It was busy in Berlin! I have so much to tell you. Ok, I won't tell you everything, but here are some excerpts from my field notes.
First, let me say Hilda was a most gracious, fiercely funny and resourceful hostess, a fine semi-colon of a girl; I <3 hh.
On Monday afternoon, I went swimming at the public pool. Did you know that one of my favourite things to do when I visit a city is to take a swim in a public pool? The pool I visited in Berlin was a gorgeous complex built between the two World Wars. The grand staircase was tiled in jade tiles, with a dark wood floor and benches of the same colour. The pool itself was oblong, rounded at one end, with massive columns, jade tiles and large mosaics showing people engaging in water themed activities. There was a mezzanine that looked down on to the main pool. At one end of the pool there was a curved staircase flanked by two brass sculptures of babies mounted on giant walruses that spouted water from their mouths.
Are public pools a reflection of the collective consciousness of a city? I tend to think so. In France, the lanes are very narrow and the water very cold, in Toronto the lanes are very wide and the water is piss warm. In Berlin, there are no lanes and the water is just right. I felt like Goldilocks. Admittedly, it was somewhat chaotic in the pool. People were swimming back and forth willy nilly.
I had a nice long swim and only bumped into a few people, most of whom were quite gracious and understanding about the whole thing. Interestingly, there was also a tanning station at the pool where you could drop in a few Euros and get a little UV.
We went for a fine dinner along the canal at a place called Cafe Jaques (We tried to go to Henne, a famous chicken house, but alas, it was closed). Had a delicious meal with Hilda and her fine nostriled and fluttery-handed girlfriend Meeshell. They regaled me with stories of life in Berlin over dinner and we continued on to a nightclub for an evening of dancing, which we didn't end up doing that much of. They projected the movie Dirty Dancing behind the dance floor. All I can say is that Patrick Swayze was a handsome man, that is for sure. We got home rather late.
On Tuesday we went to the Turkish Market in Kreuzberg. It was festive and charming, with people selling all kind of things: food and fabric and nuts and flowers, et cetera. We took a long walk along the canal and exchanged various factoids and ideas (of which we are both great fans) and generally conversed in an agreeable manner.
We ate dinner at a Vietnamese place (so interesting to have German Pho, not so delicious as our Toronto Pho, you know). We tried to make it to a Sophia Coppola movie in the evening, but we were late and got the time all wrong and so went home instead and ate black liquorice. Earlier in the day, we had been to a store that sold solely this and little else. Sweet black liquorice, salty, with chocolate, pastilles... What an amazing place. Check it here
On Wednesday, I spent the morning doing a bit of a wander around the city, retracing some walks I'd liked. After a Turkish lunch (I discovered Turkish is one of my favorite cuisines in the world, I do believe), I went to the Medical History museum. It's a neat little place on the grounds of an old hospital called the Charite. The second floor of the museum was really macabre. Disembodied human parts were displayed in large glass cabinets, manifesting various unfortunate malformations or conditions. There were cancers, bladder stones the size of golf balls, giant hairballs retrieved from stomachs, hands with nubs instead of fingers, feet with elephantiasis, and unborn babies with missing parts or extra parts. There was quite an assortment of babies; two babies fused into one being and one baby with a quite, serene expression whose torso tapered off into a sort of point, not unlike 'Slimer' in the animated television serial 'Ghostbusters'. Weird.
Hilda met me at the train station to say goodbye and after a coffee and a run to the supermarket to get some more liquorice, we parted ways. Goodbye, dear friend!
Homeward bound! I got on the train and sat down in the couchette and read the last pages of "Freedom". My couchette mate boarded the train in Dresden, a charming Hungarian biochemist (the mate, not the city). The train stopped at Breclav in the early morning hours and I suppose the train's arrival coincided roughly with the closing of the local drinking establishments because the two parties of people who boarded our sleepy car were a little drunk and evidently a little sad to be leaving their friends behind. They kept calling out their farewells from the corridor. Following this, there was uncoupling and recouping of cars, some of which were going to Budapest and some of which were not. The announcement had to be made in three languages and the whole thing was rather disruptful. Anyway, I arrived in Bratislava and was so tired that I slept for basically a whole day and a night and woke the following morning feeling more refreshed than I had in a long time.
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