More tales from Berlin

I know I’ve already talked extensively about the trip, but I’m simply not done yet. There were definitely some real gems of anecdotes buried in that weekend, and I don’t want them to go untold.

For example, after coming back from the bar on Friday night, Cihan was wrangled into brotherly combat with one of his bros, who must have been losing, because he decided to bite Cihan.

Life is never dull when you hang with Turks, I’ll tell ya what.

Then, on Sunday, after sleeping marvellously late (obviously Cihan and I will remain friends for a long time, as he understands how to squander a day by lounging around in bed too long), we decided to cruise around and see some Berlin sights, so we hit up the famous TV tower that the Soviets built to spy on people. Now, of course, it’s got a rotating cafe and an observation deck up there.

While waiting in line to purchase our tickets to be allowed into the tower, I experienced the awesome German work ethic. The teller at the window simply said to Cihan, “I can’t help you right now” and proceeded to sit in his glass booth, staring off into oblivion. We waited over five minutes, asking several times what was up and how long this delay was going to take, as I had to catch my ride back to Munich in an hour or so.

It turns out the dude was on mini-strike, waiting for his relief to come. After about five minutes, a coworker came, apologize for being late, took another five minutes to get situated, then asked how she could help us. “Um, we’d like tickets, please,” Cihan said.

After that wonderful excursion, we booked across town to get to Potsdamer Platz, by far my favorite area of Berlin, because it has pimp buildings that look like spaceships or something.

Potsdamer Platz was the place to be, because I was leaving Munich with a carpool of chaps also headed thither. Over the weekend, I’d run out of minutes on my cell phone, meaning I couldn’t reply to the cascades of texts my Munich homies and honeys were sending me. I wasn’t about to get into a car with some dude and barrel down the autobahn only to have him ditch me in Leipzig and me not be able to call my hero Cihan to come rescue me.

So before hitting up the designated meeting place at Potsdamer Platz, we cruised by a gas station and scooped up a prepaid card for my phone, only 10€ or so. While there I noticed what I was pretty freaking sure was an ATM, and thought I could use some bucks for food, so I stick in my card. Cihan turns out and has a “Noooo you fool!” moment, but too late, card is in. Apparently the contraption was a ticket-paying machine, so it was demanding to know how much to deduct from my card.

We couldn’t get it to spit my card back out. We hit “Cancel” ten thousand times, but it kept asking us to pick a language. Time was running out on when I needed to meet my ride, so I was feeling like a real tool. Cihan tries for a while to hack the machine and make it cough up my card, then has the brains to ask, “Dude, are you sure you don’t have your card still?” I look in my wallet, and sure enough, my card’s chilling in there. The machine must have spit it back out immediately and lobbed it directly into my still exposed wallet.

“Americans,” Cihan said. “You see a slot for a bank card and immediately you cram yours in, without bothering to read a damn thing.”

“You’re right,” I replied. “I guess I should have figured that in Germany, the machines are trying to steal my money, instead of spew it out at me. Hey, isn’t where we are right now technically in East Berlin?”

Cihan then repeated his favorite English phrase over and over: “You’re such a dick.”

I cannot wait to visit this guy again. We’ve already made plans that I’ll be spending Christmas with his family, plus perhaps travelling to Norway while up there (tickets would definitely be cheaper out of Berlin than out of Munich, that’s for sure).

We shall see.