Berlin. We smash into that town. And when we see it coming, it's something great. The station's this mammoth thing with multiple levels of tracks stacked on top of one other connected by thick, new-age glass elevators. The whole place is glass and cool steel and concrete. A giant lecture in (post-)modern style, oh, German architecture. "Ah, uber-post-modern," Max says.
"Oh, dah. Dah!" Grant and I chime in. And we dig it, and crane our necks up and down and in every direction at the whole metropolitan-of-the-age of it all. Walking out and looking back at it's simple, clean grandiosity, it feels like the future. Of new things to present themselves, and present themselves they would. Eventually. But right now we don't have a place to sleep at night. No hosts have responded to our three-person stay request yet, and we can't really blame them can we? Who'd take in three rowdy American youths romping around Europe anyways? I know I'd have to pause a moment.
Berlin Central Station would not be the last lesson in the city's architectural inspiration, though, and whilst we slowly hump towards the city center in a reluctant search for a hostel, the river walk walks by on the other side of the water, all white concrete and metal rippling by. In the distance, down the river we see the "washing machine" building, and "What in the world is that?" asks Grant. \
Max and I both thoroughly inspect it from afar as we keep trotting along with our packs on. And my head tilts to the side, "Ruhh, ri don't know, Shaggy."
We learn later at the hostel that it's part of the Chancellery, and Mr. Little Voice-in-my-head says very matter-of-factly, "Well, he sure as hell's got a lot of laundry, this chancellor guy." Laugh, haha. I crack myself up sometimes.
We peek into a relatively nice hotel we come across to inquire as to the whereabouts of the nearest, cheapest hostel. Just drop our bags down in the middle of the lobby, wipe our brows, and approach the receptionist desk as curtly as possible. "To the Circus," she tells us, and shows us on a map, and waves us off. The Circus hotel is some high-to-do place overlooking a great five-pronged intersection. The Circus hostel faces the hotel on the other side of the intersection, looking like a pettish, less-pronounced, little brother. But the Circus is booked - I guess some people (pussies) actually reserve beds at hostels in advance, who knew - so the young Australian girl working the desk directs us to The Wombat, a hostel around the corner. The Wombat takes us in. They have a few beds to spare that night (but they're booked the next day, so we'd have to be on our way in the morning), and the recepetionist, another Aussie girl in fact, gives us each a key to our room, a common-sized thing on the fifth floor with big windows and six bunkbeds, three on each side wall, and six pairs of lockers. The toilets and showers are down the hall. Mmm. My own bed. A good change of pace, I suppose, although it's twenty euros a night. Still, not bad. The sheets are even clean and new in a neat clear plastic bag on the bed waiting for me. Not bad at all.
When we barge in, nobody else is there, so we kick off our shoes, put our packs in the lockers, and just sit about for a moment to let the new city seep in and to feel the weightlessness in our shoulders. Breathing slows and softens, and we talk in a dreary-eyed, exhausted excitement of the things we're to do in Berlin. Showers down the hall are taken with time. There's no hurry. We'll stay a couple days and see what there is to see, and romp around in the day and get drunk at night and then be off again. To Prague and hopefully a host, who knows? All in due time though. For now anyways, the sun's sinking into the afternoon, so hell, let's get drunk. There's a bar on the roof.
[stop]
If I'm to only name one, the most stark difference between traveling by hostel and traveling via couchsurfing, it's this: when you couch-surf you're living with locals or (in Inna's case) at least residents of the city. When you stay at a hostel, you're living and eating and sleeping with travelers. It's a change, for sure, and as we walk into the bar and order cheap happy hour pitchers of beer, there's definitely more of that feeling of being on vacation; a young tourist.
No matter what hostel you find yourself at, though, you will probably always feel like you've got on foot in Australia, and the Wombat is no different. There are Aussies abound. Some Kiwis too, and a couple of Americans, but for all intensive purposes, that hostel bar, with it's rooftop balcony looking out towards the Berlin Needle, might as well have been beachfront on the Goldie. We're not five minutes into a game of Fuck the Dealer before three cheery-faced Aussie gents come up to our table and ask to join in the madness, they'd never played before.
"Why, of course, pull up a chair bar-friends. The more the merrier." Intros first, but who ever remembers those. Then it's off to the races in a five euro pitcher named Delusion. By the time the first handful of pitchers is finished and refilled, and we're playing another game now and the whole bar seem to be crowded around our table outside, hootin' and hollerin', and pitcher after pitcher of beer seems to materialize out of the woodworks. It's to be a proper, old school beer bender then. We rage and play and shout and laugh and drink through the sunset and into the wild, Berlin night.
[stop]
The bar closes at 22:00 (10:00 p.m.) much to our chagrin. So we shuffle out and down the stairs (because that's always more fun than the elevator) and out onto Schonhausser Strasse, swaying in the warm city dark, which isn't that dark, really, and tinted ever so discreetly by the streetlights running up and down the strasse. "Where to now, fellas?"
Some of the Aussies that came down from the bar with us have been here for a couple nights. "Well, there's a bunch of clubs downtown... Not much around here except a couple of bars." And they take off towards the metro with a couple of girls. But we hesitate. Local bars sound just dandy to me, and Grant and Max agree. So we march off into the night with some other Aussies and a Kiwi with some crazy name - Tigiilagi, I think - in search of the local talent. The first bar looks cool from the outside, but there's a ten euro cover. Lame. Over it. The Aussies go in though.
"Well, we could go to 8mm," suggests Tigiilagi, "It's just right down the street and I'm pretty sure there's no cover." Oh, those two magic words, what I won't do for you. We're all on board.
When we arrive it's nothing too impressive. Just some hole-in-the-wall joint painted all dark red, inside and out. But hey, it's free, and when we walk inside, order drinks, and snuggle into a couple chairs at a little table by the bar, they're playing some new-age hip punk music, and I get the feeling that this place is all right. Probably doesn't hurt that there's a couple of pretty brown-eyed lovelies lookin' us up and down at a table right behind Tigiilagi. And we're drunk, so naturally, we pick up our chairs and join their table. I like it, this place isn't big at all.
"Hi!" I've already forgotten I'm in Germany as I'm sitting back down, but then I remember, "English?"
"Yes," she smiles and laughs, and looks over at her two friends. They're all busy chattin' up Max and Grant, and Tigiilagi is sitting back in his chair, sippin' his beer, with this faraway gaze on his face. We're all wasted. She turns back. "I am a from Spain," she says.
Spain. Awesome. We get to talkin' and pretty soon we're stumbling down the street towards the hostel, arm in arm, the rest of our small, mad posse behind us. We go up to the room, up the elevator, and plop down in front of the door so as not to wake our new roommates. The hallway's spinning now, but someone's still passing around a flask of whiskey, so down the hatch. Time's doing that thing where waves up and down, and sometimes the minutes are slower and sometimes they're faster. Who know's how long we were sitting in that hallway, but eventually the girls get tired and two-kiss us goodnight on the cheeks, and we promise each other to meet up tomorrow, see them to the elevator, and "adios." We don't even get their numbers. I'm not gonna realize 'til the morning though. Right now all my head's wishin' for is that bottom bunk pillow.
