Berlin

Berlin is an attitude. It’s a place packed with expatriates from all over the world, oddball Germans who didn’t fit in where they came from, students, artists, etc. If you took the Turkish population from Berlin and put them in their own city in Turkey it would be the third largest city in Turkey, or so I’m told. Rent is cheap. There is a thriving night life. You can buy the best city tour available for less than 2 Euro on the S-Bahn cross town train. Kick back and watch one of the world’s finest cities go by. From the hip coolness of Kreutzburg to the Eastern Europeanness of Wedding (I went to a party once in Wedding that could have been in Poland in 1970. It was mostly writers, painters, poets etc. from various Eastern Bloc countries. The women wore a lot of eye shadow. I thought they were exotic and beautiful. The men were bearded and used a lot of hand motions when they talked) you can find whatever you are looking for there. I played in Steglitz last night. Steglitz is a village dropped in the center of urban Berlin. Quiet suburban feeling streets, women with baby carriages, green areas, small neighborhood businesses. If I moved to Berlin I would live in Steglitz. The Celtic Cottage is a classic Irish pub in the center of it all. They serve a fine Cottage Pie with green salad. I arrived early for the gig and ate dinner sitting outside on one of the last of 2009′s warm summer nights while changing guitar strings. I played from 8 O’clock until the bartender said it was time to stop. I took a couple short breaks but It felt so good to play that night that after a few minutes I found myself wandering back to the stage,tuning up and playing again. The room filled and stayed full. They were a multi-national group who liked to comment and communicate with me and each other between songs. In the corner 2 girls talked and laughed except during the slow romantic songs when they paused, listened, then returned to conversation during the uptempo stuff. After the show I took a night bus to the Hauptbahnhof where I waited for my train. Funny thing. 24 hours of Berlin. Now I’m home. Except for some Euros in the bank it’s like I never left.

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