Day 9 - to Berlin

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Day 9

Like a good German, I arose from my sleep at 7:30 AM, bid ‘auf weidersehen’ to the noisy bastards, swiftly scarfed down my morning Muslix and coffee and headed off to the train station. I hit the train station and locked up my luggage for a few hours before my departure. For some reason, I had to get out of there. I just didn’t get the right vibes. Sure, it is beautiful, for an industrial port, but we bombed the shit out of it during the war and there aren’t many sights left to see. Looking to the bible, I passed by the Rathaus and checked it off in my guide. The Rathaus was the city’s town hall. Very nice, very closed, thus very useless to me. I followed my trek to an empty Hamburg marketplace, soaked in a lake that had a fountain that squirted some water and ummmm, no, that was it. Thankfully, after two of the longest hours in my life, I boarded the train that hurried me away from Hamburg.

Where to now? The train could have broken down in the middle of a corn field and I would find the sights more interesting than Hamburg. It was not just the fact that there were no tourists and nothing was open…it was the fact that there was nothing to open. Apparently, 3.5 million people live in Hamburg and there was nothing to see. Maybe after the war, the Hamburgers decided to protect themselves from a future bombing raid by building a subterranean city. Maybe it was like the sesame seed atop the Big Mac. I went there, saw the seed and thought…”zzzz…zzzz….zz…z” If I only scratched the surface of that bun. Imagine what I missed. I could have seen the proverbial two all beef patties. That was where they hid the beef in Hamburg! I guess that if I spent some time experiencing the taste of the Reeperbaun I may have encountered some ‘special sauce’. (Enough of the burger references!) Regardless, in my haste and ignorance, I left with a no good stories and one restless night’s sleep.

Ok. What next? I turned to the bible for guidance. My eventual goal was Berlin. However, after the Hamburg debacle, I wanted to jazz up my trip a bit. Leafing through some passages, I found the perfect spot. Resting on a shoal between two rivers was the ancient city of Lubeck. Lubeck dates from the medieval era and is located in the Schizwig- Holstein region. The kicker? The imperial city was also guarded by a series of moats, ten-foot thick walls and by the natural protection of thirty foot high rocky cliffs. Sounded pretty cool to me. Lets’ go.

We trekked for three hours up to the northern part of Germany. Finally, the train pulled into Lubeck. Leaving my ride, I strapped on my backpack, walked across the ancient bridge that spanned the Stadt-Trave River, passed through the gatehouse and ventured into the city centre. As always, my first task upon arriving in a new city was to find a place to stay. Sorry, I left out a few key related dynamics to my journey. Once again, the temperature was above 90 degrees, I was down to my last pair of under trousers, I ran out of clean t-shirts a couple of days ago and was in the middle of layering another veneer of sweat onto my UWO t-shirt. I stank and I knew it. Like St Patrick with the snakes, I wandered up and down and up and down a myriad of cobbled pathways and endless alleyways with a trail of flies following me.

Eventually, I located a hole in a wall that served as the entrance to the hostel. Beat, raw and raunchy, I asked the young lady at the front desk to let me a place to rest and hopefully an opportunity to clean myself up. I wanted to ensure I did not wreck other tourist’s enjoyment of the old city. Yet, the haggard fraulein barked out at me from behind her cage. "Zits full…now zoot!" Once again, my travel plans did not include calling ahead and booking a reservation. Rejected, weary and reeking of my own essence, I summoned my bible and searched for answers, searched for direction. However, I must have been reading the Old Testament because despite another hour of lugging my laundry around Lubeck I still couldn't find a place to sleep. My search was fruitless. I was tired, I stank, it was hot, I was somewhere, up there in the north of Germany and I was hostelless. Suddenly, it appeared so clear to me. I came to a city on a whim and I really didn’t care much about it. Obviously, the feelings were mutual. Resolution? I spun around, strapped the pack on a little tighter, returned to the train station and like that, hopped aboard the next train to Berlin.

It was that easy. “Auf weidersehen Lubeck - Danka Berlin!” On my adventure to the Kraut capital, I met two Yanks from Northern California. Conveniently, they were also heading to Berlin. Their names were Bill and Alan. All three of us were in pretty much the same boat. No idea what we were going to do when we arrived and no place to stay for the night. It was as if we were a trio of vagrants riding the rails, looking for adventure.

Bill and Alan were fun enough lads to hang out with however there was another more advantageous reason for seeking their companionship. Deftly stored within their packs were two 26ers of vodka. In comparison, within my backpack, I stored zero 26ers of vodka. That was another attribute about myself that I learned while on my travels. I found out that I had this innate ability to easily meet new friends, especially when we were able to nurture our blossoming friendship over a few swigs of free hootch.

There were more than 26 reasons why I was going to Berlin. Unlike Hamburg, Berlin did not play second fiddle to any other German city. It was number one. The largest city in Germany. Berlin has a number of historical and symbolic reasons that make it a prime destination. Where do I start? The Reichstag. The Berlin Wall. The last defence against the crusading reds. The airlift. The spot where Kennedy told the world that he was a donut. The spot where Reagan directed Berliners to “tear down that wall.” The Brandenburg Gate. Home to Hitler, that Nazi bastard. The Love Parade. East. West. The list goes on.

While most adults may have recognized all of my justifications for travelling to Berlin, except, of course, the last one. The Love Parade? Huh? Berlin is about Nazi’s and neuveau pacifists. Love? Germans don’t show love…at least not out in public. Upon arrival in Berlin, I too learned about what was known as “The Love Parade”. I learned about it when I arrived at the tourist bureau and discovered that every hostel in Berlin was fully booked. I soon learned that the largest adolescent festival in Europe was being held in Berlin the day I decided, on a whim, to visit. Apparently, over a million youngsters goofed up on ecstasy were in town for a massive rave. The entire downtown core was going to be turned into a huge party for the next few days. And I was going to spend my time on a shoal jutting out between two rivers. Luck strikes again.

While I was lucky enough to come to the largest rave in the world, there was still the issue of finding a place to sleep. As I was still tagging along with Alan and Bill, we decided to camp out in our only collective option, the delightfully tagged, Berlin Tent City. I was pleased to discover that the German capital looked after its’ migratory homeless vagrants by providing them a spot of dirt to lie their head within a makeshift canvas community.

The Berlin Tent City? Immediately, visions of those refugees seen on Sally Struthers infomercials flashed before my eyes. In petitioning for a place to stay for the night, I visualized wading through a ditch overflowing with human excrement, trudging across a muddy lane with swarms of flies hovering around my crusty lips as I lugged my bloated stomach across a proverbial wasteland. However, I had forgotten that Germans were well adept at building camps for their visitors. Just like I saw in movies and read in books on ‘German history’ as I entered through the 12 foot high gates, a tall fence lined the park and they placed a series of tents in a row. My accommodations included such amenities as my sleeping bag, my laundry balled up in a plastic bag for a makeshift pillow and their generous provision of one thin layer of canvas that protected the ground from the sky. I was to be placed right beneath the robust shelter. Oddly, while looking nothing out of the ordinary for a camp in Germany, I noticed plumes of smoke arising from beyond the main building. Thankfully, the only things being cooked were sausages…at least I think they were sausages. I was not totally disappointed. My choice was either ‘Tent City’ or huddling beneath the comfy canopy of a big tree in some inner-city parkette. I took my spot in the ditch, laid back and hoped for clear skies.

That evening, I got quite damp sitting around a campfire and sucking back pints with the lads. One cannot beat free Vodka and bottomless pints of German lager. It was around the fire that all these folks chatted about the upcoming Love Parade. I remained bemused about the concept of a ‘love parade’. By this time, I was not fully apprised of the fact that The Love Parade was a monster rave. I was still thinking about the traditional definition of a parade. I like parades. Pipe bands, clowns, floats and cars driving past carting around political nobodies who loved to wave to strangers. However, as the evening passed I came to understand that this was going to be rather different. Chicks, music, scantily clad chicks, bunch of teenage chicks…you get my drift. Back to my evening festivities…miraculously, I made the journey from the fire pit to my spot in the dirt without stumbling over others, falling into the fire or waking up shivering in a field somewhere.

As you can see, 'all in all' it was a very busy day. Before I continue, lets’ review my last forty-eight odd hours. I got stoned in Amsterdam, went to Hamburg and found it intensely boring, travelled all the way to the tip of Germany where I stepped off a train, walked around for a few minutes, turned around and went all the way across Germany to find myself pissed to the gills in a tent city somewhere in the suburbs of Berlin. This day most accentuates my newfound freedom. As the breeze blows and swirls, so does my ability to change where I want to go and when. By simply flashing a train ticket, I altered my plans and zoomed six hundred kilometres across Europe. I was oddly amused and satisfied with my newfound schizophrenia.

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