Real Berlin, Dirty Berlin

Charlotte Roche’s Wetlands open in my lap, deep in the narrator’s meditations on bodily fluids and intimate grooming, I set the book down and looked up. Cedric was steering us across the Wannsee with the practiced ease of someone who actually knows how to sail. Beside me were two Rebeccas—one local, one who’d come up from Bavaria specifically to drag me out of my bad mood. It worked, mostly.

We did Berlin the way I like it: Warschauer Straße at night, greasy chicken döner eaten at two in the morning at Alexanderplatz, the kind of aimless walking that has nowhere to be. We listened to the new The Subways record—All or Nothing—which genuinely rips, and I already know Strawberry Blonde is the one I’ll still be thinking about in a month.

Along the way we broke a Starbucks streak that had quietly become embarrassing, found the new issue of Nylon, and spent twenty minutes philosophizing about how Apple has been leaking whatever cool it had for years. Especially now that even Bild—Germany’s most-read tabloid, the Newspaper of Evil—apparently runs on Macs. That means something has shifted. Probably time to find a new obsession.

The few days went too fast. They always do. Thanks, Beccalein. Until Bavaria.