Stereotypical International Experiences

Well, last weekend I finally met Lisa's closest girlfriends from Freiburg! It was Jenny's birthday on Sunday so Lisa and I went to Berlin to help her celebrate. Jenny was super sweet, and let me stay at her place and cooked great food (like Milchreis with fresh mango and shredded dried coconut....mmmmm....) and she even spoke English a bunch so that I could participate in the conversations instead of just listening! She was really sweet and patient. Unfortunately while we were there Judith was really sick, so I didn't really get to know her very well, but she seemed quite creative and fairly similar to Lisa. Theresa was awesome and so grounded and calm, she reminded me a bit of Mo.

The highlight of the weekend was Saturday night (of course). Jenny made us all a delicious dinner of pasta with salmon and cream sauce, and then we just chatted and drank and listened to music until 2am. Then, we headed out to Jenny's favourite place: Panorama Bar. It's located in an old DDR warehouse in East Berlin, is only open 1am to 4pm the next afternoon, and has an incredibly relaxed and accepting atmosphere. In fact, the vibe reminded me a lot of Organix in Vancouver! Go figure. The music was equally as bad though, it was this beepy unst-unst techno which Jenny describes as "intellectual". If you were dancing, it was easy to get lost in (so I partially understood her definition) but if you weren't dancing it was just irritating. Unfortunately I got tired fast, so mostly it was just irritating for me. Just before first light outside, they put down the curtains (the warehouse had huge windows), and we ended up leaving at dawn around 5:30am. I definitely wore one of my vintage hats, but other than that I felt like I could check this European stereotype off of my list: Partying till dawn in an old DDR warehouse in East Berlin to bad German techno. Yea Baby.

---

---