who knew i was missing out all of this time? having a car in berlin is a life-changing event. it makes the number of times we will still have to go to IKEA and Bauhaus to finish the apartment somewhat bearable.
for now it’s the smart which amuses me to no end. i keep wanting to cut out a hole in the bottom and walk around in it like the flintstones or fold it up into a suitcase like the jetsons. you can park that thing almost anywhere.
the woman who ran into us over the weekend must have thought she had a smart. she tried to fit her wide bodied car in a space half the size. she wasn’t just lacking smarts in the car department. can i have your info? she asked. anyone can make a claim, you know. i wonder how many parked cars she’d already run into that day, if she was worried about random people claiming she hit them.
seeing a city from the passenger seat of a car gives you a whole different perspective. i notice things that i’ve never seen before, as i tend to walk upright, like most humans. things like the bright neon green cross on top of the evangelische kirche at the end of zossener str. i wonder if it changes colors for different holidays like the empire state building.
being mobil without the macht of the deutsche bahn is also pretty nifty. i have so little to say about berlin because i’m constantly thinking about leaving (so soon!). first stop, hamburg. any town with a harbor is the place for me. maybe eventually i’ll get around to visiting other german cities. with a hamburg wedding coming up this summer, it looks like hamburg will stay at the top of my "most visited german cities" list.
raskal trippin 
Steven Augustine said,
Thursday 13 April 2006 at 12:16 am
Okay, I admit it…the first couple of years of Berlin can be SOOOO annoying…but HAMBURG? You’ll be done with it in a week, I’m kinda sure. Berlin’s charm (not unlike Nosferatu’s) creeps up on you…give it time…the trick is to ignore the, uh…natives. Lach. By the way, do you know Germantown, in Philly?
sattva said,
Thursday 13 April 2006 at 8:34 am
hey steven,
i don’t find berlin/berliners annoying but i’ve seen the fish that “live” in the spree! harbor + hipsters beats out hipsters + fake strand. but anyway i’ll only be there long enough to catch the fire and buy an fc st. pauli shirt or something.
why do you ask about germantown? never been but know it well…
Steven Augustine said,
Thursday 13 April 2006 at 12:18 pm
Ha ha! The good ole fake strand! I was sitting at one of those once in a party that included a lawyer, and the lawyer, with evident pride, surveying the tons of imported sand and dying palms and the waste-laden barge gliding behind us towards the basilica to a soundtrack of quaint old acid jazz, asked me, ‘Do you have something like this where YOU come from?’ Being from Southern California I replied, with incredulity ‘Yeah. It’s called Pacific Beach.’ The ‘bitch’ at the end of that sentence was implied.
Re: Germantown: I ask because I lived there for a bit, and I believe you wrote something somewhere about having lived in Philly? Or was I imagining that?
Brother M said,
Saturday 15 April 2006 at 6:44 am
I spoke to a girl at a party who was from nearby Germantown. When I asked for her opinion of the place, she called it a formerly well-to-do area that was now a graveyard of mansions.
I am saddened to learn that you can park. It may mean that I may have inherited the bad parking genes.
Here’s to cars that double as backpacks!
sattva said,
Saturday 15 April 2006 at 7:55 am
*I* don’t have a license. I’m waiting until I’m 50 and we have a mini-van. :)))