Berlin Post

I am in love.
With Berlin.
So far.
It´s cheap and urban and the keyboards are reminiscent of American keyboards. Plus I had a super cheap shawerma that was fantastic (fresh and minty and sesame-y, with chilli sauce) and then I went and had a small waffle-cone of orange-chocolate ice cream (my favorite). The cone wasn´t even stale, it was crisp and sweet and mildly cookie-like.
Did I mention that it´s cheap?
The past 2 nights Ariel and I stayed with a couchsurfer named J. She´s a photographer and so this morning she photographed us for a project about couchsurfing and globalization. I couldn´t relax and so I look stiff and sombre in all of the pictures, which is too bad. But, I am happy that I got to participate in it.
She took us to a legitimate flea market which was loads better than Camden (!!!). People were selling their art and vintage clothes and cheap goods (I bought embroidery needles) as well as absolute junk (boxes of watch straps or piles of old-style calling cards for public telephones from before everyone had a mobile and lots of polaroid cameras). We dropped by some sort of techno music festival which was interesting, as Ariel pointed out "youth culture in the first world is the same EVERYWHERE." The audience at the festival could have been relocated to anywhere and could have fit in. We stayed for maybe half an hour, then left because it really wasn´t Ariel and my scene, and J was no longer interested in that sort of thing anymore.
Berlin seems to have a more unconscious alternative side, or maybe Berlin is mostly alternative. Most people have lots of tattoos and piercings, or they´re Muslim (we are staying in a hostel in an area with many Muslim people). But, as I said earlier, in a lot of ways it seems less studied. And less subversive (I am not sure that that is the word that I want to use there) Christiania, in Copenhagen, was a different type of alternative. Less urban (obviously) but less hip too, which is kind of a relief since the lines between alternative and hip seem to blur in somewhat obnoxious ways. Also, in Berlin their seems to be an emphasis on youth culture rather than general trends towards alternative lifestyles. Man, I use that word a lot. I think that it will be interesting to see what hip kids of my generation are like in 20 years. Will they still be vegans inhabiting the hip areas of cities on mattresses on the floor and subsisting on beer, cigarettes, vegan sprouted-wheat bread and coke? Will they be a softened version of themselves? Or will they go the opposite direction and become born-again republicans?
I dunno, may be a little of both.

I realize that I haven´t said much about Copenhagen. We stayed with this guy T who we never saw but he was hosting a French Canadian guy too and so we hung out with him which was cool. We saw a design museum and that small statue of The Little Mermaid. Then we went to saty with this woman, L (the one with the cats who took us to the party). L was great and had lots of ideas of things to do in Copenhagen. We went and walked around Christiania, this alternative living e-squatters community (look it up, it´s great) and it felt a little like Santa Cruz because it was laid back and people tended to garden the same way (overgrown and bushy and colorful) if you went away from the main street (pushers alley or something like that). And the houses were built bz the owners and were wooden and really cute and again mildly santa cruz-ian. Very macrobiotic.
The party was fun but Ariel and I were tired and so we left early. There was pizza and a band called "Hapcore" that I enjoyed a lot. Kind of weird and there were 2 harpists, the lead singer-songwriter and then a very meek, geeky girl who wore socks with her sandals and baggy skirt and who would read some magazine when she wasn´t playing, even though she was still on stage.

That´s about it so far... internet is cheap here so maybe Iwill update this more often, but I don´t have a lot of confidence in that statement.

OH! I forgot! I checked my bank account this morning, and I am UNDER BUDGET. Nice.