Travelling Hopefully

Subtitle: Let Me Tell You About the Boars and the Bees

There have been claims in recent years that bees are vanishing.  Apparently our stripy, buzzing friends have been making themselves scarce.  This is a total lie.  The bees aren't vanishing, they've all moved to Berlin.  Fortunately I'm quite partial to bees.  It's odd, if a fly were to crawl all over my glass while I'm drinking from it I would be disgusted but I have no such problem with bees.  In fact one of them actually fell into my drink without prompting anything more than concern that the little fellow might drown.

For the non apiarist Berlin still has plenty to offer.  I have totally fallen on my feet in regards to accommodation with my hosts turning out to be delightful and welcoming people.  Living in a flat where the owner has made all of the furniture out of recycled bits and pieces is quite interesting too.  I'm hanging out in Kreuzberg which is quite an interesting part of the city (fewer hipsters than around the centre and fewer murders than Neukölln).  Plenty of Turkish places to eat and at least one restaurant of every other nationality that has ever so much as dropped in on Berlin for a visit.  There's even a Sudanese restaurant.  The last time I looked Sudan didn't even have food.

I visited the holocaust memorial which is very modern, which is to say there is nothing to indicate that it actually relates to Jews or death at all.  It comprises a large area of different sized pillars forming paths you can walk through.  From a distance it looks like a maze, once inside it is actually rather creepy and foreboding which indicates that the artist did know a little about what he was doing although the effect was rather spoiled by the children playing hide and seek there.  Once through I succumbed to total tourist stereotypes and sat amongst the bees and had a currywurst.  Berliners seem quite taken with what is basically a sausage with curry powder on it.  They even have a museum dedicated to the currywurst which I made a point of not seeing.

After dining sumptuously on the local delicacy I strolled down the Wilhelmstrasse (with a silent nod to the memory of Erich von Stalhein) and then the Unter den Linden which was quite a disappointment as it is currently a construction zone.  I went past the Bugatti dealership to see what they had to offer.  The salesman liked me so much he offered to knock a million off the price of their latest model.  I told him I'd think about it.  While I was thinking about it I fled back to Kreuzberg where the presence of a Bugatti would prompt a police raid.

My hosts in Kreuzberg are an artist whose name is Jah and her flatmate Chris, Jah's sister's name is Yip.  I mention this so that when I say "Yip took me to the flea market at Mauer Park" you won't think I've lost my mind.  Helpful family members need not chime in at this point.

I have never seen a flea market that sells furniture before.  There was stuff a purchaser would need to bring a flatbed truck to haul away.  The best thing about the flea market was the karaoke.  An outdoor amphitheatre (on a modest scale) provides the setting for people determined to embarrass themselves in public.  The very first song I heard as we arrived was "Jessie's Girl".  I swear to god that damned song is following me around.  The most fun about the karaoke is seeing the performers really putting on a show.  Callum for example wasn't just a drunken yob from Glasgow who butchered "Proud Mary" he was a drunken yob from Glasgow who butchered "Proud Mary" while also performing, dancing, interacting with the audience and generally putting on a great show.  We applauded him like crazy.  Particularly when he accidentally danced on and broke the bottle of beer he was drinking from.

The next day dawned grey and wet so I took a bus tour of the city.  We rolled past the home of the German president and embassies from definitely more upmarket nations than the ones I had seen in London (I even saw the embassy from the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg).  The Tiergarten is a patch of sort of forest in the middle of Berlin.  Apparently it has been maintained since ancient times as the Prussian kings liked to go boar hunting without travelling too far from home.  The guide on the bus assured us there were no boars there now although apparently there are quite a few in the forests around Berlin.  If, while strolling innocently in a forest around Berlin, one should encounter a boar apparently the best thing you can do is talk to it.  After first freezing to the spot of course.  Apparently the local boars have learnt to identify the sound of human speech and if you talk they will realise that you're probably something whose death would have severe consequences.  I got this information from a tour guide in the middle of the city, on the top of a bus, next to a park where there are definitively no boars, so you know it must be good advice.

Checkpoint Charlie is really just a checkpoint.  Basically a sign indicating that here would be a good place to stop if you didn't want to be shot by someone.  However there is a museum next to it dedicated to the Berlin Wall, the events surrounding it and people who succeeded (and failed) to get past it.  They were selling little bits of what was supposed to be the wall but since it came down two decades ago and millions of tourists visit every year I'm a little suspicious about that one.  Its rather like believing that every Victoria Cross is still made of bronze from cannons captured in the Crimean War.  I saw a part of the wall still standing and was a little let down.  In my mind I had imagined some huge medieval fortress type thing but its just a wall.  Sufficiently high so that people can't comfortably get over it before the border guards have had an opportunity to swing their machine guns round and that's about it.  The real barrier was in the bare "dead zone" behind the wall and the guard towers and dog patrols behind that.  If you actually managed to get as far as the wall you had actually got further than most.

For those of you who have read this post in an agony of suspense allow me to assure you that the bee that fell in my drink at the start survived and managed to struggle out of its own accord.