Die Hard Three

I like the names of the metro stations here in Berlin. Cottbusser Platz. Landsberger Allee. Kottbusser Tor. Mehrowerraoulwallenbergspringpfuhlbies Strasse. Qottbusser Dorf. The people who made the subway must have had a blast naming them. My favourite metro stations are of course in London. Wood Lane. Shepherd’s Bush. Cockfosters. St. John’s Wood. Some say the English are all dry wit. I say, take one look at a map of the London Underground to disprove that hypothesis.

I’ve always wanted to name something. A few years ago I really wanted to get some cats – mostly so I could choose what they would be called. Murtaugh and Riggs. Mayhem and Chaos. Castor and Pollux. I never could decide. The only living thing I can remember naming is a friend’s dog. I shouted out Franklin and she loved it.

I remember reading about a terrorist organization based in the Philippines and their name in English translates as the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. I can just see these guys when they were sitting around trying to decide what to call themselves. Maybe their leader already had a great name picked out or maybe they used some sort of multi-round balloting system where each round the least popular names were dropped except if one of the names had more than 75% of the votes then they would just skip the remaining rounds and declare that one the winner.

The one English-speaking guy there would have had his notebook out and he would have been writing down the names when he first saw it. Or maybe it happened later that night when he got home. He wanted to find out if the .org domain name was already registered (it was). Either way it doesn’t matter. What matters is that it’s hilarious and for that terrorist, getting up to go to work each day was that much easier because of how he could now answer the question, “What do you do for a living?”

More CanCon – I arrived at my local last night and the hit song Ironic (1996) by Alanis Morissette was playing on the radio. No surprise here – I think Jagged Little Pill sold over 30 million copies worldwide. Is it just me or is the only irony that none of what she sings about is ironic – except maybe the “no-smoking sign on your cigarette break”?

Eric Partridge, in Usage and Abusage, writes that “Irony consists in stating the contrary of what is meant.” And here is an example I found on Wikipedia “Sullivan, whose real interest was, ironically, serious music, which he composed with varying degrees of success, achieved fame for his comic opera scores rather than for his more earnest efforts.”

With this in mind, you can decide for yourself if the song is actually about irony. Here are all the the relevant parts.:

• An old man turned ninety-eight – He won the lottery and died the next day.
• It’s a black fly in your Chardonnay.
• It’s a death row pardon two minutes too late
• It’s like rain on your wedding day
• It’s a free ride when you’ve already paid
• It’s the good advice that you just didn’t take
• Mr. Play It Safe was afraid to fly – He packed his suitcase and kissed his kids goodbye – He waited his whole damn life to take that flight –  And as the plane crashed down he thought – “Well isn’t this nice…”
• A traffic jam when you’re already late
• A no-smoking sign on your cigarette break
• It’s like ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife
• It’s meeting the man of my dreams –  And then meeting his beautiful wife

Personally, I think the song should be called “Unlucky”, do you not agree? Natasha, I’m turning to you for guidance here. Or should I stick to writing about sidewalks? Note: I’m preparing an epic post about sidewalks.

Am I the only person who finds smoking gross? I’m sitting in a non-smoking cafe, but all the windows are open and there are two customers and one of the staff sitting on the patio, chain-smoking cigarettes like they just got back from the war. Would they be so cavalier with their smoking if they knew how ill they were making the non-smoking customer (me)? It’s a nice day and I wouldn’t mind sitting outside, but now I’ve moved three quarters of the way inside the bar because it’s getting unbearable.

Actually he was smoking a cigar.

Last night I was one of three customers left in the pub before closing. The other two asked me if I minded if they smoked. Of course I said I didn’t mind – they were far enough away and I was leaving soon thereafter. I have to say their politeness was refreshing.

Every time the server lights one up I ask her to get me something. A beer, then a glass of water. Do you have a menu? I figure there’s less smoke being blasted into the cafe when her cancer stick is sitting in the ashtray and not sticking out of her mouth.

My previous seat by the window.

The smoking ban will eventually reach Berlin and I hear the winters here are pretty cold. I’m thinking all the windows will probably be closed for at least a few months of the year.

“What right has any man to become a perambulating nuisance—a moving smoke-house—a traveling volcano—leaving his trail of nauseous vapor on the air, which his neighbor cannot avoid, but must, perforce, respire?”

— From a 1853 NYT editorial

——

Update – the kid of the chain-smoking server is running around the bar screaming and yelling. He sits down at my table and starts up a conversation (he looks to be about three years old).

Who am I kidding here? I have no idea how old he is.

The kid’s father comes by an says, “I hope he’s not bothering you” to which I respond, “as long as he doesn’t light up a cigarette”. He laughs and goes back outside to join his friends.

Then the kid comes back and sees his picture on my screen. He starts pointing and yelling with excitement that he’s on the computer. It might be time to leave soon…

The weather has been spectacular for each of the past 18 days. There was one thunderstorm when I was in Rome that managed to shut down the subway, but that was at night. And last Tuesday it rained for about 30 minutes in the morning in Berlin. Other than that it’s been perfect.

Is it snowing in Ottawa yet?

On Thursday I was invited to a BBQ in the park. On Sunday at 13:00 I met up with Bénédicte and two of her friends, Janet and Cindy (Three’s Company just wasn’t the same after Suzanne Somers left) and we went to the Volkspark Friedrichshain (M5, M6, M8, or you can just walk). I had gone shopping the night before and purchased two sausages and two sausage buns to eat at the BBQ. We picked up some beer along the way.

What a nice display of beer.

So we get there and everything is awesome. The weather is great, there’s lots of people, and best of all one of the French guys has brought this game where you throw the big heavy silver balls and try to get them closest to the little yellow ball. It was sooo much fun.

You get two points if both your balls are closest to the little ball.

Anyway, so Leo is running the BBQ and I’ve got my sausages on the grill and it they’re all cooked up good.

BBQ! French-German style!

So I move one to the side (away from the heat) and take the other and go over to where everyone is eating. When I finish, I go back to the grill and low and behold my sausage is missing! I look over and there’s Leo. He’s just about to eat my sausage!

I stopped him just in time.

Other than the sausage mix-up it was a perfect day. Twenty-five degree weather on the second of October. BBQ and beer in the park. I even managed to get in a little nap. Does it get any better than this?

So I had to make a decision on how I want to get around Berlin. There were six main choices

1. Buy a bike and take the tram (pay as you go)
2. Tram (monthly pass 74 euro) plus walking
3. Walk everywhere
4. Remain immobile
5. Buy a car
6. Use a taxi service

The factors I had to consider were complicated and many. I will list them all for you now:

1. When hanging out with Berliners they all have bikes – my bikelessness might impact rendezvous times
2. The weather will not stay nice forever – walking and biking in the rain sucks
3. Sometimes I want to visit locations that are outside of biking / walking distance
4. The other people in my German school do not have bikes and are relying on pubic transportation
5. Berlin has an awesome streetcar / underground / train / bus system
6. In Berlin one can purchase a pass for 30 days (e.g. June 5 to July 4) or for the calendar month.
7. I’m going to be leaving Berlin for a few days next month (maybe two weeks)
8. If I get a bike I need to sell it before I return to Kanada
9. Walking is good exercise but it is very time consuming
10. The pay-as-you-go use of the tram / subway is about 6 euros for a day pass (or about 1.5 euros per trip within the AB Zone)
11. I can use time on the tram / subway to educate you with this blog or to read or to study the German
12. Sometimes I’m required to move large quantities of substances around the city
13. Right now I am of no fixed address
14. One usually sees the more interesting things on the trams / subways

So I’m in the pub around the corner from my house, typing away. I hit the loo and on the way back Diamond Sun by Glass Tiger is playing on the stereo. I can’t believe my freaking’ ears. Now, you have to understand that Black Velvet was a number one hit everywhere. It made Christopher Ward a mulit-bajillionaire. But Glass Tiger?

There is no real way to describe the experience (yet I’m going to try). It’s a combination of too many factors. The complete lack of English or French being spoken in the bar. Being so far from Canada. The fact that it was not that popular song to begin with. I only really started getting into music circa 1986 so Glass Tiger would have been on my first mix tape.

Diamond Sun was a good song – the first single off their second album. Glass Tiger faded into obscurity shortly thereafter. But the the previous song on the radio was also Canadian: Tal Bachman’s She’s so High. I’m not surprised to hear this one: it’s more recent and I understand it was pretty popular. But still, this begs the questions: is German radio required to adhere to CanCon? There’s only one way to find out.

On another note, in the year 2000 in Burlington Ontario, I saw Glass Tiger perform at a benefit concert where my cousin was the MC. My friend Nita and I were essentially hanging backstage with, Zappacosta, Glass Tiger, Platinum Blonde, and Randy Bachman (father of Tal from the previous paragraph – and also Taking Care of Business).

For some reason in my previous post I forgot to mention the best part of last night. On my way home from the bar I checked in on the doner shop we went to the night before and they were playing *another* Jean Claude Van Damme movie.

JCVD’s awesome mullet was a dead give-away for Hard Target but I had no idea which film this was as he was sporting his normal do. My only clue (and it was huge) was that Oscar-nominated Stephen Rae was the villain.

And that turned out to be enough for me to find the movie on IMDB.

What can I say about my first Saturday night in Berlin

On my way downtown I realized that one of the things I find unnerving about the drinking in public is that unlike in Kanada, the kids are not drinking your standard 341 ml bottles of beer. See, over here things are reversed – the majority of beers in Germany are 500 ml bottles and in Canada a person drinking from one of these larger bottles in public would be an indication of someone you might want to avoid.

I watched the Phillies win (they were up by 8 runs with three outs to go – I’m pretty sure they made it)

When I left the pub the neighbouring bar was playing Black Velvet. I don’t hear this song for ten years and then boom, twice in 23 hours. In Germany. Very strange.

And then there are these “alcohol cops” that go around giving breathalyzer tests to drunk people. I think it’s just a mechanism to reduce drunk driving but it looks like it could be effective.

Bonjour La Police!

Maybe one indication that I’m getting proficient in German is my ability to become annoyed after an engagement conducted entirely in my third language. The transaction in question was one that I had forecast well in advance and I figured it would be the second easiest thing I would do during my 13 weeks here in Germany. I was wrong.

So if you think my views on child-rearing are utilitarian, wait till you hear my thoughts on haircuts. When it comes to visiting the hairdresser some people in my family are anarchists (e.g. they get their hair cut once every sixty months) and others, like me, a more civilized every three to four weeks. And as you can tell from my photos I’m in dire need of one.

Now I’m thinking “end to end this should take five minutes”. I’m basing this on what I did in the morning: traveled effortlessly on public transportation (changing trains a total of three times – two outbound, one for the return trip) across half the city. I didn’t have to wait more than three minutes for any of the five trains I had to catch. Implementing an effective public transportation system is really hard and the Germans have done such a good job at this sort of thing I’m thinking they’ve probably got a robot or something that will cut my hair in like 3 minutes. I only need a number 4.

Sadly, there was no robot.

I’m waking down Schlesiches Tor Strasse and I pass this hair salon. I pop in and the woman working there asks me to come back in one hour – for my 5 minute haircut. Ok… so when I do come back she motions me to sit on the sofa to wait. After witting for fifteen minutes she tells me it’s going to be another fifteen or twenty minutes. Now I’m a patient person but I just spent my first 15 minutes watching the other hairdresser tease the bangs of her client while applying enough hairspray to burn a hole in the ozone layer the size of Texas. She could have cut my hair twice in the amount of time it took her to finish with Goldilocks.

Basically all the worst parts of the bible.

So I bail out of there and I return to the pub to work on my blog. Here I sit, my hair a complete mess, but kinda happy I was able to get upset in German. One step closer to being complete.

Note: for a return trip, the number of trains waited for is equal to the number of transfers plus two (the wait for the first outbound train and for the first return train)

My first full week of school is under my belt. I have to say it feels good. The people in my class are great. I’m meeting some of them tonight at Belushi’s to watch the first game of the Rangers-Rays series. I get there at 23:00 and the game has just started and the kitchen is closed. Alex (from France/England) and Miel (Seattle) arrive about half an hour later. Finn (from Sweden?) never shows. After about 4 innings we’re all starving so we go grab a doner at the Alexander Platz. Hard Target is playing on the TV. I don’t even know where to begin with this one.

We return to the bar to watch the end of the game. Miel really wants to see the Yankees but they’re not on until 02:30. We grab a beer for last call and finish watching the Rangers lose (big time). I take off when the Yankees and Tigers are tied one all.

Making your way through a German city early on a Saturday morning is an interesting experience. Compare this to my first night in Tunisia almost one year ago

In Germany you can purchase alcohol (beer) at any time of the day and you are permitted to drink it anywhere (even in a moving car). So on your walk home on a typical Friday night you will see people out drinking beer in public, on the trams, busses, and subways. In Kanada this is incredibly verboten. I don’t think I will ever get used to seeing it. In Tunisia it was very different. I arrived in Tozeur and while alcohol was not illegal it was pretty difficult to find. There were lot of people (all men) out on the streets but none of them were drunk.

In Tunisia I felt safe because everyone was sober (but they were drinking lots of coffee) and beforehand I had read that the police don’t look too kindly on locals who mess with the tourists. In Germany it’s my familiarly with the city, the culture, and the language that keeps me at ease.

I jump on the tram to get home. I exit at Antonplatz and the local doner shop is playing Black Velvet by Alannah Myles on the radio. I haven’t heard this song in years and here here it is playing in a Turkish diner in Berlin at 03:30 on a Saturday morning. A little piece of Kanada. Surreal.