eine stunde in berlin

i spent an hour in berlin all because of the buttons on this my new coat. nice, no? can you guess the story?

what a night i spent on the train starting from gare du nord, paris. had to put up with a chinese family chattering and a nerdy bitch reading her harry potter way past midnight. no, do not turn off the extremely bright light that burns holes into everyone's tired skulls, because i am READING! finally i had enough and switched off this devilish source of halogen hell. THANK YOU VERY MUCH, the nerd hissed at me, but i did not care, i needed darkness, sista! all the while the shaky train neared my destination and birth place: the great city of wolfsburg, home of the reichswagen...


thinking i had plenty of time to jump off the train, not wanting to be stuck in the aisle with the loudmouth chinese, i waited til we came to a halt, the vw moon still lighting our way in the still dark city of the working class. i slung my oh so heavy red bag over my shoulder, and pop! goes one of my shiny copper buttons under the bench behind the legs of another sleeping cabinmate. excusez moi, i mutter, while i crawl on the floor in search of my treasure. hah, found it, off i go. now i must hurry a bit, i'm thinking. i rush to the door and it's stuck. this train has been traveling the rails a great many years... and it begins to move again! oh no, i see myself truly jumping off, but not to worry, this door is SHUT! and i'm stuck. and yet, i have my BUTTON, putain! where's the man in uniform who will help me out of this conundrum? a nice man who while telling me i will have to go on with them to bahnhof zoo, berlin to revisit christiane f.'s old haunts, writes on my ticket "passenger fell asleep and missed her station" so i won't have to pay for my ticket back to stinkin' wolfsburg.

turns out bahnhof zoo has been cleaned up. it's freezing cold and the marble tiles on gate four makes me slip and almost fall on my ass. my butt still remembers kissing the bathroom floor a few weeks back at my sister's and is thus more cautious to stay above ground. also i am not so keen on meeting a train from below the rails... carefully i make my way to the information counter. when is my next train home? i ask the cheerful lady. an hour wait. not so bad. but my sister is driving in circles through wolfsburg i wonder. still so foreign in my homeland it takes me a while to figure out the phone booth, which euro to put where. (yes, i'd like to stick it to the harry potter chick!) finally, i reach her on her cellie. this will make a fucking funny ass story. happy to serve! make sure you don't lose that button. stop that train, a button's gone amiss... oui, je sais, i'm a moron. like bob always said, since he couldn't pronounce my name correctly.

whiling away my time, i'm writing this down for future reference. der verhaengnisvolle knopf i call it. later, klaus my brother-in-law suggests i should have taken a tour of berlin, have some coffee at the moevenpick, easy. passt schon, he says. haha!

no traces of the olden days, no ghosts of christiane or david or the others. and i'm in need of a needle... and thread, to sew on that blasted button, dammit!