I returned to Berlin and the ravishing company of Amy and Adrian the Saturday before last. Our week was filled with arty stuff - multiple exhibition openings which we attended with Vivian and Liz, also visiting from Oz.
Berlin was well and truly freezing by the time my second visit began, and it was a wonderful, warm relief to spend one evening in a German sauna, where the five of us paraded around nude with the best of them. We withstood the hourly towel-twirling - what a strange job that would be, ladling water and tea tree oil over the hot coals and making a helicopter while about thirty naked people sweat and flinch and rub ice all over themselves. We hurried into the cold showers. We sat unperturbed in the freezing courtyard and watched the steam rising from our legs. We dozed under enormous cream blankets, then woke up and started all over again. Afterwards we went for curry at a tiny place that Amy knew. I thought I´d never be cold again.
There was also a fair amount of drinking and dancing at gay nights. Adrian and I became completely obsessed with the Beyonce video ´Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It)´, which we watched on Youtube an average of once a day, when we weren´t singing ´Famous Blue Raincoat´in anticipation of our Friday night... When we ventured to Hamburg to see Leonard Cohen play. This was indisputably one of the best gigs of my life. From ´Dance Me to the End of Love´to ´Closing Time´, we were completely enraptured. Cohen played for three hours, skipped on and off stage for multiple encores, and endured the stadium´s applause with his hat clasped humbly to his chest. We venerated him! At one point, only halfway through the set, the audience spontaneously burst into a standing ovation. The closest thing to a religious experience you can have with your clothes still on.
Disappointment of the week was the cancellation of the Randy Newman concert the next night. I´d faithfully bought my ticket about a month ago, but my poor hero had back and neck problems and couldn´t play. Here at the Nomadic Randy Newman Fanclub we wish him a speedy recovery and suggest a restorative trip to Australia.
Instead, a bunch of us got dolled up and headed out to KitKat for Amy´s leaving-Berlin party. My oh my. What hijinks. Blacklit white lace underwear floating on the dancefloor. Costumes consisting of leather straps and rivets. Lots of lone men in underpants and shoes watching swingers frolicking on beds as the house music interminably crescendoed. We were objective, overdressed. ´Science teachers,´said Jimmy. ´They´re all science teachers.´ I couldn´t help wondering about the ordinary people at the train station the next day as I waited for my train to Prague.
The really crappy thing about Prague was that on the way there I realised I´d le
ft my Eurail pass on the train from Hamburg, and since then I´ve had to pay oodles of euros for each of my full-price rail tickets. This is ok in the long-term because my pass was insured and I can claim back the tickets. In the short-term it was a continental pain in the arse because it meant having to get a police report from the Czech feds. The third police station we tried came through for us, and after two hours of sitting in the barren waiting room, I finally had in my possession my first and hopefully last Czech police report. Ordeal of the century.Prague itself took us back to our early tourist days, before we became lazy and spent all our time creating hangovers and then sleeping them off. It came at us like Paris - we went in forewarned of how beautiful it would be, and still couldn´t believe it when we stumbled into the main square. Also, we had the most amazing garlic soup with croutons. Effectively garlic bread soup. Prague has it all.
Soon I will write about Italy and Spain. I´m moving quietly around Frankfurt for two nights before spending my last weekend in Paris, and then on Monday... NZ. Ka flippin´pai.
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