright, Mary Zimmerman (MacArthur Grant fellow) who had put on a great theater production of the Arabian Nights. He also talked about the use of music on the show and there was this great moment that clicked in my head when he mentioned that the way they use music (especially for him) is to talk when their should be singing in the song. He mentioned how the artist Bexar Bexar sent them a CD unsolicited and they went on to use his music quite a lot.