That's a Eurowrap

Ready to rave?

A few more days in Berlin.

Went to a house concert. Heard an a cappella version of 1, 2, 3, 4 (original by Feist, who managed a spot in my 96-player hottish Jewish female celeb tourney). Kap never had heard that song. Wacky. One of the performers in the group might be my future wife. She doesn't know it, of course. Yet.

Then up was some Aussie woman with a disturbingly creepy but kinda cool voice.

Then an Aussie dude who was pretty good. The latter two duet-ed at the end, providing by far the best/most energetic performances of the night.

I spent some of the time wondering if Jess is better than these folk. Yes. Yes she is. Kathryn agreed.

Next day or day after I checked out an old German bomb shelter adjacent to an U-Bahn stop. Interesting history around this and other shelters. Most of them provided practically no protection that citizens wouldn't get in their homes, but it was a propaganda play. And by luck, only one of these bunkers was blown up during the war, so the Nazis could claim they worked.

After the war the Allies blew up most of the bunkers. Or at least tried. A few were built crazy well. One so much so that after several unsuccessful destruction attempts of one particular military outpost by the Brits, some German kids climbed up atop the structure and wrote "Made in Germany." Kind of funny.

Anyway, thousands of undetonated bombs still are being found in/around Berlin. There was a big accident in '94 with one of them exploding. If someone finds one on their own land, it'll cost 'em 30,000 euros to remove. Crazy.

Bunkers used glow in the dark paint so the people down there could read. It still sort of works. Guide drew smiley face on wall with flashlight then turned out lights. And there was smiley. My room in my freshman dorm had glow in the dark stars in it. I went to the art store and bought some paint, planning to write something like, "die, freshman!" on the ceiling for next year's class.

Recently, as I was packing up my apartment, I found that bottle of paint. Unopened.

My neighbors in the dorm found some porn in their ceiling with a note addressed to the future residents of that room, telling them to enjoy and please add to the collection. Some girls on the first floor had a couple of lawn chairs up there that the previous occupants had stored and then returned to pick up.

So I looked in our ceiling. There was a tampon. Not new/not still in packaging. Seriously.

Back to Berlin ... the group that manages this bunker and other sites like it discovered a metal card catalog of sorts with records of employees and, well, slaves of the Lawrence Company. Germany had promised reparations to victims of WWII, but only if they could document their situation. These records allowed some to do that. Good for them.

Of course, our tour guide -- a German woman -- couldn't resist making a couple of snarky comments ripping war and the German and Russian governments (mostly past versions of governments). I don't think many or any would disagree with the points she was making, but it seemed gratuitous and out of place.

That said, if I spend a few hours a day in a German bunker with remains of German and Russian soldiers -- many unidentified, some eventually placed in plastic bags and buried -- and limited oxygen, maybe I'd be cranky too.

But they did have an example of a Pneumatic Post tube -- air-pressurized tubes to deliver mail (think the tubes at bank drive-throughs). Actually kind of amazing how big the network was and how well it worked that long ago. It was groovy. I sort of want to build one.

Other Berlin notes...

*Witnessed a blind man swearing when he almost accidentally got on an escalator.
*Went to a film fest and also a documentary on the role of skateboarding in East Germany (the former had a couple of decent shorts; the latter -- "This Ain't California" -- was pretty solid). The ticket desk person was drawing something. Kathryn's BF says to her, "Oh, we have a budding artist here?" The girl at desk quickly covers up the art and says, "it's not a penis!"

Um... OK.

Apparently many think whatever she draws looks like a penis. We didn't see the resemblance, but clearly she has some sort of issue there.

That same night (I think) a group of us went to the same cafe where I dropped the Coke Zero down the stairs. This time, while Kathryn worked, John (BF), Pernilla and I photoshopped Kathryn's cat's face onto Darth Vader. Productive.

Going postal.

We leave, some guy asks me for something, I say, "lo siento, no comprendo." Then the guy switches to English asks for coins, for money. I resist laughing and manage a puzzled look (which wasn't difficult, actually, as I was puzzled as to why he thought I was speaking English). I say, "no comprendo. hablo espanol." He walked away. Had he broken into Spanish I probably would have given him 20 bucks for the effort.

Of course, then a few deaf people surely would follow ...

Last full day, I take Kathryn and her roomies (Maggie and Leah) to brunch to thank 'em for putting up with me. Somehow Israel-Palestinian conflict comes up. Brief talk, then we let it go. Then I find myself all fired up about it for the next couple of hours. Seriously, took me a while to chill.

(Also, place couldn't figure out how to use my credit card b/c of the lack of chip thing, which continues to be annoying. Swipe, enter last four digits! Anyway, Kap had to cover lunch. Oops.)

Get back to flat after going to a market, all is fine. It's a touchy/emotional issue. Varying opinions, none of which are 100 percent "right" on either side.

(The market wasn't even there anymore. So I got a pretzel.)

Next day Kathryn and Maggie are walking me to bus stop on my way out of town. Kathryn says, "Did you see the t-shirt whatshisname was wearing at the meeting last night?" It was a meeting for the documentary Kathryn is producing on Mali. "No," I say, thinking she'll tell me it was a They Might Be Giants t-shirt.

Nope, it's apparently some anti-Israel shirt.

"Why would you tell me that?!," I ask. "It took me hours to calm down yesterday and you bring it up again as I'm leaving?!"

It's funny now. And I was caught off guard by how fired up I got by the whole thing. But four weeks in Europe before my only political-type argument (was soooo close to making it out unscathed) -- not a bad effort.

So off I go to Tegel, and then to JFK, thus concluding this season of Bomb's Away Euroadventuring. Good time. It wasn't a life-changing trip, but I needed/enjoyed it. Chillin' with friends and meeting/hanging with cool new peeps was great. Coughing on and off for four weeks? Not so much ...

Damn Heathrow.

Next up ... a day in NYC, a week in Mexico, the downfall of the iPhone.

And the most probing question asked of any of us during that week: "Are you making chicken?"