What follows is a portion of a rather half-assed journal of my summer trip through Europe.
Berlin. Tuesday. Noon.
My evaluation of Berlin has thus far been hampered by exhaustion; I haven’t had a room to myself for two weeks. I remembered this fact last night around 10 p.m. when, after a dinner of schnitzel and cucumber salad (when in Berlin…) and plans to make a night of it in the Oranienburger district, the fatigue fairy slapped me across the forehead with the truncheon she calls a wand and I fled the scene for the not-so-comfort of my tiny twin bed at the Plaza Hotel on Kurfurstenhurstenschmurstendamm.
But I’m not one to shy away from cursory judgments. Or in this case, comparisons.
One Thing That’s Better About Berlin Than New York
The subway.
I’ve ridden on subways in Athens, Barcelona, Copenhagen… (I was going to keep going, alphabetical-style but I’ve never been to Dublin. Not that I’m sure there’s a subway in Dublin.) I’ve ridden on lots of subways, and most of them have been in places where I didn’t speak the native language. All of them were easier to decipher than New York’s subway. So perhaps this isn’t an endorsement of Berlin’s subway as much as it is an indictment of New York’s. However, Berlin’s subway has proved particularly easy to use; even though I don’t speak German, and even though last night’s trip threw at me a stoppage of service on the U1 line at Wittenbergplatz, I was able to navigate the choppy transportational waters without even asking anyone. (I probably could have asked someone but holy mackerel do Germans look like they don’t want to be asked things.) It took me six days in New York to reach a point where I wasn’t asking someone for help with the Express Train that only runs on weekends and during lunar eclipses, which knowledge you can never learn because they’re aren’t maps anywhere.
One Thing That’s Worse About Berlin Than New York
The girls.
(Note: I once had to change the word “girl” to “woman” in an ESPN piece after I wrote something about how I had been staring at a “girl” on a treadmill and my bosses were afraid it would come off like I was staring at a female child. So, in case you’re a fucking imbecile: when I write about “girls”, I’m writing about young women. “Girls” just happens to be the parlance of our time.)
The problem with the girls in Berlin is that they’re dour. I don’t mind a mean-looking girl – sometimes they’re the most interesting. (This is not an opinion I share with my brothers, who often accuse me of going after the bitchy-looking ones. I maintain that the bitchy-looking ones are probably the only ones with something to say.) But looking dour, which I define as looking like someone pooped in the pillow you slept on last night, is different from looking mean, which I define as looking like you beat the hell out of the someone who pooped in the pillow you slept on last night.
Then again, this opinion of mine could be influenced by where I’ve been. Specifically, in Sweden and Denmark, where not only were the girls attractive to a degree that already seems mythical, they were actually quite nice. Of course, that could be my ego talking – the girls in Scandinavia seemed to like me. German girls appear to hate me. So perhaps this is a one-user evaluation.
As evidence to the contrary, though, I would point to this fact I just made up: in New York, the average man will find his attention caught by the female form three to four times per block. In Berlin, that number is more like two to three.
Nonetheless, I, your humble servant, am willing to go back into the street (or subway) for more research. Which is what I’m going to do…now.
For the previous Euro Bits entry, click here.
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