by Alison Evans
"I've known you for three hours and you do seem to drink a lot of it."
"We have a complicated relationship, wine and I." She grins. "I don't drink it very often. Usually a cider person."
"You don't like beer?"
"Gross." She pokes her tongue out.
"German beer is pretty great. You're probably not going to find cider here. I haven't yet."
Roslyn's phone starts flashing and she unlocks it, taps out a message, and opens another app. She scrolls through for a few minutes and makes a noise of frustration. "Jalen!" she says at the phone. "Stop reblogging pictures of Lee Pace; I'm going to get RSI!"
I blink. "That was very loud."
"I am very passionate about a small number of things, one of them being masturbating, and the other is attractive people."
"Intersecting interests." I nod and pour more wine for both of us. "Handy."
She sighs as she sees something on her phone screen. She looks at me. "We're the invisible ones," she says. "Bi and ace people."
I snort. "I guess people are generally assholes." I raise my glass and we toast again. "To the ones who aren't."
"Keep each other safe in the wind," she says, closing her eyes as she drains her glass. "God, I hate wine."
Chapter Three
Roslyn
@roslyn: woke up to my hostel room full of people. gross,.
When I went to sleep, the room was empty. Now, the three empty beds are all occupied. Which is fine, I guess, but I'd rather just keep the room all to myself forever. I get showered and dressed as quickly as possible and go downstairs for breakfast. I clutch my coffee close and blink slowly. Going out last night with those people from the hostel till three a.m. seemed like a good idea at the time, but my head is pounding. Christie's tip of stealing extra food was super handy, because now my backpack is full of tiny cheeses. She's legit the coolest person I've ever met, I think. I don't know how she knows what she does, but she breathes the cities she's been to.
Outside is freezing and windy as shit, but the dorky earmuffs I got seem to be helping. Whenever I've been leaving, I've been turning right, so today I turn left. Immediately, I feel lost and like a tiny baby, but Christie made sure my 3G was working, so I open up the maps app and have a look at what's around. There's a comics shop not too far up, so I make for that.
On the corner, there's a milkbar that looks like it could be from home. Y'know, apart from all the packaging being in German. There's soft drinks, lollies, newspapers, cigarettes, and milk. There's also a shit-tonne of alcohol, which is less like the milk bars at home.
I buy a packet of lollies and continue down the street. There's a reply from Jalen:
@ja7en: @roslyn digusting. have u tried singing wtuhering heights from the top f ur lngs?
@roslyn: @ja7en you should be asleep
@ja7en: @roslyn dont tell me what to do!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I don't actually know what the time is back home, but I'm probably right. They really need to sleep more, but then they never listen to me, because I don't go to uni and so apparently, don't know 'what it's like'.
The comics shop is tiny when I find it. It's got a little zine section and although a lot of the titles are in English, the contents are in other languages, mostly German. Deception. I end up buying a couple that are mostly visual.
As I'm contemplating leaving the warmth of the shop, my pocket buzzes and I see I've got a text from Christie.
Hey, if you're free some time I've been meaning to go to David Bowie's studio.
I reply quickly with a hell yes. I've met her only a couple of times, but already I feel like we could be friends. She's patient, but also takes no shit. We work out the details and I manage to only get lost once on my way to the nearest train station.
*~*~*
"So, this is it?" Christie says, looking up at the building with its white columns and whatnot—clearly it doesn't look like how she imagined. "Seems pretty... clean."
And I have to agree with her. It looks very... professional. Business-y. I was imagining a messy-ashtray-sharehouse-living kind of deal.
"Number thirty-eight. This is it."
Hansa Studios—the place where David Bowie recorded Heroes. You used to be able to see the Berlin wall from here, and on the corner, we passed the wall story left over from the Maeurfall celebrations. It talks about the song Heroes and how Bowie based it on a couple he saw meeting near the wall every day, though I'm not sure how true this is.
"You wanna go inside?" Christie asks me. She grins as I stare at her with wide eyes. She's itching to go. There's something in her that tugs for constant movement, and I've never done anything like this before, and fuck it, let's go.
"Fucking yes."
When we get into the lobby, it's empty. Maybe it's the wrong place. There's a room beyond that leads to a staircase, so we start walking up it. The carpet is red and plush. As we ascend the staircase, I wonder if this counts as trespassing. I mean, it wasn't locked. It's not like we had to break in.
We reach the landing and it's empty and silent and my breathing is literally the loudest thing I've ever heard, oh, jeez, we're gonna get caught so bad. There's a big room with chairs and buffet tables set up, and then we realise there's a guy in the corner setting up something. He's got his back to us and doesn't see us though, so we tiptoe past and go into a corridor. My heart should probably slow down at some point, right?
"You reckon it's locked?" Christie asks when we come to the first door. Before I can answer, she opens the door and reveals a toilet.
I gasp. "You reckon Bowie peed in that?"
"Probably." She laughs.
"Oh, jeez." I get out my phone and send a photo of the toilet to Jalen. "Jalen will freak."
"They into Bowie?"
"Yeah." I nod. "They're the biggest trash hipster you'll ever meet. They're great."
The next door in the hallway is ajar and inside the room is a piano, an open window that's letting in freezing air, and a table with some chairs. There's an ashtray on the piano and there's a couple of cigarette butts in it. I can still smell the smoke in the air, so they're fresh.
As we continue walking down the corridor, we hear a noise behind us and I panic and speed up.
"Relax," she says, touching my arm. "Just walk like you're supposed to be here and then no one will notice."
"My hair is bright purple," I say, tugging some behind my ear. "I practically glow."
"It's fine," she soothes. "Don't worry."
Her words almost work until I trip over my own feet and swear loudly, and I'm ninety-nine percent sure that literally everyone in the building has heard me.
But we keep going, and make it to a bar at the end of the corridor. It's empty of people, but there's a shitload of wine behind the counter. There are windows on the left-hand side that look out onto some trees: a tiny park. I wonder if they were there when David Bowie was here. Maybe he sat in one of these stools and wondered what he was going to write next.
Christie wanders behind the bar. "Should we steal the wine?" she asks, but again, doesn't wait for me to answer before she slips it into her bag.
"You would even if I said no, right?"
"Tastes like musical genius, probably."
We can't find the other doors to get to other levels; all the doors are locked. As we're going down the staircase, a woman is walking up. She looks at us, frowns, and we smile and walk quickly down before she can say anything.
When we're outside and a few blocks down, we open the wine and taste it. It's not great, but it was free and stolen, so it's perfect.
"Great idea," I tell Christie. "Got any more?"
We wander as we drink from the bottle. I'm so glad no one stops us because the wine is keeping me warm from this freezing wind that won't let up. I know this isn't legal in Australia, but I don't know about here.
We stumble upon more remnants of the wall. It's all grey and broken, but still standing. There are chunks that have been either chipped away or have fal
len off, exposing the wires in the concrete like a skeleton. There's a section where I can fit my whole head through the hole, since the wires are bent back.
Astrid, maybe someday we will be together, some graffiti says in red paint, faded, so we can barely read the letters.
Underneath our feet is where the destroyed Gestapo headquarters was. The area is barren and there are signs up telling people to respect the area and not to be loud. On the information panels, there is only one small photograph of Hitler and his face has been scratched out.
"Germany is very loud about its past," I say as we stare at the scratches.
"Not used to that at all."
The exhibition is all out in the open. You can go right up and touch the tiles that the headquarters were made of. Keep it out in the open so you remember, so no one forgets. So anyone who repeats can be held accountable.
After that, Christie decides we need to do something fun, so she suggests a comics shop that she loves. I tell her about the one I found that morning and she tells me she loves that one, too.
To get to the shop, we walk down a laneway that is covered in graffiti. It reminds me of Vee. She was my best friend, until she wasn't. She used to do graffiti and I'd be her lookout sometimes.
There's a boxing glove that says Queer Punch and I take a photo of that, too, send it to Jalen. There's another beautiful paste-up picture of a person with breasts and a penis. I send that through, too.
"Jalen would love it here."
There are puddles of water on the ground between the cobblestones. The rain combined with the graffiti makes me think of home.
I sigh. No time to be homesick. Adventure, I tell myself. We're not here for missing Melbourne and Jalen. Both will be there when you get back. There'll be time to be sad later. Though, I can still feel the sadness like a hidden river, swift under the surface. Ready to pull me in.
There's a museum dedicated to Otto Weidt, a man who hired blind Jewish workers during the Holocaust. We go inside and see the wardrobe he used to hide a doorway behind.
"I can't imagine the courage needed for something like that," I say.
"Sometimes I don't even have the courage to get out of bed," Christie says, and the disgust at herself in her voice is chewy. "So self-absorbed."
As soon as she says it, she looks at me with wide eyes, and it's too much, too much for people who barely know each other.
"Hey," I tell her, touching her arm. "There's a different kind of courage in that."
She stares at me. We keep walking.
The comics shop is full of indie comics and I want to buy everything. I end up getting the ones that have beautiful art, not caring about the words inside because, again, all the titles are in English and the insides aren't. There are art prints covering the walls and I want to buy all of them: they're all so beautiful and familiar, but I have nowhere to keep them, so instead I leave them to hang.
There's a dark café at the end of the alley, so we go inside, and it's so hipster I could die with happiness. It's mostly lit by candles, and there's a piano for a goddamn table. I'm in heaven. We sit at it and there's a low ache in my stomach for Melbourne. This café: Laini would love this café. I bunch my fists under the table because fucking hell, I did not come here to miss ex-friends and -lovers, especially so close together in the day.
@roslyn: this cafe's level of pretentiousness is definitely Melbourne. hashtag fuckin homseick
We order and I listen to the hubbub of different languages around us and I love it.
Not too long after, we get the coffees and I sip mine.
@roslyn: the coffee is awful, definitely not in mlebourne.
"So," Christie says, spooning a sugar into her coffee. She stirs slowly, deliberately. There is always deliberation in her movement. She occupies the space with purpose. "What're you travelling for? Holiday? Work?"
She's asked me before, but I didn't really answer. And now I get a chance to ask her properly.
"Babes," I say, giggling. "Adventure. New places and fresh skies."
She raises an eyebrow. "Very poetic."
"Why did you start?"
"No babes." She grins. "Adventure. To get rid of old places, old skies."
"That work?"
She shrugs. I've said the wrong thing, because the smile slips for her face, though she tries to recompose it before I notice. "We'll see, I guess. Your plan working?"
"Pretty well so far, but then, it's not even been a week yet."
"How long are you staying for?"
"Berlin for another five days, but I'm in Europe for two months. All I could afford and I mean, like, I could have delayed it and saved up more money, but I couldn't any longer, you know?"
She nods. "I know."
There are dark, hiding reasons why she left. They lurk under her words. And maybe she'll tell me, but I don't need her to bare herself to me to satisfy my curiosity, so I don't ask.
*~*~*
We pass huge amounts of graffiti on our walk to the train station. Christie points out a number six painted across a posted that's been pasted up.
"I saw these a couple of days ago," I say.
"It's this guy that people call Mr 6, but he calls himself @SeX, like with the 'at' symbol like on Twitter, who just bikes around painting the number six. People think that maybe it's because 666, the devil's number, or because it kind of sounds like sex. And the lowest grade you can get in Germany is a six, apparently."
"Is there a mysterious cool reason?" I ask as we stop to wait for the pedestrian lights to turn green.
"It's the easiest number to paint when he's on his bike." Once we cross the road, she points to another six that has a seven attached to the top, so they're one symbol. "He does, like, software stuff. Keyboard shortcuts and things. He's got this one where if you press six and seven at the same time, something happens, or something."
"How'd you find out all this stuff?" They just look like some rando has tagged them, like the litter of other tags on the walls beside us as we walk.
"Friends," she replies. "And that right there," Christie says as she points to a circle of lighter concrete in the wall, "is where a Banksy piece was before someone cut it out of the wall."
"Wow," I say. "What a load of shit. Steal a piece of the goddamn wall, so you can hide the stolen artwork in your own house, so you can look at it sometimes and be all, 'ooh, yes, it's a real Banksy, yes, I stole it from where everyone could see it, but now only me and a very select group of friends'. Like, fuck off. Art is not for the rich, especially not fucking graffiti."
"That was amazing." She grins at me.
I snort. "Thanks."
"No, for real. I've been trying to articulate what you've just said for, like, years."
"What, that the concept of high art is fuckin' bullshit?"
"Basically."
"Hm." I think for a moment. "I guess my process is say what you need to say with as little words as possible, but also with as many swears as possible."
She laughs, her eyes bright. "Good advice."
She's still laughing as we say goodbye and I get on the train to go back to the hostel. As I watch Berlin rush past the window, I realise that I don't want to leave Christie so soon.
Chapter Four
Christie
Museum der Dinge—the Museum of Things. I've heard about it, but never got around to going, so when Roslyn suggests it, I agree immediately. We pay to get inside and find that it's, well, it's what it says on the tin. It's got... things in it. Weird things. Weird things organised into groups and cabinets that you can look at for only five euros. There's a surprising amount of people in here that are looking at the things, but no one is giggling like us.
There are several sections of chairs. There's a wall of wooden praying hands set onto plaques, which makes this feel like an op shop, but then the section that is just things with boobs on them makes it a little less so.
"It's like someone took the contents from, like, ten old ladies' houses and put i
t in cabinets," I say.
"Old ladies who are the biggest hoarders in the world," Roslyn says. "They seriously rival my grandma, and that is saying something. She's literally never thrown out a thing in her life."
"Jeez." Fucking hell. Having so many things. It would drive me to… fuck, I don't know. My house is so bare; I wouldn't even know what to do with possessions. I can't even own more than three pairs of pants before thinking it's a waste and giving them away. They just take up too much space in my mind. That and good clothes for fat people are hard to find.
We stop in front of a shelf that has a roll of duct tape, a tube of some kind of glue, and what might be a light bulb in a box. The label is in German, but I doubt it's anything extremely exciting.
"Is this just, like… so post-modern that no one can actually understand?" Roslyn says. "Is this a huge prank on the citizens of Berlin? What is this place? Po-mo as shit."
"Post-post-deconstructed-modernism." I snort. "It's obviously a wizard museum. Like, about non-magic people. Wizards from all over the world come here. The Berlin wizarding school has excursions."
"And the lil' wizard babies are all sick of the place, because they come here literally every year. It's the most boring tour of the world, because their history teacher, while very enthusiastic, is not very charismatic."
"Oh, my god," I say, clutching my stomach as I laugh. "My history teacher was just like that, fuck."
Then we come to a cabinet full of real Nazi paraphernalia, including a cushion with a cross-stitched Hitler. Cross-stitching takes a long time, and it's a whole goddamn pillow.
"Bloody hell," Roslyn says. "People bought this stuff. Someone made this pillow and spent real money on it."
How did someone go about getting these Swastika-emblazoned objects? Some tea spoons have the symbol on the end of them. Was everyone issued one, or did you have to go out of your way to buy them? Maybe the only spoons available had the symbol on them. There was no choice except to buy Nazi spoons: little reminders of the party that ruled your country.
It's a very strange level of control, and one that I've never thought of before.