Mike's Blog

 

Well Berlin is gone after 10 or 11 nights or whatever… craziness! Let’s see, first night in the hostel I met a couple of cool Canadians, one of which has been studying in Dublin for 9 months and is now on a few month travel trip around Europe. She showed me her pictures and I am now completely sold on Norway and Portugal. Holy monkeys, some of the stuff she had was completely better than postcard photos from the Carribbean… I realized that I’ve been sticking to just big cities and I haven’t really seen much of the beautiful nature out here. Well hopefully I can change that, not sure how to get out into it without a car. Maybe I’ll just rent one.

I spent Tuesday just roaming around and doing some errands. Played some guitars but ended up resisting a purchase… would just be quite bulky and I had a hard time finding a cheaper one. They only had a couple for under 300 euro, and I paid $150 for my cheap one back home… maybe if I could find a used one. Maybe I’ll buy one, but not yet. Other than that I went to a new part of town to find an open mic night, or rather ask around about them. I had no luck, but I found a really cool part of town… it was a really nice artsy looking neighborhood, and almost everyone over there was dressed in black, pierced, and tattooed. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a couple of the aforementioned type people pushing a stroller. And the best part is that I didn’t fit in here, but I didn’t feel like anyone was looking at me with hostility. In fact, I asked some folks hanging out at a cafe about open mics and they were incredibly nice. Dropped a few more F bombs than the average person, but they were friendly as could be.

So once again, stereotypes are ridiculous. I can’t quite put it in words, but I’ve half realized something cool… there’s a parallel between snubbing someone who doesn’t speak english and snubbing someone who swears a lot. In both cases, the listener is focusing on the manner in which information is being communicated, not the actual communication. Some people just include those kind of words in their diction… they aren’t trying to be up in your face or anything… it’s  like a subset of the language. I don’t know, I think it’s a cool parallel and I don’t support either type of snubbing. I think people should focus on what is being communicated more than the means it’s communicated, that’s just my opinion. I mean this is in casual scenarios, not saying everyone in the business world should start saying “Sup mother fuckers” in every meeting or something. Actually that would be pretty rad…

So yeah that was really cool, I feel like East Berlin is a lot more real than West Berlin, at least the part around where we were staying. I liked the pulse of things over there, and honestly there were a lot less people asking me for change and stuff. I guess it makes sense for the touristy area to attract that sort of behavior, and also be more fake. Got to appeal to the masses I guess.

Anyway, I found a restaurant online and was sold by the Norwegian salmon on the menu… walked about 30 minutes over to it… the waitress was tall German lady who didn’t seem to like the fact that I was speaking English or dining alone or something. I actually didn’t get my salmon, instead I got some breaded trout or something. I would have sent it back, but I was famished and actually it was really good. Still, that salmon would have been awwwwwwesome. I usually really look forward to salmon at restaurants and then upon eating it I think I make it better at home. So maybe it’s for the best, and it was a few euro cheaper!

The train to Hamburg was uneventful, and the hostel here in Hamburg is just as cool. They have these badass security lockers where you use your room keycard to lock them. Nice to not need a separate key! And the internet is free and works in the room, usually it just works in the lobby.

While I was settling in to the 10 bed room (no one was home) one of my new roommates showed up… he is a really badass French dude. This guy worked as an aerospace type engineer and then one day decided he was done working that job and was just going to walk around Europe with no plan and enjoy himself. Hmmmm, sounds familiar. Too much stress and work and not enough play and life and passion. So we hit it off right away. Technically he wasn’t a rocket science, but he was involved in a project to boost the space station… apparently it has a diminishing orbit some craft has to dock with it and boost it back up occasionally. So how cool is that!

He actually quit his job more than a year ago, bummed around for about 4 months just walking. He said he took trains and buses, but also just walked from town to town. He had a tent and just camped in a lot of places, sometimes stayed in hostels. It gets better though… after this, he got some small jobs for a while, and at this point he’s taking another trip… biking from his home in Lorraine, France to Norway to do some open camping and check out the fjords up there. What a total badass. He has no reservations of any kind, he’s just got his gear on his bike and he’s cycling. 18 days and 2100 km so far. Goodnight. 

So we ended up walking around town with another new roommate from Canada. That dude was a little odd, but he’d only got two hours of sleep the night before. Still a nice guy, just talked a lot and a little strangely. Hamburg is beautiful, cycle dude had been walking around all morning so he took us to this park he didn’t get a chance to check out… absolutely amazing place. It’s seriously like being in the wilderness but in the middle of the city. They do a lot of stuff with water, and the river through the park starts as a waterfall that looks really cool. I’m still amazed they can create the kind of nature over here in the middle of the city. It rules.

Cycle dude mentioned he was going to try to cook something that night, so I was all over it. Canadian guy was tired and sacked out early. After a trip to the grocery, which only cost us 9 euro total, the dude cooked up some pasta with ground beef and some sauce… I thought it was delicious but he wasn’t happy with it, they didn’t have many spices at the hostel kitchen. In the end he admitted that we did the best with what we had 🙂 We also had some tomatoes and mozzarella before the pasta was ready, which was actually really damn good. I’ve never liked eating tomatoes without anything, but I think I’ve finally conquered the consistency and now I can enjoy them. The mozzarella was awesome as well, I’ve never had it in slices like that. It doesn’t really taste like a cheese, it’s nice and mild. For dessert we had some yogurt and an apple apiece. Delicioso!!! I’m from Naples! 

Dude, I just realized that when I asked that Berlin waiter how to say delicious in Italian, he replied I’m from Naples, how did I miss the beauty of this thing… so it shall be!

Anyway, upon return to our room, we found it full of young dudes drinking beers and talking loudly while Canadian dude slept like a baby in a top bunk in the corner. Apparently he was still out like a light. Our new roomies were actually really cool… the crew consisted of 2 Danes, an Aussie, a dude from Finland, a German, a French-Canadian, and 2 Americans from the Midwest. One of the Danes was a lady, everyone else was dudes. So yeah, they gave us some beers and we just hung out for a few hours. Definitely one of the best roommate situations I’ve had on the trip, maybe tomorrow I’ll hang with some of the peoples… sadly the cycle dude is continuing on his trip, but I might bump into him in Copenhagen. The Danes are also rolling, and they were friggin cool. The dude had this hilarious running joke about how everything good in the world originated in Denmark. So he’d just randomly pop into the conversation with a, yeah the Beatles are Danish or something awesome like that.

Man, a cycle trip for like 3 months. That’s crazy awesome.

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