new year's eve in berlin - part three

so here we are at part three of this saga. i am secretly hoping that this is the last one, cause after a brief departure of a short blog entry letting people know i'm fine and am now gainfully employed and another very short entry (posted while slightly intoxicated on german beer - mmm... german beer...) showcasing one of the coolest and most useless websites i've stumbled upon to date, i'm back to my story of new year's. to tell you the truth i'm over talking about it. i've told a few people in real life what happened, few people even got the uncensored director's cut version, and it seems like so long ago now that i want to talk about other things, but they'll have to wait til after this story is done with. (NB what i will type here is the slightly censored version, not totally censored, but ever so lightly edited. afterall my family reads this and i would like to keep some of this story for myself and a few trusted close friends. otherwise, as previously stated somewhere on this collection of ramblings, if you bump into me, buy me a beer and i'll be sure to tell you the full story. i'm hopeless when it comes to keeping in stories about myself after a drink or two.) but anyway, on with our story...

so there we were, myself, alexis and paul. we had just gotten off the train and met our friends reinaldo and ricardo outside the station. at this point the alcohol had sort of worn off, but i know that for me the adrenalione of being somewhere in berlin on a night like this, and the added excitement of all that alcohol and firwork fueled mayhem of potsdammerplatz had kicked in to overdrive. add to that the fact that i was en route to one of europe's most talked about, feared and insane alternative dance clubs, well you could only imagine the rate of my heartbeat. before we left our posting at the train station ricardo went to a bank and i took the opportunity to grab some smokes from a little alcohol shop that faced the station. i walked in there to find a massive group of toursts trying to buy alcohol. i know they were tourists because they all spoke english and they all seemed really drunk, loud and slightly obnoxious. i, however, being slightly sober was able to ask for my smokes in german and made no fuss or noise that wasn't needed. to tell you the truth, this is one of those times i was glad that i can pull off being german. having just expeienced the most crowded train ride ever where i was forced to talk to some english college boys i didn't want to have the same conversation again with people who were infinately more drunk than anyone else i had noticed so far that night. my german may not be good enough to fool a german, i have no idea what's feminine, male or nuetral, but i can fool a tourist. and that's all anyone can ask for really. so after a quick, 'drei davidoff classic, bitte? danke.' i left the store, rejoined my friends and we started to make our way to berghain.

berghain is in the midst of a rundown area of town and all that seems to surround it is an empty dirt field with some 3 metre high chain link fence and a few scattered industrial buildings, which look either abbandonned or waiting for hostel 3 to start shooting. it's kind of creepy to walk through this area (although to tell you the truth, alot of berlin looks creepy and dangerous to walk through). but once you get inside berghain and passed the huge number of poeple lined up to get inside, it seems like a whole other place. although it still has an industrial feel and look to it. as a friend of mine said, it reminded him of blade. he was waiting for the sprinklers to start showering people with blood and for the vampires to all come out of the woodwork. i thought that sounds silly, but once you've been in there it's a pretty spot on comparison. i prefer to think of it as if blade and batman had a baby and filled it with industrial house music and never came back to clean or check up on it. but again i'm getting ahead of myself. we arrived outside and as soon as we saw the line we were so thankful that we bought tickets for this place the week prior. the regular line was huge. by huge i mean massive. it was at least 100 metres long, at the very least and about 6 people wide. alexis, reinaldo and myself had tickets, so we left paul and ricardo in line together and headed towards our line, which by comparison was like measuring the distance between the couch to the tv, and between siberia and brazil. okay, that might be a slight exagerration, but you get my point. reinaldo was in the line a little bit ahead of us, cause alexis wanted to talk to ricardo for a little before leaving him behind (they hadn't seen each other in years, and he was only here with us because of a chance meeting two days earlier) so by the time we got inside reinaldo was already in line at the coat check. which was handy cause we got to push in. and germans being all correct and german, will never tell you off for something like that and cause a scene. it's only when it can be done annonymously or privately will they ever tell you off. i can't even begin to tell you how many red lights i've crossed at an intersection and having seen many a german look at me disapprovingly and yet not say anything because someone else is there. hehehe... that's the trick if you ever want to have a perfect existence in germany, don't let people be with you alone if you're gonna do something that's not koscher. also don't let them know where you live or you'll get a letter in the mailbox telling you not to do something. for example, the recycling here is waaaaay outta control. there's four different bins, one for waste, one for compost waste, another for paper and yet another for plastic and/or packaging. there's yet even another three for your different kinds of glass, white, brown and green. alexis tells me that if you don't put the rubbish in the right one, instead of someone telling you off and fining you, cause that would be a public thing, they put a picture of the offending rubbish up annonymously at your front door, like anyone could have put it there. i laughed my arse off and keep bugging him to put the wrong thing in the wrong bin so i can have a picture to bring home, or at least post on here. i, however, am of the belief that the german's way of recycling is just a front. when they collect the glass from the bins it all goes into the same truck together, so the seperating is a waste of time. i am highly suspicious of the rest of their recycling as well. but that's for another post.

(i'm going to have to stop this post here for now, as i have to start getting ready for work. i will probably get into it again either tomorrow afternoon or more likely the next day, as i have to work again tomorrow...)