A Brazilian and an American walk into an 80s club...

The night finally cooling down heated Berlin, my friend R. and I walk into a club, Talking Heads blasting as Foosball is played in one corner and the rest of the enormous room is crowded by dancers of all ages, some dressed up, some not, and all moving to the 80s.  Over the night, we move from one spot to the other, trying to find the best vibe to dance in, avoiding cruel stares by the sometimes haughty Berlin women, and of course trying to find the cutest single guys. 

Luckily for us, we had no problem finding gorgeous guys all around us - making out to other guys.  Little known fact (that probably everyone else knew): 80s night is home to the gays, at least outside Shoneberg, Berlin's famously gay-friendly neighborhood.  The fabulous gentleman who stepped on R.'s foot a whopping three times soon became our friend as he told me my Madonna-inspired dancing was "fierce" and tried to help us pick out straight guys for us to dance with as he intimately interacted with the other gentleman behind him.

Fog and cigarette smoke obscure vision, not to mention our previous drinks, as we try to pick out the cutest guy, give him the eye and strike up a conversation.  Another fun fact about Berlin - German guys do not, I repeat, do NOT go up to girls and chat them up!  German women find it creepy for men to approach them and start a conversation, so it's up to women to say the first hello.  Very, very different than how I was brought up!  R. and I have decided we need to garner some practice in chatting up guys, since now all the pickup lines are sadly up to us. 

But never fear, as we learned upon leaving the club, when the men are drunk, they have no problem coming up to you and asking you to accompany them "over there" to party.  Before you ask, we refused.  Time to prep for another night out in Berlin!  :)

Kind Requests

When discussing what to blog about in Berlin, my current flatmate suggested that I write about something very unique to Berlin: the large variety, rather than large number, of people asking you for money. 
Today, someone asked my friends and I to buy cookies from them so they could get tickets back home - wherever that is, as they did not have accents that we could identify.  Eastern European, perhaps?  With packs on their backs and hand-carrying a basket of cellophane-wrapped cookies, we wondered how they got the money for cookies and a myriad of other roadblocks to their cause, including the possibilities of its truth. 

Very common to Berlin are hippies younger than me, dirty and pleasant, asking for money for beer or weed.  Often in a group, sometimes with a dog, they are usually a jubilant bunch, hoping to score a little change to be spent on a good time in Berlin.  As usual for me, I continue to have questions: where do you live and how do you pay for that?  Do you simply not have enough left over for beer, or is it just a sign that you made in hopes that it would inspire donations, no matter what the funds are really used for?  What is your history, what brought you here and made you decide to stay?  Perhaps just the availability of street donations. 

My personal favorite are of course the street musicians.  I have taken to giving them my smallest coins if I think they are playing well, and considering it good karma, have kept up the practice.  I inherited quite a bit of small change from friends and family leaving Europe, and I certainly think that decent musicians are a good avenue for that small investment.  However, I do not like them on trains - the space is too small, and makes it impossible to gossip with one's friends.  Those I ignore - I don't want to encourage them!  However, they are all a part of what makes Berlin, especially in this warm time of year, an incredible place to live.  Someone's always doing something, and there's always something to talk about. 

A wave to the hated tourists

At least once a week, I do a jog/walk along the canal near my flat in Kruezberg.  I go past the open tables of restaurants where people are having coffee or wine on the river, underneath a swaying willow tree.  I go past Kottbusser Brucke, where I dodge cars and bikes to cross one of the busiest streets in xberg, as my neighborhood is called, and I hit Admiralbrucke, where friends meet for a quick drink from the local spati.  I continue on, focusing on panting down the dirt paths instead of the more damaging stone ones, and try to improve my form with each step, moving as if through water.  I pass friends meeting for lunch, preschoolers on an outing with their teachers, homeless men looking for bottles to make some quick change.  I turn back when the river turns away from me, and work my way back on the other side.  I pass the wine store that tempts me with liquid gold and sometimes jump my way through the obstacle course that is the Kruezberg Market, mostly Turkish men selling cheap and in-season fruits and vegetables that pass by. 

I stop at "my" bridge, Hobrechtbrucke, and there, I stretch, using the gate that keeps me from drowning as a barre to stretch my tired, jumpy legs.  My neighborhood is covered with graffiti, and this bridge is no exception.  As I look down to focus on my stretch, I see three separate statements hating the tourists, damn them all.  And as I look up, I give a wave to a boat full of them as they pass underneath me, my disco music drowning out the tour guide as he rambles along.  Berlin is a little gritty and conflicted in that way, and that's why I love it. 

Cocktails in India...in Berlin

In Berlin, the best place to get cheap cocktails is at your local Indian restaurant.  At the place down the street from me, it goes from about 6pm-9pm, or 18-21 in European time, which I now prefer, and provides cocktails for 3.90, an unreasonably amazing price.  Now, you do get what you pay for, but for those of us who just want to drink something sweet and not worry about a price point, it is absolute perfection.  In other neighborhoods in Berlin where Indian restaurants are more prolific, there can be a variety of happy hours.  Some restaurants provide the cheapest price from 9-12, others only from midnight on, and even others restrict it to lunch.  If you're a very lucky duck, you can simply go from one Indian restaurant to the next, getting more and more drunk on cheap, and probably low liquor, cocktails. 

 Start with a mojito and continue onto a cosmopolitan, served here in a tall glass, not as a martini, and before you know it, you'll be screaming for a long island iced tea and enjoying your Berlin weekend quite thoroughly.  For those of us with a fairly low tolerance and a certainly small pocketbook, this is an ideal way to spend the day.  After all, in Berlin, it is completely normal and even expected to start your Saturday drinking with a glass of something libatious at a late lunch, and keep on trudging along until you are pleasantly drunk at midnight, right in time to go clubbing and get hit on by the usually very reserved, but currently plastered, German boys.  Only in Berlin!

Thoughts on Life

Every single day is riddled with choices - what to eat, who to spend (or waste) your time with, where to call your home, and on and on, ad infinitum (now that I've added a touch of Latin you may think I'm a douchey pseudo-intellectual and stop reading - yet another choice!).  Some are the best choices we've ever made, and some are the most regretted.  My life choices have been of severe debate amongst all of my acquaintance, and unfortunately I'm not even sure yet whether they're good.  But I can tell you that I've never regretted the choice to be happy.  Because to my surprise, happiness is a choice, not a gift from God, not something formulated by putting together the magical recipe that bakes into your happiness, but something you have to work for, and that you have to focus on.  Who knew?!

Living abroad, however, is a choice overflowing with challenges, most generally ridiculous and unforeseeable.  Going to the hardware store suddenly becomes an adventure, and talking to your co-workers is an absolute impossibility.  In cases such as these, to paraphrase Jane Austen, a bad attitude is impardonable.  And it is a lesson I need to learn, every damn day, and only the hard way. 

When I tell people in my home city how I live my life, and especially where, the first response is assuredly "OH, I could never do that", spoken in a low whisper of fear and almost horror at the thought of how difficult it would have to be.  Of course there have been difficulties, but I worked through them, one step at at time.  What I consistently find interesting is that for me, it would be horrible to stay where I was, and to just be another part of what I call the Minnesota Machine.  Make decent friends, get a decent job, have a decent amount of fun, marry a decent person, have very decent children, get a decent house, and have a decent life.  I looked upon my future there, and found that "decent" was all I was going to get out of it.  I know wonderful people who have been very happy living their lives there - and feel that they are more than decent.  I rejoice in their happiness, and would never try to change them.  But I wanted more - I wanted something different.  And to stay where I was would have been robbing myself of the full life that I fully expect of myself. 

As many of you already know, and some of you could probably suspect, if you know me that is, I have been going through an existential crisis for many weeks now.  I get up, I go to work, I see my friends, I have my fun, but all the while, underneath all the bravado (of which I have perhaps too much), I am wondering what the hell it is all for.  Why am I here?  Why do anything?  Why do nothing?  What is the purpose of the universe, and what is my purpose in it?  Can I even contribute anything at all of value?  Does anyone at all really benefit from my contribution to the world in a way that no one else could provide?  I currently teach at a preschool, and I think I do a reasonably good job, but there are I'm sure many others who could, and do, a much better job than I ever could.  I feel myself floating in a world without a purpose or direction, and I'm not sure what to make of it. 

Is there any solution out there?  As of yet: unknown. 
The existential crisis continues!

Rough day...and it's not even 10am

Exhaustion coats my insides as a morning that started at 3:30am finally comes to rest, my bones creaking even as I write. The tears that have made me infamous come to my eyes and I mentally beg the Berlin transit system to get me home soon, where I can cry my years of frustration in peace.
Thoughts of my family, my job, my future, my life, fill me with an inescapable sense of helplessness, uselessness, and the reality that I am entirely without power hangs heavy with dread. I have no solutions, no avenues left to explore except to try again and again, making myself insane by definition, and yet I cannot help it because I have no other choice.
I pray that sleep will help, that fear will recede and solutions will appear to make this better before the next collision occurs & I am useless again.

And for the millionth time I ask myself: is it worth it? But it has to be, for this is me, forming myself, building an emotional future I can count in, and I must continue forward. There is no other direction to move in.
I am powerless.

Anatomy of a Scam

It all started with a housing emergency, the recommendation of a friend, and some minor evidence of truth.  But that was only the beginning. 

I was in a state close to homelessness recently, practically dying for a place to live, but still trying to find the just right one, acting Goldilocks and avoiding ones that were too expensive, not big enough, or housed by freaks.  Most were denying me for one reason or another, usually because I don't speak German or I am "too American", but that's life.

 A friend of mine, C., had found a place in Kruezberg, but then couldn't take this one place that she heard about in the same building.  It sounded strange, she admitted, but she had seen a flat in the same building with this person's name on it, so she thought it might be legitimate.  So, I emailed.  Corinna got back to me, nothing sketchy, so I wasn't suspicious yet.  I asked when I could see it, and she said that she couldn't let me see it because she was out of the country, but could send me some photos.  They are the photos that you are seeing in this post.  To this day, I have no idea where these photos came from, or who really lives in this place. 

I told C. that I thought it was getting a little sketchy, so she suggested skyping with her, which is what she was going to do to check it out, and then seeing what happened.  We made a skype date, and I got online.  Immediately she's messaging me, but not calling me.  I call her, trying to hear a voice, get a face, something to substantiate her claims, but nothing is really working.  She answers, but then immediately hangs up.  Right away I call her on the scam, trying to figure it out.  She instantly gets offended, saying that I should look somewhere else if I am going to be so arrogant - clearly not the appropriate word for the situation, so I know right away that her English isn't good.  I'm about to hang up, but I need a place to live, and it just might be a strange situation.  So I apologize, explain that I'm not about to give my money to someone without knowing that it's a real thing.  So, I start asking some questions to get some more information about her, her situation, and this mysterious flat that she has for rent. 

First I ask where she is, she gives a simple one-word answer.  I ask what she's doing there, again a simple one-word answer.  I ask why she chose to live there, again a simple one-word answer, and a pattern develops which continues throughout our conversation.  For every question, I get a simple one- or two-word answer that simply does not verify that this is a real person.  Also, she's not talking like I would in this situation.  Of course I can talk until the apocalypse comes and saves everyone from my rampant rambling, but there's no information.  She says she's a nanny, and I share that I work in a kindergarten.  No shared stories of working with children, no details.  And people who work with kids are friendly - generally, we love to talk, and love to talk about our kids.  Which ones like which foods, how each sleeps, what each likes to wear.  We love them, and love sharing about them, just as if they were our own.  It's a sickness that you love to be inflicted with.  But here, there is no sharing, no stories, no complaints about parents (another common caregiver indulgence).  I ask more questions, but still get simple answers with as few words as possible.  My suspicion increases, but I just keep remembering that C. saw a flat with this name in her building.  And wouldn't it be just too perfect to live in the same building as my friend C., in this beautiful flat.

But suddenly, we're cut off.  She says that she has to restart her computer, I say ok, and she signs off.  For over an hour.  My internet doesn't work too well in my temporary flat, so I take my computer and move the whole operation to my friend's flat about 30 mins away.  It isn't until I've been there for almost an hour, drinking tea and watching Downton Abbey for almost an hour, that finally Corinna comes back on.  Frustrated by the wait and by the lack of answers for my questions, I finally start asking about the photos, the flat, and the situation of renting it.  Corinna says that her mother owns it, but that she's renting it out. 

As you can see, there are two bedrooms, and she's trying to rent out both of them.  But she's in the UK, she says, so she can't show them.  Remember, up to this point, I have only seen the photos, received and sent emails, and had a skype instant message chat.  No voice conversation, no video chat, no opportunity to view it for myself or verify anything.  But, now out of sheer curiosity, I push forward.  There are two bathrooms, so I ask about them. 
I try to find out which room goes with which bathroom, and Corinna seems to have no idea what I'm talking about.  I ask about what I see in the kitchen.  Does it all come with the flat, or did she take it with her?  What about the clothes and other belongings?  Will they fill the closets so I can't put my stuff in?  She sort of half reassures me that she took them out.

So far, I'm not really believing a word.  Around this time in our conversation, I start chatting on facebook with my friend L., who lives and works at a kindergarten in Munich.  I'm telling her about this really strange conversation I'm having on facebook.  I explain that it's really suspicious, but that Corinna hasn't yet asked for my passport or for any money, so I'm still evaluating.  Generally, scammers always ask for things inappropriately soon, trying to get something out of you so they can steal your money, identity, or both.  L. tells me that it sounds just like someone who stole a whole bunch of her money when she first moved abroad.  I assure L., the woman hasn't asked for anything inappropriate.  L.'s only answer is also one-word: "yet".

As L. is telling me to back off and forget it, I ask Corinna how I would pay her rent, if she's out of town.  She tells me that I would send it through my bank account.  How would I get in the flat?  She would send me the keys via courier.  She neglects to inform me of which would come first: the bank account, or the keys.  After talking to L., I'm a little more willing to believe that the bank account will be exchanged first, and the keys will never arrive.  Upon L.'s suggestion, I say that although the room sounds nice, I really do need to see it first before I can move into it.  Corinna's response: I understand, but I cannot show it since I am in another country, and I have to work so I cannot just come back to Berlin to show it to you.  I then ask the question that I have had on my mind for over an hour: if your mother owns it, and you are the one renting it out while you are out of the country, then why can't your mother show me the flat.  And finally, the story starts to unravel.

Her mother is dead, she claims, and I mentally debate the reasons for putting her mother in the present tense earlier, although clearly her English leaves much to be desired.  I, also mourning a parent, say that I am sorry for her loss, but ask if she doesn't have any friends or other relatives that could show the flat while she's away.  Generally, if you're from a city, you have people there who will do favors for you.  I can immediately list about 20 people off hand who would do this for me in my home city, without question, and of course expecting a favor owed upon my return, which I would happily repay.  What about that, I wonder?  She freaks out, immediately tells me to stop asking questions, to look for another flat, and that she is no longer interested in renting to someone like me, the same claims she made earlier in the conversation when I said that I was not interested in a scam, but a legitimate flat being rented.  Using her mother's "death" as a reason, she stops all communication, and is no longer interested in me, but I, of course, am now completely disinterested in anything else "she" has to say to me.

L. hears all of this, and is just as fascinated as I am.  Asking for the skype info, she creates a fake skype account to test "Corinna's" story: that she is a native German/Berliner who moved to the UK and needs to rent out her flat.  L.'s fluent German tells the whole story: all of "her" German is clearly google translated.  Whoever she is, she's not German or from the UK or the US.  And L. suspects, just as I did when we were talking about working with children, that she is in fact a he.  It's hard to explain why, but there is just a certain way of talking that is clearly not female.  All my suspicions are confirmed, and I immediately block "Corinna" on skype, and delete "her" emails, until now, when I resurrected them for the photos for this story.

But what about the flat in C.'s building that had the same name?  Clearly, this person stole their name, claimed that their flat was hers, and started trying to rent it through the internet, where you can create an entire identity for free, no waiting.  I immediately bring C. into the conversation, and we're still working on contacting the woman in her building about getting the police involved on the possible theft of her identity.  I hope nothing was truly lost on her part, and of course hope against hope that no one believed the scammer and got conned out of a great deal of money, but it is possible. 

So if you are looking for a place to live, remember to ask crucial questions, look for suspicious behavior, check on everything, and do not ever give your money, passport, or any information about yourself until it's a sure thing.  Even if it seems legit, check again and again.  And really, just don't ever rent or buy a place to live without seeing it first.  Unfortunately, that's how darling L. lost a great deal of money, and how I almost got caught in, too.  It's better to be safe than sorry, kids, and in a dangerous world like this one, be careful who you trust.