Friday, September 16

In Berlin, we stayed with Lindsay and Kevin, who make the most of being in Berlin, taking advantage of as many of the things it has to offer as they can. They’d made reservations for the evening at a synthesizer concert, which filled up Volksbühne, a local concert hall. The main act was Caterina Barbieri, who played all the pieces from her recent album. The smoke machines ran the entire time, and along with many automated lights created quite a 3D atmosphere. Also unpleasant. It was annoying when the lights were directly in your eyes, and smoke is smoke no matter how allegedly nontoxic and allegedly aesthetic it is.

People miss smoke. Smoke has been a marker for bonhomie for the last half a million years, and now we have learned that it’s bad for us and we don’t want to do it any more. It’s always been unpleasant, like alcohol, but taking one for the team is what social animals do, and if wine and smoke can create cohesive hunting and gathering squads, then their use will persist. But now, with eight billion people and technical knowledge stridently oriented toward individual welfare, we must give it up.

Before the show, we walked to Mi Bap, a little Taiwanese place that had a very simple hot pot menu. If you go, ask for a spice level of 1. No spice is bland, and 2 is quite spicy.

Saturday, September 17

In the afternoon, Lindsay and Kevin hosted a barbecue at their house. The barbecuing took place in the reasonably large backyard belonging to the whole apartment house. Many of the neighbors attended, as well as 30-40 of their friends. We were also joined by our friend Sam, who has been in Berlin for several years now. We knew a few of Lindsay’s friends from before as well. It was potluck, and many people brought meat and vegetables to grill. Many bottles of wine were consumed. The guests were pretty much all artists, musicians, or tech people, and it was fun talking to them.

Sunday, September 18

Most of the day was spent recovering from Saturday. We walked around their Neukölln neighborhood, having lunch at a little Israeli place, and touring some gardens that were open.

Lindsay is taken with this artist, whose graffiti has been made product and is available in the usual media (posters, coffee cups, etc.)

In the evening we just ate leftovers.

Monday, September 19

Monday started out with brunch with our friend Philipp and his wife Lexi, who was very pregnant with a boy we will find out about any day now. We met at Benedict, which features many Benedict menu items; I had “Kalimera” which was poached eggs over shrimp and potatoes. Afterwards we had a mission to replace a belt which was disintegrating, so we went towards the Berlin Zoo, shopping in the upscale Kurfürstendamm area. One place we looked was in a mall called “Bikini Berlin”, named for its see-thru middle story. We’d been there in 2019 and had visited an interesting shop. Neither of us remembered the exact shop or its exact attraction, only that we wished we’d gotten something from them. It turned out to be a Danish licorice shop, and so we got a bottle of licorice syrup and a small jar of chocolate covered salt licorice. All the belts we saw were expensive and had metal buckles, until we got to a store whose name was something Outlet. They had a 5-euro belt with a large backpack-style plastic buckle that we struggled but succeeded in threading through the belt loops. We stopped in the Kaiser Wilhelm memorial church, which had been badly damaged in WWII, but where a modern replacement sanctuary and bell tower had been built next to the remains. The decor of the original definitely was worshipping the Kaiser, no surprise to Richard Francis Burton: “The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never worshipped anything but himself.”

Lindsay and Kevin pointed out a jazz show that happens every Monday night in the building where one of their friends has a studio. And our friends Thomas and Bibo had just returned from a trip to Azerbaijan, where they were involved in a group art show. We met them for Ethiopian food, and then all six of us converged at the jazz show. Omniversal Earkestra is a big band with 13 brass players and bass and drum. They have played together weekly for ten years, so they are very tight and dynamically in control. It was thoroughly enjoyable. The venue was full of art.