We arrive in Germany. I never want to leave.

     On our last day in Leiden I left the others and wandered around the city. I love canals and I think everywhere should have them. People are just happier in places with canals. I have this theory that everyone would be happier if they were just a little closer to places with fish. We can learn a lot from fish. 

     It is almost spring in The Netherlands, and some if the really tough trees are already flowering.

 
    
      We were supposed to leave Leiden to go to a party at the ADM, a squat in Amsterdam. We took the train with Flo, one of our hosts from Leiden.
The ADM is, in fact, pretty epic. It's an old ship factory that the squatters took over years ago. They took over several building and then made a village of tiny one-room houses in the woods surrounding the building. This seems to be wher ethe Dutch squatter movement comes to hang out. They have punk and metal concerts, everyone sleeps with everyone else and makes art and spins poi. It felt oddly like the Oakland warehouse scene. The main building has a huge chunk missing from when the owner decided to show up with a wreaking ball and destroy the building, with all the squatters still inside. Fortunatly there has was a law at some point that he could't destroy the building wile there were squatters in it so he was taken away by the cops, leaving a huge hole in his own building.
     The concert, though not really my style of music was amusing because my brother likes to mosh and his hair is getting really long. It sort of spreads out around his head like a halo while he thrashes around. He was the only blond mosher. I went to bed early, the punk scene isn't really my thing and after a day with anarchists I sort of wanted to become a well-adjusted member of society.

     We were supposed to take the train to Berlin but there were three people driving to Prague who offered us a ride. They said we would leave around

 1PM and get to Berlin around 7 PM with enough time to find our Berlin host and get settled. However when we rolled into Berlin at 2:45 AM instead of 7PM we found ourselves stranded in the middle of an unknown city in the middle of the night. Also our driver wanted to get a wasted and do a bunch of speed at a Punk bar here so he would have energy to get to Prague. At the bar we found an insane Canadian anarchist girl who agreed to let us sleep in her room in the Punk squat because she had decided to take our place in the van for Prague. By the morning I was so sick of anarchists that I vowed to go stay in a hostle and do dishes for room and board. My brother maintains there are lots of different types of anarchist, but these people take themselves way too seriously. And do too much speed which grosses me out. I have forbidden The Burble to do that drug by the (small amount of) power invested in me as older sister. As of this point he is being responsible. 

     I was completly ready to call it a day and return to Leiden to the comfort of a city that has become firmiliar, but we found that the Punk house we were staying at was a block from the house of our Berlin couchsurfing host. We found the address and The Burble played the trumpet outside the window until he answered the door. 

     So for the last couple of days we have been staying with Pierre, a wonderful frenchman who is completely willing to take us on long adventerous tours of the city. It's amazing how much more relaxed I am when we have a stable place to stay with cool people. Pierre is hosting us on the recomendation of Flo from Leiden and he and his room mates are really awesome. We went on a long walk around the city yesterday while Pierre showed us the important buildings in the squatter movement. There is an epic battle going on here between the tenants and the landlords who are trying to gentrify the area. There are no more squats in Berlin, there are what they call housing-projects. These used to be squats that were then bought by the squatters or legalized. You can recognize them because of the amazing art on the sides of the building. The kids in the housing-projects are waging a war against the developers who are buying the properties, kicking everyone out, and remodeling the building to make it expensive. You can tell the places where the rich have won because in the night people fill blown eggs with paint and throw them at the walls.

      The street art here is amazing. The best taggers in the world must live in Berlin because every paintable surface is covered with the most amazing pieces. As soon as the landowners paint it over, the artists use it like a new canvass.

      The housing-projects are carefully organized; most of them have bars that are run by the occupants and there are specific places run by the LGBT movement.












     There are huge parks here made around hills in the middle. Being from San Francisco I didn't really pay them any mind but our host told us that Berlin is not naturally hilly. These hills are man-made, and were created after the war. People took all the rubble from the destroyed houses and piled it up in places to make hills and parks. The one we walked through had a bouldering wall and I had forgotten how much fun climbing is. It was rainy and my EMS boots are terrible for bouldering but I got to climb a little anyway.

 Like in Holland there are tons of flower shops here. If I lived here my house would always smell nice.

      It's so strange being in a city that was largly destroyed by bombs in the war. There are all these places that have no old building because there are none left. Never having been bombed (except for Pearl Harbor), it's something we Americans can't comprehend. The closest we've come is Nine Eleven and now imagine that across the nation. Maybe if we had taken some bombs we would be less inclined to throw ours all over the world. The places in the US that apparently have so much history seem so shallow to me as I travel through cities that have hundreds of years more history that we do.

      We stopped at a Turkish place that makes this kind of gyro sandwich thing that was invented here in Berlin. It is the most awesome wonderful amazing thing in the world. Seriously. I am going to grow fat and old in this city eating only these things. You chose your ingredients from these brighlty colored trays. It's like heaven.

      This building marks the border between West and East Berlin. Leave it up to politicians to say, "Hey let's come up with a solution. Let's divide the city in half, split up neighborhoods and families and friends, and then build a great hunking wall cause you want to be communist and I'm scared of you, and I want to be democratic and you think Democracy is evil."
People are so fucking stupid.
     We went looking for the wall by the way. We didn't find it, apparently there's not much left, but we found food instead which was better.
    

Courtesy of The Burble

Courtesy of The Burble

 My brother has taken over my camera but he tells me he doesn't want to take pictures of anything pretty; only gritty interesting stuff.
He takes some  awesome pictures. He sees the world in a way I don't, he sees light and color and texture in things I don't spare a second glance. Maybe I'm trying to get his to go to art school so bad because I wish I had his talents. That eye for presenting everyday things as art isn't something you can gain and I don't want his talents to be wasted.

He's a little strange tho.

     Everything feels like it's working out here finally. I miss people at home but I get this depressed feeling when I think of coming back to California. I know that I need to do some work this summer in France, and I know I should seriously think about paramedic schools but I just don't feel ready to face responsibilities again. I've secured a place for myself through the WWOOF organization to work on a farm in the German countryside. The woman wants me to take care of her horse and weed her garden. (Oh however will I survive...) At least I have until June before I have to inform my very cooperative subletter if I'm going to stay here longer and maybe I will be more responsible by then.