Back to base.. (or “the warzone” as one my friends described it)
All of a sudden I realize how many graffiti is all over the place, and how colorful it makes this city. Normally I only notice the really good pieces. See all the half- or completely ruined & abandoned buildings along the tracks. Get out of the S-Bahn, hear music, and it IS actually someone playing a guitar and not a huge flock of seagulls or an air-conditioning. Or on the platform, see a guy holding his bike, and completely relaxed, smoke his cigarette directly under a non-smoking sign.
Walk past the local streetpunks begging “for weed and beer”. Smile because people not even in the back of their head consider leashing their dogs. Inhale deeply the smell of broken sewage, rotting garbage & the exhaust of the close-to-totall-loss cars, the only ones which people here can afford, and are not that susceptible to arson.
Avoid some fireworks, still saved from new years eve, being thrown into a passage. Go into my street and immediately discover a few cardboard boxes with “zu verschenken” (“for free”) and a some abandoned couches, mattresses and other furniture soaked by the rain. Actually for the first time notice that my window ledges are “noisy” with tags. Sigh, and remove a few empty liquor bottles from those window ledges. Sit here, inside, and hear the groups of people laughing and chatting on their way to the pubs, prolly holding “a beer for on the way”.
Though I could have done without getting almost hit by a car when I crossed the road or stepping into dog shit.
Just gotta check in the park if the local “senior hooligans” are still as loud and messy as always, if any dreadnecks are annoying the “Norman’s” with a beat here and there, and how much grass could even try to reach a height over 3cm after weeks of berlin’s no. 1. hobby of “grilling”
