Day 11 - Berlin

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Day 11
Occasionally time is irrelevant. Sure, I was scheduled to check out of the hotel by 11AM but I was going to juice my stay for all it was worth. 8:00…9:00…9:30…my eyes were open, but I did not dare to wake up the rest of me. Covered by twelve inches of fluffy comfort, I just laid back and basked in the glory of my opulence. Usually, when one stays in hostels in Europe they wake at 7AM, have a quick shower, eat their pittance provisions and are tossed out into the street by eight. They sleep in rooms with six or eight other travellers. They get to endure the stench of others, tolerate their snores and ignore their personal eccentricities. Of the three, the last one is the hardest to cope with. Some of these chaps tend to ... how can one put it…seek personal relief in the most wrong of all wrong places. Not cool. That is why I am in heaven at the Hilton. I can jump out of bed and prance around the room starkers without the hindrance of self-consciousness affecting my personal freedom. Flinging open the drapes to the 14th floor hotel room, I surveyed Berlin in all my glory. Where are all those unseen eyes now? From my window, I could see one of the world's most storied cities. Strangers down below saw a naked man, fourteen stories up, standing before a large picture window, his hands spread flat on the window yet still pointing back down at them. East Berlin has indeed found freedom.

What else can I say? Prior to leaving the hotel I gave myself one more reward. To compensate for two weeks of 30 second showers, for communal showers, for showers that I had to press a button before the water would dribble down upon me, for showers in all ranges of cold temperatures…I rewarded myself with two 30 minute long, hot showers in a row. The shower head was bigger that my own. The water was steaming hot. I could choose from 6 different settings, none of which was ‘spray in eight different directions at the same time’. I emerged a prune…a luxurious prune.

My breakfast consisted of granola bars purchased at a nearby variety store. One can’t beat a granola bar when faced with the obscene costs of Hilton breakfasts (31DM). So I packed up my gear, stole everything not bolted down and aimed for the hotel reception. Inching forward in line, I treasured my last few moments of extravagance. I did not want to leave. How can I leave when one night I am sleeping under the stars on the ground and the next I am snoozing under the covers of thick duvet and on the most comfortable mattress ever slept upon? Well, I found out soon enough. At the checkout counter I was greeted with a 55DM room bill. Huh? Why the hell were they charging the equivalent of fifty-five bones Canadian? No, I didn't attack the bar fridge and despite your sordid thoughts I did not sit up all night watching wanker flicks on the tele. Rather, I soon learned that my outrageous invoice was due to a ten-minute phone call. 55 bucks to chat for a few minutes with my sister back in Canada? Blasted Krauts! It is no wonder we keep on warring with them. With telecom costs like that they deserve a few more 'moaning minnies'. So, pissed off, I tramped out of the sleazy hotel all the while screaming "Good riddens ya theavin' bastards!"

Armed with the knowledge that this thing called the Love Parade was in town and I would still not be able to find accommodation, I needed to consider my options and look to my next destination for a place to stay. Love Parade this…Love Parade that. What is all this hype about the Love Parade? Why would 'adolescence Europe' swarm to Berlin and occupy every available bed in the city? I heard rumblings of this when I hung out with Marie Josee in Bruges. Taking a few days off from the Ridge, she was going to travel to Berlin to party at something called the Love Parade. She was not kidding. Over one million youths packed into the downtown core of Berlin for a massive rave. Music blared from every corner. Hardcore techno beats were pumped from speakers stacked ten feet high. Kids in multicoloured outfits danced in trace in the city streets, one with each other, one with themselves. Everywhere I went, legions of the drugged up youths twisted, popped and turned to the music. Teeming with sweat from the hundred degree temperatures, crowds numbering in the hundreds of thousands danced to the electronic beats. As an outsider looking in, I was caught in a trace from the heaving, throbbing mass. It was quite impressive and wholly unexpected.

My first stop after leaving the Hilton was to go back to the Zoo train station in the hopes that I could store my gear for the day. My train was not scheduled to leave until late that night and I was not really interested in joining the party with forty pounds strapped to my back. Unfortunately, every other traveller stuck in Berlin was also in the same predicament but woke earlier and secured themselves a locker. I slept in and was punished with a sore back due by having to haul my weighty duds around all day. Yet, I trudged along. It was eleven o’clock in the morning and I had eight hours and forty-five minutes to blow before the night train left for Budapest.

Budapest was my destination of choice. Why Budapest? Since I didn’t have a place to stay in Berlin, the train offered me a spot to crash for the night. While I would relish the chance, I really cannot afford two nights in Berlin's most opulent hotel. My other option was the dirt floor and once you sleep at the Hilton one cannot go back to Camp Crap. Thus, I needed to leave a city with so much history that it merited a much longer stay. It sucks, but the wallet always has the ultimate say in decision-making.

I spent a large portion of the day checking out the parade. Well, it wasn't really a parade in the traditional definition of the word. There were no marching bands, clowns or floats. Every street in the downtown core was cordoned off. Every park, every square was jammed with ravers. It was all around me. The participants were the most interesting parts of the parade. Some wore green hair, some bright yellow, while others had hair dyed blue, orange, teal, fucia or pink. It seemed like I stumbled into the filming of a Gap commercial. The most enjoyable part of my day was watching the girlies. Raver chicks wear almost nothing. It was one hundred degrees outside and these young divas were suitably attired for the event. Their appealing and revealing apparels combined with the simple fact that German women are incomparably supreme made the heat and hardships of hauling my gear seem somewhat tolerable. Tall, young, blonde, stunningly gorgeous. I would love to master that race.

There is a key reason why Berlin's world-renowned parade does not attract many adults. As one ages they tend to migrate from the left side of the political/social spectrum to the right. They look down upon the happy-go-lucky adolescents and wonder how the world is going to survive when that generation takes over. If they took a wander through one of the intersections lining the party, watching the eventual financers of their retirement popping and bopping to computer beats would cause them to immediately make a call to their broker to up their pension investments. The Love Parade is not for those who either have jobs or lean to the right.

Attendees must appreciate and enjoy watching something different, something strange, and maybe even something extreme. There are the expensive clothes, the four-dollar bottles of water and the fact that almost everyone is on E. However, I have one encounter that best defines and explains why old fogies should stay home, lest they fry their pacemaker. I was sitting on a concrete bench, sipping from my water bottle on that hot morning. I was trying to moisten my parched mouth when I saw something that caused the liquid to be choked back into the container. Before me was a young chap nonchalantly walking down the street. In all his glory, the rest of the world seemed irrelevant. It was just he and his yellow sock. Yep. The guy was wearing a sock. One solitary sock. His feet may have been cold from the pavement but the sock kept his equipment warm and cosy. What can I say? I guess…I once saw a man wearing a sock. Welcome to Berlin's Love Parade.

Other than the sock event there were a couple of other pretty cool events that marked my interesting day wasting away hours in Berlin. I followed a pack of ravers going…I don’t know…nowhere special, when I ran into a gang of a dozen Nazi skinheads surrounded by around 20-30 heavily armed German police officers. These societal vagrants were monitored like the miscreants they epitomized. The cops stood alert in their black boots, black helmets and black billy sticks waiting and hoping that they started to misbehave. Instead the gang just sat together in the street in a little circle, swigged from their beer cans and defiantly taunted the police. Some might say that is ironic to have an event called the Love Parade dotted with so many heavily armed officers. However, after seeing a guy strut down the street with his gun in his sock it was refreshing to see the piece being placed in the right holster and displayed for the appropriate reasons.

Earlier, I mentioned that because I was unable to find a place to store my backpack, my back was getting rather sore. I was not kidding. As the day got hotter and hotter, my back got more and more sore. After hanging out with the kiddies for a few hours I needed to grab some rest and blow away some more hours before heading to my next destination. Therefore, I sat on the floor in the middle of the train station, sat back and watched the clock tick away. Tick….tick….tick….tock

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