Tryin' To Throw My Arms Around the World

It's four o'clock in the morning but I don't believe in jet lag so just humor me. Seven hours of sleep since leaving the States, not that I'm counting.

Berlin's the bomb. Ed picked me up from Tegel and took me to his apartment, where I promptly knocked over one of the eight zillion stacks of CDs he keeps about the place. I guess when you've been a rock critic since Rolling Stone, circa 1969, the tunes sort of ... accumulate. Anyway, he gave me some coffee and seemed unfazed. There's a slight problem with his spare set of keys. Turns out you can't have duplicates made here without eighteen forms of ID and a copy of a lease, he's leaving for Austin in the morning, and someone named Nina has accidentally mailed the second set to Budapest. Or at least we think so ... Nina's incommunicado in Prague. We'll figure something out.

'Achtung Baby' is my favorite album ever so it's fitting that my first non-Ed Berlin experience starts in Zoo Station. I know I've got that "ask me for money" face but when the kid lurched up it was still a surprise. He had a translucent junkie pallor that made him look like an Orthodox icon, and his eyes were both crazed and calm. What he was saying was an obviously well rehearsed spiel similar to your basic A Train begging, "Excuse me, ladies and gentleman, may I have a moment of your time...." but since I don't sprechen sie Deutsch AT ALL what mesmerized me was the cadence, the rhythm. It sounded like a prayer. In Luang Prabang he'd be a monk chanting for enlightenment but in Berlin the Buddhist was calling for a fix ... another altered state. When he finished I just said "Hi. What?" and the junkie said "No problem," and Ed put me on the train and said he'd never seen anyone smile that way at a panhandler. I wish the kid was orange-robed in Laos instead of orange-skinned in Zoo but maybe he's right. No problem.

On the ride Ed showed me some of Berlin's best graffiti.











We got to ITB at the ICC and got my press credentials squared away and then met Mikhail and Karen and Elizabeth who bundled us into Mikhail's car and drove us out of the city for a wine tasting at a mall and it sounds horrible but achtung, baby, it was so not. I had some excellent German vintages in December but Heribert Kastell is a winemaker with a platinum palate and the nose of a parfumier. Butterscotch! Licorice! GUNPOWDER! (in a good way) and of course my perpetual apricot. They tasted great, too, from the grassy riesling to the peppery pinot noir. Get yourselves to Bingen, y'all. It's worth the trip.

And then, because I'd only been up forty hours, we went to dinner at Trattoria Paparazzi - appropriate if you know what Karen does for a living. We talked about politics and art and pop music and why Brad and Angelina are spending so much time in Berlin. (My guess is because they can.) Then I was dropped off to learn another lesson that every backpacker in the world knows but I didn't: Hostels don't always have towels. This one, the JetPak, is sparklingly clean and has broadband and free CD burning and iPod chargers and and and ... but they don't have towels. Time for me to dry.