From Berlin, back to Zwonitz

So I suppose I never finished the post on our time away, on New Year’s Eve (Silvester, in German, which I think is a much more elegant name for the holiday) in Berlin. It was also my first trip to Berlin, and I have to say, I loved the city. Silvester itself was a little lackluster, unfortunately. And, once Bill and I decided to do a little daytime shopping on the 31st, we found that all of the shops closed by 2pm, despite the throngs of people still flocking the main shopping areas. Even the huge department store he wanted to show me, which sounds like Berlin’s Harrods and is apparently, like Harrods, is a huge draw as a tourist attraction, was closed when we walked up to its doors at 2:30. Even all five of the H&Ms distributed within 2 city blocks were closed. It boggled my mind, though I suppose it goes along with the German retail ethic I’ve found in Zwonitz—absolutely nothing open on Sundays, everything except the biggest grocery store closed by noon or 1 on Saturdays, and every store closed for at least an hour, if not two, for lunch on weekdays. Doesn’t seem like they could sell enough to stay in business, but I suppose, German being a much more socialist-leaning state (in terms of national health care and staggering income taxes, though I actually know very little about it and this is all rather uneducated conjecture) than the US, they don’t actually have to do much business for the government to keep them in business. I suppose I should do some research on my temporarily-adopted country.

Speaking of my new country, I got my visa last Thursday, and can officially stay and legally work here until July 5th (why July 5th? I don’t know. I thought I was allowed a year but they seemed to just have assigned me a visa expiration date arbitrarily). I certainly won’t be staying longer than that, and in fact am thinking I’ll probably come back at least a month before then.

Oh, but the rest of our time in Berlin was great. Bill’s friend Colin has just moved there (like Bill, he did a semester abroad in Germany) and has friends in Berlin, so Bill and I got to spend time with more than just each other, which is a nice change (not that we’re sick of each other, just that we spend at least 20 hours a day alone together and it’s refreshing to interact with other humans).We hit some second-hand shops in a cool, slightly run-down neighborhood. And a couple friends of Colin’s took us to a deserted neighborhood where, underneath some elevated train tracks, we sought out the slightly hidden entrance of an underground club and danced the night away in unheated concrete rooms. Very fun.

Speaking of parties, back in Zwonitz we spend Friday and Saturday night with our new friends from Mettenschicht in the only cool bar in town. We met a very interesting character on Friday night, someone we’ve seen in the bar many times before and have carefully avoided (I have at least—I find him a little frightening). We still don’t know his name, despite spending more than an hour interacting with him that night, so we simply call him The Nazi. Because that’s what he calls himself, when he’s not claiming his name is Hitler. I don’t know if the accurate label is neo Nazi or skinhead, because I’m told there’s a difference, but he hailed Hitler a number of times, was wearing a Fuck America tee shirt, and is covered in tattoos. These include, but are certainly not limited to, Satan’s face on the back of his right hand (for ultimate effect when he makes a fist with index and pinky fingers upraised for a “rock on” and “I just might kill you for the fun of it” gesture), full sleeves and neck of various symbols, something above his eyebrow, and ink on the upper inside of each ear, notably a handgun on the left one. But I’ll wait for Bill to recount the details of our conversation with him, and post it here later.

On Saturday, walking home from a place called Wind, where we saw an overpopulated band play a lot of American pop covers (a lot of which are currently on the radio, which exasperated me), Bill repeatedly demonstrated for me his skill for speed walking. And I quote,
“It would be such a waste of my talent if I didn’t try out for the Olympic speed walking team,”
and,
“Wait, no, look. Watch my rate of acceleration—it’s incredible,”
and,
“No, hold on, you weren’t watching. Here, I’ll do it again. Look at how fast I can accelerate!”
I didn’t want to indulge him at the time, especially because it was funnier to see him drunkenly trying to prove, over and over again, his unrealized talent by suddenly taking off, hips swinging back and forth and arms pumping furiously like the old ladies who do it while wearing weight belts or ankle weights. When I told him, the next morning, that I was planning on putting the episode in my blog, he acknowledged its comical value but insisted that, once I had made my jokes, I should admit that he does possess exceptional speed walking skills. Which, I suppose, he does.

Now I’m off to English club at school. Our girls are going to tell us how the European soccer leagues work. They’re also going to teach us about handball, a very popular sport in Germany, and hopefully show us how to play.

Biss shpeta, mein freunds (I know that isn’t how to make “friend” plural, but I don’t feel like looking it up right now. And, as I’m writing this on Word to be posted later, I don’t have internet so can’t look it up, as Bill’s computer has a nasty virus and mine only seems to find the wireless in the evening, a mystifying limitation).