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Hello, my name is Judas Gutenberg and this is my blaag (pronounced as you would the vomit noise "hyroop-bleuach").



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   vegan kabab
Friday, September 13 2024

location: cabin 105, Swiss Ruby river boat, on the way to Berlin, Germany

As always at the end of a cruise, the rules are designed to squeeze the passengers out as if from an angry pimple. Breakfast was scheduled extra early, and the first bread I took (to make my faux cream-cheese-with-vegan-lox "bagels") were pretty stale. Forunately, better bread was eventually put out, and it was so good that both Gretchen and Kelly took extra for eating on our subsequent travels.
While we were having our breakfast, our boat docked near the confluence of the Spree and Havel in the district of Spandau in western Berlin. By then, we'd been blocked from further access to our cabins. This meant that if anyone had to use the bathroom, all that was available was one gentleman's room and one ladies' room. Lines quickly formed in front of these, and, since lots of people (even some vegans!) don't poop until they've had their coffee, many people were spending a long time doing their business, and the lines were moving slowly. I'd already pooped, but then I felt like maybe I should poop again. So I went into the men's room soon after Brian had been in there. If it had been a mess or smelled like a disembowelment, it wouldn't've been something I could've blamed on Brian. As for the smell, I don't know what that was like, as I didn't breathe through my nose while I was in there for fear of smelling something I could never unsmell. But, considering the dozens of people who had used it, it was amazingly clean. The only unnerving thing was how warm the toilet seat was when I sat down on it. I came back to the lounge, where our posse was sitting around, and mentioned the warmth of that seat, which the others found amusing. Then Gretchen mentioned something I'd said earlier in the cruise after emerging from the toilet: that we were going to need to "tear it down to the studs." That line came up several times in the hours that followed.

It took awhile, but when we finally got off the boat, we said goodbye to Simon and Cathy (who would be staying a couple nights in Berlin and whom Gretchen and I would be seeing later) and then Kelly, Brian, Gretchen, and I all started walking to the nearest train station so we could all go together to Alexanderplatz, a square near the center of Berlin. As usual, Gretchen said we should board the train without buying tickets, reasoning (as it happened, correctly) that the enforcement of the buying of fares is not a common occurrence. Kelly, Brian, and (to a lesser extent, me) are not the kind who enjoy worrying about whether or not we're about to be busted, but we joined Gretchen in her minor infraction. This kept us from having to figure out how fare is paid in Berlin's commuter rail system. Aside from the stress of wondering if we were about to be busted, the train ride was very pleasant, featuring beautiful views (we were up in the second floor of a double-decker car).
At Alexanderplatz, we walked some distance west, past an ominously-tall tower similar to the one I'd seen in Hamburg. This was, I would later learn, a radio tower built by the East German government as a show of communist capabilities. Like the Space Needle and other such towers, it features a rotating restaurant. Eventually we walked past a lock in the Spree, turned a corner, and ended up at the Greens, an apparently popular coffee shop. It could enough outside for Brian to be wearing a jacket, so we took a table indoors and proceeded to drink a number of fine coffee drinks. We'd had great food on the boat, but the coffee had been pretty bad, so it was nice to drink a quality oat milk cappuccino. As we did this, we all played the New York Times Spelling Bee on our respective devices. It wasn't long before I'd gotten to the status of queen bee, and once I had, I cautioned Kelly and Brian that they may not be familiar with the panagram ("chickadee"), which is a species of American tit, but that the word had come up in conversation only last night. They eventually got it, and it turned out that "chickadee" has a meaning in British English, though it doesn't refer to a species of bird.
After a fairly long time at The Greens, it was time for Kelly and Brian to begin making their way to the airport for their flight back to Edinburgh. We hugged goodbye at an intersection and then did the ridiculous thing that Kelly always talks about: waving just as we pass out of site from each other.

From where we separated near Alexanderplatz, Gretchen and I had a two-mile hike to our hotel, which was more or less directly east, over at the edge of the Samariter Quarter. On the way, the neighborhoods we walked through were austere and very residential, with big apartment buildings and no businesses of any sort. At some point I wanted to piss and thought I'd do it in a tiny clump of trees. But as I drew close to it, it smelled so bad that I had to abandon my plans. It turned out we were near an overpass that served as the roof of a homeless camp, and that clump of trees was its bathroom. I did much better in an overgrown grassy median.
Further on, we passed a series of trees, all of which had little numbered tags nailed to them. This seemed a little too German. (When Germans start putting numbers on you, their plans may not be to your benefit.)
Our hotel was called Klassik, and it came highly recommended by Gretchen's parents, who had stayed there for at least a couple weeks some years ago when they were scoping out Berlin as possible place to flee to had Donald Trump won the 2020 presidential election. The place seemed a little janky for the tastes of Gretchen's parents, considering that the lobby area stunk of cigarettes. Fortunately, our room smelled okay, though everything about it seemed to be made of the cheapest possible materials. Our room came with a little kitchen complete with a sink, but the faucet almost came free of the countertop when Gretchen touched it. There were similar issues with the plastic escutcheon around the toilet flushing buttons. Up on the third floor, we actually had a tiny balcony overlooking the corner of Bundesstraße amd Revaler Str., but I was nervous to put any weight on it.
Along with all the jankiness, our hotel room also had some modern features we'd never seen in a hotel room before. This included wireless phone chargers on either side of the bed. The one on my side of the bed didn't work (chalk that up to jankiness), but it didn't matter because my cheap-ass Android cannot be charged wirelessly. Gretchen, by contrast, usually has phones that are closer in quality to a flagship, and they usually can be charged wirelessly. When we laid her on her wireless charger, it indicated it was indeed charging. To us, this seemed a little like magic, as this was the first time we'd encountered wireless phone charging. Soon thereafter, I ordered one (it cost about $14) on eBay.
[REDACTED] So we set off on foot into Samariter. The neighborhood north and east of our hotel was much better than the windswept residential hellscape we'd walked through. It was a walkable city, with plenty of shops and outdoor cafés. In appearance, it rather reminded me of that neighborhood in Mexico City where we'd stayed back in February. The vegan kebab place went to was called Doen Doen Kebap, and when arrived it was decidedly luppertime, so we were the only customrers. The signs were in Turkish and German, but the cashier knew enough English to guide us to what we wanted. For me, I wanted everything in my vegan kebab wrap, and for Gretchen, she wanted everything except the tomato thing that also contained cucumbers. We also ordered a large order of fries, and it was enormous. It all came out quickly, and Jesus, it was some of the best food I could remember eating. It was keyed exactly to my palette. I ate my entire wrap and made pretty good progress on the fries, though we had to take half of Gretchen's sandwich and most of the fries to go.
After that, Gretchen was in a mood (to the extent she gets into one) to shop. She hadn't brought enough clothing suitable for the colder weather we were now experiencing. This explained us going into a couple clothing shops, where the sweaters she wanted tended to be absurdly expensive. But we also went into a shop that sould things like ceramic bowls and amazing posters (the kind I would've loved as a thirteen year old, featuring dense depictions of sea life, plants, or the peiodic table of elements). While there, Gretchen bought a ceramic bowl for use as a dog water bowl up at the cabin, and it turned out that the cashier was Swedish and spoke better English than German.
Gretchen had learned from a friend of a friend about a nice little hole-in-the-wall beer hall called Hops & Barley, so we went in there and sat in the gloom, with me drinking a not-great IPA and Gretchen enjoying a sour beer. When we left, I had to pay in cash because they didn't take credit cards. On the walk back to Hotel Klassik, we passed through a park we'd been through before, and it looked exactly like such parks in Mexico City, but with fewer dogs and better play equipment for kids.
While I went back to our room, Gretchen managed to find a thrift store below the hotel that had just the sweater she wanted for cheap.

Later tonight as we tried to go to sleep, the persistent punchis punchis punchis of electronic dance music made it difficult. How had Gretchen's parents been happy in this hotel if it overlooked a nightclub? And, this being Berlin, that nightclub would probably be thumping all night long. Gretchen took a diphenhydramine to help her get to sleep, but it was the last one we had. Since we only had one pillow each, I went down to the desk to ask the woman working there (she looked to be a surly seventeen-year-old) for extra pillows. She didn't really know where such pillows were, but eventually she found a pair that didn't have pillowcases. That was going to have to do.
Both coming from and going to the elevator, I stumbled as I crossed a completely unnecessary single two-inch-high step, the kind of jankiness you'd never see in an American building. It had been marked with yellow and black cautionary tape, but somehow I kept not seeing that and stumbling. When I stubbed my foot into it on the way from the elevator, I then fell into a wall, catching myself with my arms, the same ones that still aren't completely recovered after falling down a flight of stairs over a year ago.


A ruin of a church (Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church), viewed from the train to Alexanderplatz. Click to enlarge.


Walking behind Gretchen and Kelly in (or near) Alexanderplatz. Click to enlarge.


A monument to anti-Nazi resistance in Berlin. Click to enlarge.


As we passed this graffitied wall on our walk to Hotel Kassik, Gretchen joked that it was "a Berlin wall." Click to enlarge.


Me enjoying vegan kebab at Doen Doen. Click to enlarge.


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