2005-02-04 - 1:35 p.m.

i'm writing from the coin-op terminal at my hostel in berlin. i am convinced its the best hostel in the world. comfy and cheap and no curfew.

berlin is much as i remember it, though its the dead of winter now and not midsummer. kreuzsberg is not the supermegahotspot it was last time, apparently the "szene" has moved north to freidrichshain. no matter, i'm a smidge exhausted anyway. i wandered my favorite haunts on oranienstrasse last night drinking whiskycolas and trying out my mangled german on unsuspecting drunks. berliners are a lot like new yorkers except they dress better and almost everyone speaks more than one language. friendly if approached, otherwise not all in up in one's grill.

last night, i chatted with some painters for a round or two in a combination of broken english and bad german in a club called 'cake'. there was a cute girl dj with fantastic records. unfortunately, she had no idea what to do with her crates (!) of parliament funkadelic, the time, and rick james. not only did she not bother mixing, she appeared to be choosing the tracks virtually at random. noone else seemed to care.