vokü!
I met Joey at the Tuesday Fischladen Vokü. He was standing outside, smoking. I was early, and awkwardly looking for a way to break the ice.
“You have a light?” I asked him. He did. I rolled us both cigarettes, and we sat at a table outside making small talk and drinking one-euro beers while waiting for our food.
Anyone else would have noticed that Joey was crazy within the first couple of minutes. I suppose I must have noticed, but considering that I often come across as being a few cards short of the deck, I like to give people the benefit of the doubt. Besides, most “crazies” usually turn out to be a lot more rational and interesting than the rest of us.
Continued on Young Germany.
love song while running away
This just in: The Agency would like to notify all citizens that on the night before moving yourself six hours across the country, you should at all costs avoid drinking a half a liter of vodka with your ex-boyfriend. You will feel sad, and hungover. Thank you for your time.
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There are two lesser known ways to make a city look more beautiful. Most people would just redecorate. A new building here, a new paint job there. I leave.
Of course, as soon as you’ve decided to leave, the whole bothering with wanting to make the place more appealing becomes rather silly, but life is just one big monkey barrel full of paradoxes now isn’t it?
The day I decided to leave Dresden rays of sunshine descended from the heavens like choirs of angels, drab buildings did their make-up and put up their hair, and everyone I passed on the street started smiling at me shyly like we were about to become friends, or lovers. Potential started bubbling up between the cracks in the pavement and quickly hardened into missed opportunities.
Moving away is almost as good as first arriving. I highly recommend it, though the moving costs tend to add up after a few tries.
In the last weeks before a move, everything teams suddenly with heightened significance. This isn’t just a shower or breakfast. This is my LAST shower in this apartment, and my LAST breakfast in this kitchen. This is the last sentence in a chapter, and the first sentence in a new one. Banal daily events become Transitions, New Beginnings, and New Ends.
The day I decided to leave I went down to visit the Altstadt skyline to refill her glass of wine and see if she wouldn’t let me give her a little kiss. How many dates does it take to get a girl in bed these days? I smiled at her dumbly across the river, and she sipped her wine slowly smiling at me contemplatively with a look that said ‘I knew you’d leave me for that grimy little bitch but you can give me a little kiss all the same.’
My last weeks were a blur of new-crush butterflies and energy and excitement. I ran around trying to finish the Dresden section of my guidebook. I stayed up late typing chapters of the novel, racing my calendar to happily ever after. I drank too much coffee and wandered around Neustadt over and over again, sipping in all the details that I would inevitably miss.
On my last night Markus came over to say goodbye, and we went out for One Last Neustadt Beer. Which turned into Quite a Few Last Neustadt Beers and an almost-pub crawl to say goodbye to all the nooks and crannies I’d become smitten with over the past six months. This is where the two-ton hangover, the five paracetamol, and the gallon of coffee entered the scene. I had only slept for a few hours when my headache woke me up, and I twitched over to the train station to pick up the rental van (which turned out to be more like a big huge metal box), threw everything I own into the back, headed in the direction of the train station again, and clipped another van’s side mirror right fucking off.
The word “clipped” may be something of an understatement. “Crushed,” “obliterated,” or “completely annihilated” might be more appropriate terms. The angry owners of the damaged van did not grasp the irony of the situation—they were driving the exact van that I had hoped to rent, and the only reason I was on that street in the first place was because of an ill-fated wrong turn—and were standing in the middle of the street and watching me do one of the worst parking jobs of all time with mouths trout-wide open in shock and anger.
Then I slid out of the high driver’s seat, and they both laughed.
“A tiny girl like you in a big car like that? Well, that doesn’t match at all.”
“Tell me about it,” I replied, hoping their jovial good mood would inspire them to forget all about the smashed mirror, pay me, and drive off into the sunset laughing and waving. But as they weren’t even sitting in the car and their mirror was still lying in pieces in plain view, we filled out the accident report form from the rental company and made a few phone calls. I finally managed to battle the “I think I may, in fact, burst into tears at any moment” look off of my face when they fixed my own bent mirror for me so that the van would still be safe to drive on the autobahn.
“Don’t worry,” the fat one told me, “It happens. No big deal.”
Is this how car accidents usually go? I sure hope so, but somehow I think I got lucky.
I was a half an hour late to pick up my ride share passenger from the train station where she was waiting with her husband in the cold.
“I’m so sorry I’m late,” I told them. “I umm, had a little trouble with the mirror.”
I had been hoping for someone with a head full of interesting tales, old hitch hiking adventures or strange family histories, or maybe even ghosts, yeah a head full of creepy ghost stories and a knack for spooky voices. That would keep me awake.
“I lived in America for 20 years,” she told me after a few minutes of banal small talk. “I lived in Alabama and Kentucky. I miss it so much. Especially the weather. Oh give me an Alabama winter anytime.” She spoke English with a bizarre combination of deep-south twang and we-learned-Brittish-English-in-school twug. It had just started to snow. “What I miss the most though is being able to shop 24 hours a day. You ever miss that?”
“Well, it took a while to get used to the shops’ hours here, yeah, but I don’t mind it anymore,” I told her, making awkward slow turns and hesistant lane changes with the van.
“Oo-wee. Just being able to go over to Walmart after work to go grocery shopping. And the spicy sausages! You ever had a spicy sausage?”
“No, I haven’t actually,” I told her, “But then again, I don’t eat meat.” I also didn’t and don’t have any idea what spicy sausage she could possibly have been talking about. The only sausages I had ever seen in America had either been German or Italian. Unless you count hot dogs, and considering the fact that hot can mean both spicy or a high temperature, maybe that is what she was talking about.
She was quiet for a while, Walmart-hot-dog-stand franks smothered in ketchup and mustard sparkling in her eyes. “Well, the next time you get back to the states you’ve got to try you one of them spicy sausages.”
This time I answered in German. “Ja, klingt gut. Aber ich esse kein Fleisch.” (Sounds good, but I don’t eat meat.)
“Oh and you should probably heat them up in the microwave,” she went on, oblivious that I had done more than nod. “They’re even spicier when they’re hot. Or chicken wings,” (relentless bitch) “Nobody here makes chicken wings like in America. You should have some of those too.”
That was the end of our conversation and my cue to turn up the music. She quickly fell asleep, and I quietly rasped along to Tom Waits, the rhythm of the highway getting back into my fingers and toes.
dumpsters are for lovers
“Oh my god do you think they’re closing?”
We were standing in front of our favorite Konsum, pretending to be on a late-night stroll while waiting for the S-Bahn to haul away the twenty people standing across the street. We both looked at the boarded up windows and missing sign with furrowed brows.
“No look!” Markus said. “The shopping carts are still there. They’re probably just renovating.”
I sighed. “I fucking hope so.” That dumpster is the yogurt and expensive cheese dumpster, and my personal favorite. And if the Konsum here closes, there won’t be any more Friday night bike rides ending with bags full of Brie and mozzarella-tomato kabobs and chocolate covered bananas and crème pudding.
I slid under the fence and started filling my bag. “Do you like Jell-o?” I asked. Markus was leaning casually against the other side of the fence, keeping watch. People always see us; there’s a S-bahn station across the street and a popular brewery next store. But besides the well-dressed couples whose steps quicken when they see a pair of legs hanging out of a trash can, no one ever seems to care.
“Na I hate Jell-o. Are there any more of those fruit juices though? They were really good with vodka.”
A tandem bicycle is the ultimate dumpstering vehicle. Or it would be, if we had a working trailer. Even without it we can fill two backpacks, strap a box to the luggage rack, and then bike home, with the person in back balancing another box in their arms.
At our other regular stops, a Konsum and a Netto across the river, we fill our bags with vegetables that I can use for the vokü—eight cauliflower, bell peppers, tomatoes, lettuce, zucchini, and broccoli. I balance a box of oranges in my arms, and we pedal home.
It is usually our last stop, but the adrenaline had us back out on the street after unpacking the booty. Before leaving, I looked at the ceiling and dictated a short letter. “Dear Dumpster gods. I need some more vegetables for cooking tomorrow, and stuff for the salad. Thanks.”
It’s almost joke. Almost. It’s more like a budding diy folk religion. I’ve never asked the dumpster gods for something and not found it in the next days or weeks. Starts to make you feel like the universe is watching out for you. Starts to make you forget about being afraid: afraid there won’t be enough food or a roof over your head, and remember about living, passionately and unapologetically. And all because of a bunch of trash.
This time we rode to an Edeka whose containers are always full of pinapple rinds and that smell like fruit and garlic. Every container we opened got better and better. First some of the usual suspects: a few yellow bell peppers, apples, and enough broccoli to fill out my soup at the vokü the next day. In the next container we found mushrooms and a bag full of hot chilis that we strung and hang in the kitchen. And then—buried treasure!—an entire garbage bag filled with bread. We took the entire thing out and drug it around the corner. It was too heavy to just be bread, and at the bottom of the bag we find ten packages of asparagus, and ten more of children’s salad. “Vegetables for cooking tomorrow and stuff for the salad.”
Dear Dumpster Gods, You are fucking fantastic. Love, Nikki.
