Berlin!

When you get back from a day of walking around in Berlin in the summer, your skin feels sticky to the touch.  The bottoms of your feet are blackened and a shiny film coats your face.  The edges of your fingernails have seen cleaner days and your hair lies limp, lifeless.  But your cheeks have a rosy balm to them and your body aches so good that you collapse into your brick hard bed feeling like you've never laid in such luxury as this.  After walking strasse after strasse to get from one museum to the next while people watching at each cute café and unique shop, popping in and out of the quirkiest of galleries, you know that Berlin is something special.  Berlin is youth, energy, grunge, rebellion, art, history, east, west, hard, soft, a literal binary, dichotomous but fused into something that just feels cool as all hell.  

When I got my belly-button (re)pierced in Mitte, I was on such a high that I was preparing myself for a radical, half-shave headed haircut and a gold double ringed septum piercing.  I'd wear overalls with the shorts rolled up and some sort of ridiculous platformed shoes, not the high-heeled kind, the flat ones like the 90s that just lift you a few extra inches.  I'd roll my own cigarettes and spray paint with the boys, skateboard, and walk my dog without a leash like everyone else.  The possibilities seemed and still seem endless. 

I've had a tumultuous few days.  I've hardly gotten any sleep and I haven't even been clubbing.  Quick list of things before I actually do fall into my bed for the night.
-Holocaust memorial and information center
-Losing my cell phone and having the nicest ppl help me at the coolest/yummiest vegan spot.
-Mailing 5kg of stuff home.
-The nice Slovenia girls who helped me book a train when I was desperate.
-Reading Anne Frank's diary every night.
-Shopping at Zara and Birkenstock.
-Rewe-I LOVE REWE. (grocery store)
-Thrift shopping at "Made in Berlin."
-Lattes every day at my favorite coffee shop "Karaca" with the Turkish guy at the counter.  I always spent my mornings writing down a list of what I'd done the day before and filling in the places I'd walked on my Berlin map.
-Hearing "Let it be" played by some kid at the Berlin Dom and getting all wheepy about Americaa.  Gave him some coins because why the hell not.
-The crazy amount of galleries on Augustrasse.
-The freaky dark piercing place with the super chipper lady who ended up giving me a deal and telling me that I must be tough because Americans are tough.
-Construction EVERYWHERE.  Graffiti everywhere.
-The coolest people.  Grungy but polished.  Berlin was different from Cologne.  I need to write an entire post on the clothing, but where Cologne was relaxed, earthy, loose fitted, but put-together, Berlin was somehow more edgy.  Walking graffiti.  Tattoos, piercings, still loose fitting, but with a certain kind of swagger, a certain level of toughness.
-The same, maybe could be said about distinctions in personalities between Cologne and Berlin people.  I don't have much to compare since I was staying with the best group of folks in Cologne but the Berlin people just seem a little more...standoffish? or really, just more tough, thick skinned, bold, brash.  And Cologne people are some of the most mellow and chilled out people I know.  Aaanyway, the general attitudes of both were definitely reflected in their dress.
-So many museums, galleries and memorials.  Bode museums (a bunch of statues that really just bored me to tears), Hamburger Banhof, a giant old train station converted into a contemporary art museum, 
-THE BERLIN WALL.  Enlightening.  I had no idea that the damn thing stayed put for 41 years.  German history in general is just.  A lot.
-Getting lost in a cemetery.
-Finding an American expat at the outdoor store and coveting her life.
-Getting mixed up on the subway.  Not paying for any of the subway fares and almost getting caught by the neon-vested subway police who give out forty euro fines left and right.  I slipped out the moment they were about to ask for my fare and then skip-jogged the distance of another stop home not believing my luck.

I don't even know.  There's so many things.  For most days, I would walk around for 6-8 hours of the day because I'm stubborn and I like walking.  My feet are dead, but I feel refreshed and ready for the next city.  I feel lucky that I've left each city so far knowing that I will return.  Each brings its own special flavor and Berlin just might be a future home.  I'll cross my fingers.