Afternoon in Wilmersdorf
Coming out of Charlottenburg station with my brain still tangled up in whatever teenage fantasy was happening in that last class—the kind of thing that makes you weirdly horny for reasons you’ll never fully understand—I turn right toward Wilmersdorfer Straße. Sun on the back of my neck, a list of stupid thoughts: how one bottle of Lipton iced tea covered my entire daily sugar requirement, the petition I’m supposed to be pushing as class rep (English instead of PE), the fact that lessons were actually bearable today, probably because the usual assholes weren’t there.
A couple of emo kids outside Media Markt grin at me as I walk past. I grin back. The blonde one screams—even through my earbuds—something about my piercing. I throw up the horns and keep walking. Almost get clipped by a bus.
The bookstore’s next. New Moleskine, whatever magazine. Then Lidl, down those weird cold steps, a kid blocking the revolving door. Haven’t been here in months; the Kaiser’s is closer to my apartment. I’m trailing behind some aggressively Scandinavian family through the aisles like an idiot. Was planning on mineral water because I’d been buzzing all day, hands shaking a little—the kind of thing that makes you paranoid about whatever Michael J. Fox has. But I grab Punica apple juice instead. Bottle, no deposit.
At the register, the cashier flags over the security guard and whispers something in his ear. The guy disappears, comes back asking which one, and the cashier points—barely attempting subtlety—at the Swedish family. I’m putting my stuff away, wondering if I should wait around for whatever’s about to happen to their kid, but I don’t. Just head back up.
Outside, there’s a policewoman shoving a diving mask on some random man and handing him two beer steins, yelling something I can’t quite make out. Camera crew nearby. Some kind of street prank thing, and I’m now in the background of it. Whatever. The emo girls come past again, and the blonde one winks. And right then—standing there in this neighborhood I’ve walked through a thousand times without thinking about it—I realize I actually like it here.