Cheesecake at Three

I’m sitting in my new life now. Sun outside, kids trying to do cat sounds, Tom Cruise filming downtown. We got here Thursday morning, and the second I opened the door to my tiny dorm room, I wanted to leave immediately. But every hour here makes it clearer: Berlin is better. Just is.

I’m in Charlottenburg with a U-Bahn station a block away and a cheap Greek place on the corner. My room is the size of a closet. Internet barely connects, the television doesn’t work, and you can hear your neighbor’s cough through the wall. But I like it here.

Last night Cedric and Pia took me out. We ended up at a club where Bushido was performing, walked past some sex workers, and I couldn’t look away from any of it. But the moment that stuck was the cheesecake. Warm, with whipped cream and strawberry syrup, at three in the morning in a sixties diner. Cedric and Pia called it out immediately as the obvious stoner meal and started telling me disturbing stories about cannibals and ritual cat killings, but that moment—the plate warm, the cream cold, the syrup still moving—that was the real thing. The other one was five in the morning on an empty U-Bahn, just weird people shuffling in and out. I kept my iPod in my pocket that ride.

I’m comfortable here already. Every corner has something. Strange people, pretty women, I’m learning the U-Bahn routes. I’ll take today easy. Monday I need salt, pepper, a poster. Should register as an official Berlin resident. But if the television reception kills something I actually want to watch, that’s when I’ll know it’s gone too far.