Thursday, February 16

Apparently Germans are Fucking Weird After All

"Did you find the place okay?"

"Oh, sure, I just took the S1."

"Ah. The S1. My buddy. My favorite line."

"You like the S1? The S1 creeps me out."

"How can a train line creep you out? Especially my beloved, beloved pink line?"

"You know what's at the end of the S1, right?"

"No?"

"Sachsenhausen."

"..."

"It's in Oranienburg."

"Berlin has a fucking subway line that runs to a fucking concentration camp?"

"People live right next door to it! We went up to visit it once and we walked right past it at first. It's not even labelled. It's just kind of there. You know. Sachsenhausen."

"Dude! How can you just LIVE there? I mean, how the fuck do you give people directions to your house?? 'Take a left at the Oranienburg station, left at the supermarket, past the death camp? It's on the right?"

"I dunno, man."

"Christ. I guess I better start taking the S2."

     

Wednesday, January 25

Maybe it's Maybelline

My taxi driver kissed me goodbye tonight. Like, with tongue. It was very definitely not my idea and I have no possible notion of how I could have encouraged this behavior in anyone, least of all my taxi driver. I was so confused by the unparalleled weirdness of the situation that I sort of let him do it for a second before I realized what was going on and politely pulled away. I think this may actually be the funniest thing that's ever happened to me and I have no idea how I'm ever going to stop laughing long enough to get to sleep.

Jason: "So I'm probably going to buy my tickets for my trip out there tomorrow.. when I get to the airport, are you going to be kissing on the baggage claim guys?"

Me: "Um, apparently."

In other news, my heat isn't broken anymore, I found a whole hell of a lot of English students this week, and I'm starting rehearsal with a post-rock band tomorrow. But really, the only story you need is the first one.

     

Sunday, December 18

I Hate To Keep Rehashing Themes

But THIS is definitely the best nonsensical spam I've ever gotten:

" She works for the monseigneur. Really? I havent had time to tell you. She will relay his instructions. The uniformed nurse, her light brown hair pulled severely back into a bun, appeared in the doorway. Monsieur, it is Paris, she said, her wide gray eyes conveying an urgency missing in her low, understated voice. Thank you. The Jackals courier walked inside, following the nurse to the telephone. She picked it up and handed it to him. This is Jean Pierre Fontaine. Blessings upon you, child of God, said the voice several thousand miles away. Is everything suitable? Beyond description, answered the old man. It is ... so grand, so much more than we deserve."

I mean, it makes me want to read MORE spam. I think I may open all my spam for the next week just to see if I get the next installment, maybe some sordid background details on the spam-nurse and the spam-monseigneur. Yum!

In other news, I turned 25 and trashed my friends Mark and Eric's apartment cooking an eight-course meal for twenty people. And then wandered drunkenly away with three Irish guys to a pub in Kreuzberg. How to win friends and influence people: starring me! Apparently they wrote a series of unflattering showtunes about me as they were cleaning tomato sauce and flour off every fixture in their entire building. But I got to hear Gaelic for the first time, so really, it was all worth it.

     

Wednesday, December 14

Trick Questions in the Third Conditional

Say in the past week you somehow managed to find yourself in two separate situations which could possibly have resulted in a makeout session.

One of them involved a linguist who scuba dives and paints and flies fighter jets, who holds your coat and buys you bulgogi and shares your taste in graphic novels, who brought you to his penthouse apartment to drink Prosecco and discuss religion and politics and literature and watch the ravens fly over his hot tub.

The other involved a guy whose last name you do not know and with whom you have never even spoken when either of you were anything within waving distance of sober, a gentleman with a bandage over his nose from where he got wrecked on Jever and tried to tackle a friend of his and ended up missing and running face-first into a wall and not knowing that he needed stitches until it was too late because he couldn't feel anything at all, who brought you back to his freezing sublet room where you AND he AND HIS FRIEND were crashing after the trains stopped running.

Which one would you have picked?

Which one would you have picked AGAIN even after apologetically slurring your way into the kitchen where the appalled friend was curled up on the floor under the table waiting for this drunken madness to kindly end?

Whose house would you have accidentally left your fucking housekeys at, such that, having bolted from the room in confusion and embarrassment at five-thirty in the morning and staggered out into the cold Berlin rain, you would be forced to wait outside your apartment for an hour until one of your roommates woke up?

When people call alcohol a "social lubricant" are they making fun of me?