Don’t let the title fool you, I just like saying it. Potsdam was good times, basically a little tourist town next to a huge estate/garden that we spent all day walking around in. There’s a couple palaces there, I would more call them mansions but I guess that’s my bad. I associate a palace with like where a sultan lives, or maybe a king. This was just a huge fancy estate. Lots of cool fountains and sculptures on the grounds. We walked and climbed steps a ton there. Afterwards we tried to find a place for dinner and J began to act… funny.
I don’t think I mentioned that J is diabetic, which means his body doesn’t manage his blood sugar properly… if he eats too much sugar for his exercise level, he gets “high” and if he exercises too much, he depletes the sugar and is “low”. I guess the high is a bit easier for him to notice on his own, but the low is harder and also impairs his judgement more. When he’s high, he takes a shot of insulin, which reduces the sugar, and when he’s low he’s just supposed to eat sugar and relax a bit.
So as we were walking back to town, he started responding to what I said a little slower and less often, which is abnormal because J is one of the more conversational and nice people I know. I asked him a couple of times if he was ok and he said he was fine. So I thought it was a just a weird mood, but then he was a little bit irritable and confused, like, “What are we doing walking around this town for?” So I sat him down at a cafe and mandated that he eat some of his sugary snacks and ordered some cola for him… we relaxed there, got some juice in him too and he normalized a bit. Apparently he didn’t remember how we got to the cafe or us walking around after we left the estate.
But at least nothing terrible happened, just a few moments of handling the situation and then it was back to normal and on to eat some foodies! J got a nice steak and I had some skewer full of meat and veggies. Forgot to mention we had another torrential rain blow in right when we sat down at the cafe, it was light until we got to the restaurant and then it was utter downpour again. We were eating outside under a table umbrella, but I started to get cold as the rain hit the ground hard enough to splash on me. So inside we went.
After dinner, back to the train and back to Berlin, we ended up wandering around for a bit and then tossed the frisbee on an empty pedestrian street near some restaurants with people sitting outside. The pavement was the right level of smoothness for me to slide on it with my shoes, so that was some fun-ass frisbee time. Don’t worry, no falling occurred. We did attract some drunken dudes that tossed it a couple of times and muttered merry statements of German and English about frisbee and Australians. Good times!
Sunday we spent souvenir shopping and wandering. For J’s peeps of course, although I did buy a new hat with the Ampelmann on it. Yeah tourist! I like him though, he’s so cute and squishy… not sure how he’s squishy but… yeah. If you’ve picked up on my perverted mind from earlier, he’s anything but squishy. ANYWAY! We had planned to try to catch an open mic in East Berlin, but got there too late and ended up at a huge carnival like culutural festival that was taking place in Berlin this weekend. It was just like a line of tents and booths, but each one had stuff from different cultures. We stumbled upon a cool looking church with a concert by The Transylvanians going on inside. I like to think of it as polka rock even though it wasn’t really polka… Fiddle, Electric Guitar, Bass, and Drums. But they were rocking some song that sounded like Hava Nagila to me, not that one but something similar. And the crowd was going bananas for it! Dancing and shouting, They were tearing it up. BLOW THE ROOF OFF OF THAT… church…
They had a lot of other cool shit at the festival, some flame jugglers and spitters… the most impressive was this girl who had some sort of flaming balls on the end of 2 chains twirling them around. We ended up chilling at a drumline that was awesome. I think they must have been laying down a beat for like 20 minutes straight, pausing for a minute and then starting back up again. After that we found our way back to the train, packed up and went to bed.
J left in the morning after breakfast, I walked to the bus stop with him. It was a really awesome trip with him, had a lot of great times and saw a lot of cool shiat. If traveling with someone is the true test of a friendship, then I’d say we passed. Of course chilling in a room with another dude for 8 days has its downsides, but it worked out fine. Go us. After he left I chilled for a bit and then talked to the woman who owned the hotel for a bit. I booked a couple nights in a hostel and then a train to Hamburg yesterday. When she found out about the hostels, she was a bit like, noooooo cancel it and stay here! No one is in your room for the next two nights and you are so nice, I’ll give you a good price. But I kinda wanted to see a new part of the city anyway. She was really nice though, if you’re ever in Berlin and need a good place to stay, Hotel Alexander is great… good location and staff, nice room!
I trekked across town to my new hostel in East Berlin, which is super cheap at 17 euro and is maybe the nicest hostel I’ve had yet! The place is like a hotel, the reception is in a beautiful atrium with a piano that might be a baby grand. I have a 5 bed room all to myself for now and it shares a bathroom and kitchen with another 4 bed room. I think no one’s in there yet either. So I’m like king in the castle! And the internet is really good too. I love good internet. I figure I’ll just take it easy the next couple days, try to find an open mic and do some shopping… thinking about buying a guitar.
After Hamburg, I’m planning on heading north to Denmark and Sweden, but I’m not totally sure yet. Who knows, y’know?
Did you see Rolando when you went back? Coolest German Cuban ever. Heck yeah we passed the test. We are the man, or men, or maenner… That’s awesome the hostels in Berlin we so nice! Go Berlin and living accomodations.