Berlin

Earlier in the day, I had a flight from Budapest. Things were supposed to go well but I didn`t realize my ticket needed wi-fi in order for the QR code to get scanned. Luckily, there was someone who overheard and let me borrow his hotspot. I got on just fine and made it to the airport. Things were going pretty well until I got scammed a couple of times by the vending machine as well. Super annoying but I got on my flight to Berlin.

From the airport, I made my way down to the train terminal and took the train going to the city center. It was a pretty pleasant train ride, I managed to escape paying for anything once again. From the city center, I took a bus going to Evie`s place. I got to her neighborhood, it was nice and quiet, a bit chilly with some autumn foliage. The problem was, Evie didn't tell me what unit number her flat was so I was just stuck outside the apartment. I've been waiting for a while, contemplating whether to actually start knocking on each floor's unit but after a bit of back and forth, Evie finally called out from above. It was really nice to see her again, we picked up right from where we left off back in Tokyo. It was really easy to hang out with her, a bit eccentric and wild sometimes but hey she's one of my best friends. We started by going to a nearby bakery, running and catching the bus. I ate some raw meat inside bread which was pretty good. We went to town and saw some of the famous spots of Berlin. I had two impressions on Berlin, compared to the other European cities I have been to so far, Berlin was by far the dirtiest and the most dull. The architecture was pretty flat and gray. There was graffiti everywhere in all corners, some I wondered how they even got there in the first place. We went to the Memorial to the Murdered Jews that also doubled as an art exhibition that was meant to give you a disturbed feeling. Brandeburg Gate, Bode Museum and the bridge leading to it, the TV Tower and several parks. We covered a lot of ground and surprisingly finished most of my spots in Berlin in a few hours. We went to eat some curry fries before going off to find an antigen test for Evie so she could enter some establishments. Even the train and bus had graffiti inside them, according to Yoko (a character appearing later in the story). Berlin itself is an artwork as the whole city is painted in these crazy graffiti. We went to the station where Evie was meant to get an antigen and from the get-go in the park, I made eye contact with one of the black dudes and knew that he was a dealer, two of them there. Tempting but nahh. After we got her antigen, we went to the hipster area of Berlin, we stopped by Cafe Luzia. A really hipster cafe with a slick interior but we were just having drinks outside. The stank of weed pretty strong. We took a long time catching up here, talking about various topics from spirituality and dreamwork, travel aspirations and life in general. I did invite her to come with me to Amsterdam but I have no idea then if she was serious about it or not. As it got dark, we went out to find dinner and ended up in this awesome Thai restaurant. We were meeting with her boyfriend and her other friend Yoko. We got to this crazy underground party place inside some abandoned area and there were tons of different party bunkers to choose from, we tried scoring some weed but I just opted not to as it was such a hassle to find a grinder and everything. Her boyfriend came soon afterwards and the three of us exchanged some drinks together but it seems like Yoko, who was actually the person who told us to come here, wasn't going to make it. We got bored after a while as the place wasn't exactly playing the best music nor were the people partying at all. On our way home, we passed by a guy playing this awesome guitar riff and we were just mesmerized by his work. We even opted to stay for a bit longer and even gave him some money. We went back to our place and I immediately could tell the difference in airquality coming from Berlin's city center to Evie's peaceful neighborhood. Berlin was hella dirty.

We went back in to her flat and I was finally able to meet Yoko. He's Nigerian and we got on along pretty well from the get-go, during our introductions, I mentioned that Tokyo has a pretty strong Nigerian community as well and one of my really good friends, Sophie, was half-Nigerian and half-Japanese. Yoko was intrigued and wanted to see what she looked like so I showed him a photo of Sophie's Instagram. Yoko invited me for a smoke sesh and I happily agreed with a tub of ice cream, we talked deep about life and one of my most memorable nights of a jamming sesh happened here when I let Yoko listen to one of the songs I was really into at that time, Om Ganesha, by Mose. We were both stoned and eating ice cream and just seeing how much he jammed to the music made me so happy, we were both vibing hard throughout the song and he would just comment at how good it was. Afterwards Evie cameout a bit tired as she was trying to sleep so we turned it down and I also said good bye to Yoko as I was also a bit tired. I went to have a shower and went to bed on a makeshift couch Evie had made for me which was actually pretty comfortable.Read more