You can drink beers on the street!

(Posted a day late)
I will spare you the boring details of being a tourist yesterday and all the amazing places we saw, and instead relate to you what has been so far the most formative Berlin experience for me. After having sushi dinner in a beautiful little cobblestone courtyard last evening, my dad and I walked around Mitte (a downtownish area near many of Berlin's big attractions and close to the old wall- which I have yet to see) to find a corner store and buy some travellers- two Becks and two Pilsner Urquell to try to wind us down and get to sleep.

Finding ourselves totally wired and still peckish at 11pm, we walked down from our hotel looking over a busy three-way intersection to a falafel place just below. (Best falafel I've ever had- no word of a lie. I think it was the whole coriander seeds they used) As we were sitting there we struck up some conversation with a couple guys my age sitting across the doorway from us- Max from Austria (now living in Berlin) and Alex from Munich. We were inquiring about Berlins' economic situation because my dad couldn't believe everyone here had real jobs or that the local economy was somehow sustainable, which it turns out, no one does, and it totally isn't. Berlin, Max explained, runs an enormous deficit and is basically sustained by a national kitty somewhat like our provincial equilization back in Canada.

After our Falafels Max offered to take us out to a nearby place for drinks, which we happily obliged. Just across the street and down a bit from our hotel there is a ruinous, old, five-storey prewar building that contains several bars and clubs, artists' spaces a cinema and shitloads of squatters. My dad explained to our companions how much it reminded him of hanging out in Rochdale in the 1970s. We walked up eight flights of a graffitti-and-poster-plastered staircase to a bar situated on the precipice of an open wall looking out onto the city. The walls- Max explained had been bombed out in the war and no real restructuring had been done to the building since. It was fucking cool. You know when you see a bombed-out apartment building where you can see inside the rooms like a dollhouse? Imagine a bar done up like a CBGBs bathroom stall in one of these and you will start to imagine what it was like.

We drank beers and talked into the wee hours, with Max- his education in modern history- elaborating on the nuances of Berlin as a city, and us debating the source of Hitlers' anti-semitism, the charming genius of Ronald Reagan, and why Microprose videogames sucked.

Berlin is a city of contrast- it was built on categorical divides and exists as an anomalous, impossible endeavour. The art, design, style and history here is suffocating. So far I find there to be more good-looking guys than girls though, and I still think Toronto is the hottest city in the world.

I must post more on this city.. for what I can't put into words I will try to find pictures to describe.

Bis später...

PS- is this blog really boring? I feel like this whole 'travelogue' thing is really tedious.. will try a different approach next post.