10.23pm, open mic night, Berlin. After a few standard acoustic guitar
Indie wailers it’s time for some darkwave. A middle-aged man in an ill-fitting silver
suit and a jumper. He plugs in his USB and the dissonant music washes out. Only
he seems to keep his head above it, stalking the stage and navigating the arrhythmia
with his guttural vocals. After an indefinitely long period of time the mercy
rule is invoked. Another beer anyone?
 |
| Check point Charlie |
As the musical disarray finished and the dog grew tired of chasing the cork that
was being hurled around the bar for him, I met Rob and Morris. “So
where are you from, Morris?”
“I’m a citizen of the world.”
In a black turtleneck with the sleeves rolled up to the elbow, just
enough so as to reveal the encroaching tats creeping down his arms, he clearly
aimed for an ex-con-Archer look. Balding, in a trench coat and sporting a van
dyke, Rob had similar visions of toughness. “If I get in a fight, he’s got my
back.”
 |
| Snowy Prague |
I had the chance to meet again in Berlin Gizi and Alfie, a.k.a.
Jizzo and Fonz from Sarajevo. Gizi thought it her duty to show me some
authentic Berlin bars with her friend Nadine on a self-effacing pub crawl
around Kreuzberg and via the alleged best hot chips in the vicinity. Served
with hummus.
 |
| Australia Day pre-drinks (and piss bottle) |
Authentic Berlin bars are those which lack the pretentiousness that
comes with trendiness—those which avoid the follies resultant from being swept
up in a word benevolently offered to English by the Germans, zeitgeist.
In such bars when an old and corpulent man bent with age and life and
with a silken silver mullet comes in offering his drawings for two euros, he is
offered a beer, a cigarette and a place to sit, and in his time collects a few
coins and might even sell a picture or two. Meanwhile, the place fills up
around him with mismatched patrons and clouds of smoke. When the music hits a
lull, the girl who has been notably enjoying and focused on it puts down her
beer and goes up to help choose the next album to be played.
After spending the night before I was to leave watching Django Unchained at The International cinema, one apparently with a flavour of the old East and at which everyone rumbles into the unnumbered seats clutching bottles of beer and wine, I realised I hadn’t printed my bus ticket. So I hustled to Gizi’s bar to find a solution in a beer bottle. Thankfully the kindness of Germans extends to finishing their shift at 4am, waking at 6am, printing my ticket and then giving me directions on how to catch the two U-Bahn routes and bus required to make it to the bus depot in time for my 7am departure.
In Prague for the second time it was by some strange confluence of
chance and the subconscious indicators that facilitate the semi-random picking
of a hostel out of the endless options that I was at the same hostel at which I
had stayed with Kip some three years or so prior. So I retraced our footsteps
somewhat, reliving memories and revisiting the unceasing beauty of Prague, as
well as a certain cathedral. All of this eventually became too much under the
duress of dawdling tourists cramping my style, so I retired to a local eatery
for some deep fried cheese and pork with three kinds of dumplings. Pretty much
as listed, it is some rib-sticking food and all the more tasty for knowing how
bad it is. Nursing the food induced euphoric semi-consciousness, I retired to
the hostel’s satellite privileged TV to watch 6 hours of NFL. Bliss.
Sent to Harley’s for what promised to be “madness”, the craziest the
night got was listening to our Argentinian friend’s tales of seducing both
women and possible prostitutes, before the addling effects of marijuana and
MDMA that coursed through his system caused him to sit back and complain of the
elephants flying across the room.
For some days now I had been eyeing a roasted pork knee. Matt even
remarked that he thought he recalled the first sentence he heard me speak to
contain said animal joint. So Alex and I along with Dev—a British trader who’d
quit it all to go travelling and volunteer, sought out some more traditional
fare. Specifically the pork knee. Czech food is usually hearty, but weighing in
at 1.4-1.8kg, the pork knee put to shame all comers. Nonetheless, it had its
equal in my consuming pig lust.
 |
| Love from Prague |
Suffice to say, come 9am we arrived back at the hostel having finished
the night at a non-stop club where the refugees of the night slurred and
stumbled and gyrated in defiance of the day with just enough time for me to
shower and stuff most of my clothes into my bag before I followed Matt and
Linda to the airport. As they went off to catch their flight to Lyon I negotiated
the hour before I could check-in by passing out on a bench.
In one of the more unpleasant days of my travels I was then cramped
into a Wizz Air seat too small for me to fit my legs behind, forcing me to swap
so that I could extend them into the aisle whereupon I was woken from my
dreamless unconscious by the attendants every time they wheeled by the trolley,
only to pass out again within seconds before having the process repeated. Cold
sweat and nausea.
 |
| Prague-crawling |
The Burger, once a feature of my 4.30am Friday mornings where we would
discuss various heady topics of worldly significance in the clarity of pre-dawn
consciousness, as a white-collar man of means was to most appearances a reasonably
well kept and shirt-wearing figure.
Having relocated to the UK to play rugby league in some new climes and
more generally experience something different to the life fettered in Macquarie
Fields, his appearance has changed somewhat. Now a man of casual physical
labour, he met me with a beard of many weeks and in a tracksuit more worthy of
a street slinking chav than the mighty Burger.
Pleasantly, his new found fondness for steel capped boots, carrying a
spanner, and many layers of workmanly attire did little to disguise his
unsavoury collection of bon mots and idioms that render his company most
amusing.
 |
| 1.4-1.8kg of pork knee |
But there was also ‘Straya day with which to contend, and so the Burger
and I arranged to meet up with our fellow deviant of Oktoberfest, Gaps, and
slouched about the roof of Burger’s apartment block slugging beers and talking
the usual rubbish. Gaps, at the robust height of maybe 5’9”, currently weighs
109kg and has the biggest upper body of any human I have seen in real life.
Next we entered the very appropriately named
Inferno. Powered by atrocious music and with the worst kind of patron, with
every bead of sweat that met my brow I was more and more aware of the parallels
between this and divine punishment.
 |
| Man lunch with the disheveled Burger |
So Burger and I left not long into the morning, ordering eight chicken
wraps and eating them with surprising dignity in the back of a black cab as the
driver rattled on inanely in a quintessential cabbie manner.
Blessed relief in the UK, although exclusively courtesy of the presence
of the expat Australian and New Zealand community, is the availability of
quality coffee. On this vital pillar of civil society was established the order
of every morning. Fuelled by such sweet bean, on my last day in London before
my flight the Burger and I had a celebratory lunch of manly meat at a Turkish restaurant.
I had spent the morning discussing plans and booking a flight from Bangkok to
Ho Chi Minh city to meet Jess in a couple of weeks.
Little did I know that this footnote of my morning would turn out to be
most significant as when I arrived at the airport with a one-way booking to
Bangkok, the essentialness of my booking was emphasised by the man at the
check-in desk as he requested to see booking evidence of my eventual departure
before he’d allow me to check in.
The hostess said “Namaste” as I boarded the plane.
I didn’t recognise the side dishes to what I was eating.
The man next to me was both watching and enjoying a Bollywood movie.
In transit in Delhi I impatiently awaited the wet, warm air.
No comments:
Post a Comment