The Underground Bunker.

So there was supposed to be an opening at the Hamburger Museum. We decided we would walk, but as usual the journey took much longer than expected. Finally we made it to Museum Island, but to our dismay the opening was either closed to the public or or nonexistent because the place was closed. However, at night the building in its environment is a permanent installation in itself. It's arcades glow neon green with bars of electric blue. It lights up the whole courtyard reflecting on the trees, causing this feeling that you are on drugs or being abducted by aliens because the sky appears this crazy orange in comparison, and all else is this surreal blue color.

We sort of lost faith in the evening. The friend that we were going to meet was on her way to some gallery near our school for another opening, but the Angels were all sort of indifferent as to what we should do for the rest of the night. Trying to keep in touch with Serena, I suddenly ran out of minutes on my prepaid phone, Jess's phone minuteless already days before, and Bianca--phone-less. If we wanted to figure out anything for the rest of the night, we would need to buy more minutes.

We turn our bodies, and there it was...a gigantic mall with a highway running through it. Also known as the main train station. There were very few places open inside, but finally we found one Tabac. In broken Deutsch, we finally managed to get some minutes. 15 Euro worth for Jess & 30 for me. The only problem is we don't speak quite enough Deutsch to understand the operator when we called the number to load our minutes onto our SIM cards. Camping out in front of the closing Tabac, we try pressing all different number combinations with the codes we just bought, unsuccessfully loading our minutes. We read something on the receipt that led us to believe that our code only was valid for one hour. In a craze we start freaking out about losing collectively 45 Euro because we couldn't load our minutes.

We go to this coffee shop..."Hallo, Sprechen Sie Englisch?" ....ja "Gut, can you please help us try and load these minutes onto our phone, we only have an hour....." Three crazed girls surrounding this poor Barista who wants nothing more but to finish closing shop, attempts to help us but, flustered, was unsuccessful. Great, I think, if the fluent German speaker can't figure it out, how the hell are we going to? And in an hour! In the midst of all of this uproar, Jess receives a phone-call (you can receive, but not make outgoing calls without minutes). It was Max, the Berliner she had met at Hana in Brooklyn one evening.

"Ahhh Max how are you! Thank God you called, we are frantically trying to get minutes on our phone but can't figure it out...ahhh." Of course over the phone there is really nothing he can do to help us, and remember we think that we only have an hour to do this.

"Well where are you?"

"At the main train station!"

Which really makes no sense to be at. It's like the equivalent to hanging out at Penn Station. I run downstairs trying to get this strange man working at a ticket kiosk to help me get minutes on my phone, but he was pretty unwilling to do much for me. Jess is up one floor trying to retrieve the receipt with her code on it. Bianca tells me that she threw it away. As she was on the phone with Max she threw away our empty coffee cups then went downstairs. Suddenly she realizes what else she put in that trash bin.

"Max I just realized that I threw away my receipt with the code on it!" Remember Max doesn't really know Jess at all and at this point must have thought we were crazy!

"Well that was very stupid!"

"Yeah I know!!!! I have to go dig through the garbage."

"Ohh..that's disgusting!"

After all the drama we finally found some girl to do it for us (let me add that we find out later that what we read did not mean that we only had an hour). Then comes some cartwheels in a desolate hall of an U-Bahn station, then swim upstream a sea of people through upon our exit. After some more lost moments & roundabout routes, we meet up with Max, Leonard, & Yasch, and we go to a serious Foozeballer's Bar. They take this sport pretty seriously here. I played, embarrassed myself, but played a few times, Jess too, not so good, but Bianca on the other hand was a hustler. First game, she wasn't any good, then out of nowhere, she pulled out the skills.

Bianca & Leonard Max & Yasch

Now about 3 AM, it's apparently time to get the evening started. In Berlin it is unheard of to get to a club much before 4 AM. It was the opening night of some club that was beneath this building in this basement/bunker, and we would all go.

Introducing: Max & Serena

The cab we jumped into to get to the club

So we set out: Max, Leonard, Jess, Serena (she finally met up with us), Yosh, & myself. We had to wait outside of the club for quite a while, I guess the place reached capacity...well actually I'm not really sure why we were waiting because we were being led by Germans and relying on them to take care of us getting inside. We were just standing behind some fence with a crowd of people in the dark speaking German, without really a clue or care as to what was going on.

Ok so the club: Well I think this is becoming a motif for the blog, but uh, where have all the dance moves gone? Why is it that Jess & I are constantly spectacles, and pretty much the only ones who stray from step, step, sway, step, step, sway.... I mean seriously! They don't really use their arms either. Jess and I will throw in a fist-pump here, a hand motion there, bend down, get up....having a blast! Around us people are laughing at/loving us. Once again others are trying to dance with us, but don't exactly know how to go about it. There were moments where I would notice people around us trying to take on our moves. It was amazing! In any case, somehow we managed to dance to what I'm pretty sure was the same song the entire time (really monotonous techno).

"We're used to dancing to something, a little more....musical!" I remember blurting out to one of the boys while dancing.

At least the boys we came with were willing to have fun dancing a bit ridiculous with us for the evening. You could tell that Max had spent some time in NY this summer because he and his friends were the only ones who had some sweet moves--no joke we got very lucky with the friends we made!

By 7:30 AM, I had an amazing night, but I just about had it dancing to the same song. At that point the boys were elsewhere so we went to get our coats from the Garderobe and located them.

"NOooo, you guys can't leave, it's just getting good. The best part is in 10 minutes!"

We weren't going to buy that, I think we got the gist after 3.5 hours and besides it was Morning. We go upstairs and to our dismay it is broad daylight and soo bright. And everybody looks like shit in natural light. We are covered in dirt, smeared makeup, dried sweat from dancing, messes! Yasch pats Jess down who is covered in dirt all over. When he noticed that her butt was dirty too...

"You have some on yor ass as well, but I, I am not sexism!"

We all crack up including Max who speaks excellent English. And that was our night rolling into bed by 8 AM. God I love this city!


Today's Deutsch Vocabulary Word:

Fahrrad = bicycle

Because the next day (Sunday), Jess and I went to the Flea Market & bought bikes! I got mine for only 20 Euro!
Mines in front, Jess in Back!