amerikanerin in berlin

I've never been all THAT into the latest and greatest in cell phone technology, but in the last 24 hours I've wished four times or more that I'd had a camera phone. In the following post, I will try to make up for the fact that I don't have one with the help of Google Images.

Yesterday I walked from Schöneberg to Kreuzberg. (Like this.) First I saw this ad on a billboard:

I've seen it plenty of times before, and every time I've remarked to myself, 1) Gee, she's wearing a lot of makeup, and 2) I wonder why she stuck a glove in the front of her dress/in her necklace? This is, however, the first time I've seen the ad and realized she's blowing a kiss. I think I might have laughed out loud at myself, shortly after anyone watching me may have seen an Ohhhh of COURSE! expression cross my face. (If the kiss-blowing was immediately evident to you...please don't disown me on account of stupidity. [And I won't tell you that in the billboard version, "Kiss me, Kindl!" is emblazoned across the top.])

As I was having my Eureka moment over this ad, I was walking across a bridge which spans several lines of train tracks down below. On one of the tree-covered banks which sloped steeply from the ends of the bridge down to the tracks were several chairs and couches. It looked like someone had pitched the entire contents of their living room down the hill, not unlike this--

--but on an incline. It struck me as funny since it was right in the middle of Berlin, instead of the middle of nowhere, as in the picture.

I also saw a sax shop. (Double check that vowel. Got it? K, good.) I've already commented to various people on the level of specialization among shopowners in Berlin (or maybe it's just all cities of a certain size), but a shop dealing in nothing but saxophones is so much better than a regular old lamp or curtain store.

I also saw a new Dolce and Gabbana ad picturing a guy apparently in despair after having accidentally put on his girlfriend's jeans, and, on a sign outside a family and relationship counseling center, a depiction in stick figures of the services offered therein, both of which really cracked me up. But Google Images is no help this time, so you'll have to wait until I walk to Kreuzberg again.

No, wait. I'll break out the MS Paint skills again... Here's a pretty great replication of the latter of the two, if I do say so myself:I may not have their positions exact, but I do believe I've captured the expressions of the two characters adequately. And the original is honestly no more complicated than that, just two stick guys at a stick table. But I absolutely love how Stick Guy A is so obviously a father in despair because he just got laid off and how is he going to support his five kids under the age of five and a new one on the way? and Stick Guy B is clearly a very empathetic, supportive, capable social worker, and a good listener to boot. All that's missing is a stick box of Kleenex.

And I guess you don't really need to see the D&G guy. He's beyond my MS Paint skills (considerable though they may be) anyway.

Hokay. So. Last night. I went with Henrike to Hotel Bar (which is neither in, near, nor associated with any actual hotels) to see a friend of hers perform. She warned me that the music would probably be "kinda weird". There are no pictures on that website, unfortunately, but I linked it anyway so you could see the kind of acts that perform at this bar. Exhibit A: Friday, Oct. 20 was "latin-soul-electropop-wildstyle." Fantastic. The bar itself is in the basement--which pretty much always raises the probability of it's being cool, I've discovered--small and mood-lit and very Euro-hip, but the underground kind of hip.

First this French girl, Ava Carrere, sang. Well..."sang" is relative. It was part pre-recorded music, which was the background for her to sing/almost rap/talk/make hissing noises while playing--wait for it--cardboard instruments. I'm totally serious. And so was she. She had an upright bass, an electric guitar, an electric bass. My favorite, though, was the cardboard piano (not the whole thing, unfortunately, just the keyboard on a table) on which she accompanied herself as she sang, all the while wearing those plastic vampire teeth you can buy anywhere for fifty cents and a pair of Blues Brothers-esque shades. It was an I've-been-broken-up-with song, and the lyrics went "This is not a sad song/ This is not a sad song..." I wish I had a picture for you. So crazy, and yet she pulled it off. She had even pre-recorded tuning the instruments, and she'd make faces and turn the cardboard pegs before starting each song.

Then Mini Death played (folky triphoppy music at it's [sic] finest). They were cool, if marginally less entertaining. Also the name really didn't seem to fit. It was a guy playing bass and one playing drums, and a girl with a terrific voice singing, and another girl (whom I really could have done without, but she looked the part of Rock Star Who Plays In A Band Called 'Mini Death' better than any of the others, so maybe the name was her idea and now they keep her for the image) playing some kind of miniature electric bass and singing backup sometimes. The songs were all in English, and the band's fan base seems to be made up primarily of Americans, cause the bar was full of them. It was kind of disorienting to hear that much American English in one place. (You know, a place other than Fulbright-appointed, I guess.)

So that's what I did on Halloween in Berlin. There was no candy involved.

Labels: Berlin life

by LP on 01 November 2006 at 9:47 PM (Berlin time) | Permalink