Got the bus into Berlin and found the apartment easily. Greeted by a grinning Petra complete with pink mohawk, dangly earring, leather trousers and illuminous green string vest. He's lovely though, originally from Sicily (told you all squatters, or in this case ex-squatters are Italian), but moved to Berlin when he was ten with his parents. He showed me to my room - Alan Partridge "You could swing a tiger in here, not that I would mind"
It's HUGE. Complete with 4/5m high ceilings, leather sofa, a long rail of Prince looking clothes that are hard to determine the gender of the wearer, a manaquin in the corner wearing a patchwork dress. In the opposite corner a watery grey/green tiled coal heater, a small wrought iron balcony complete with a lost hairdresser's swivelchair (although when I sit on it I quickly feel like i must look like a rent boy from the pavement below and cower back inside) On the far wall, a vast record collection, neatly stacked under photocopies of thumbprints that form a square on the wall.
I then met the other flatmate, Michelle. She's tiny, dutch and has a peroxide mohawky hair cut, grade zero shaved across the front. A bit of an uber cool haircut that looks a little like the top of a pineapple, and also like it might suddenly start rotating and take off. She used to work at Toni and Guy in Amsterdam, but moved to Berlin so she could work for a small salon here and do more painting. She's got a similar room to the one I'm in but looks completely different as she has painted all her walls black and covered the stripped floorboards in black cellophane type stuff. I remember glimpsing a hula ring (?), and a little table roofed den under which an ibook sat on a tiny bed.
I unpacked and then went and got us each a beer, which we had in a very messy, partly finished kitchen, that certainly doesn't accomodate cooking. They both seemed very easy to talk to and I learnt more about Petra, who told me lots about Sicily and his family. I then commented on a tattoo on his arm that from a distance looked good, but when he showed me up close it was like when Frodo puts on the the ring. He explained, while i tried to disguise the horror becoming pandemic in my pupils, that it was of a post-op tranny with horns.
I then got settled into my room while Petra went off to 'perform'. He was 'performing' at a bar, which from what I could understand, pay him to dress in drag and wear long dangling sleeves which he thrashes around pretending to have escaped from a Psychiatric ward. As his stage is a shop window type thing, I guess the "millions of tourists that watch" see it in mime? Very odd.
I went for a late night walk for food, thus triggering my usual first night in a new place penchant of looking round too many corners. Before floundering on the borderline of the twin evils of desperation and starvation. I walked many indecisive miles, and when I did decide, I backtracked to discover every first, second and third choice was closed. In the end, I had ad to resort to a chicken kebab that failed the gristle test, the second time fatally- left half eaten in an overflowing bin (everywhere in Berlin - stupidly small, like those little sacks of firewood that now compliment charcoal at garages in the UK)
I got back to the apartment late, and felt a bit weird, wobbly and suddenly daunted by the whole thing. Haven't really had that feeling before, comparable only to a don't-look-down moment... but weirdly looking up. I managed to calm myself down by reassuring myself I'd feel better in the morning.
I indeed did, I got up early and walked to local Cafe. Had a good coffee, served by a large German who did nothing to conceal his amusement at my lack of german language skills. His fat tache twitching into a smile as he let me struggle through a terrible first attempt at explaining i couldn't speak German and was ashamed at my English ignorance....
