Disconnected notes from Berlin Day 1

Around the corner from the Monbijou Hotel is "Flakes and Shakes." They claim to have over 100 types of American breakfast cereal for sale. I didn't go in to see if Bruce Jenner is still on Wheaties.

Along Monbijoustrasse, on the other side of the Spree, is a block of vendor stands. At the end of the block is an elevated trash bin with the label "Museum of Contemporary Trash" likely a dig at Museum Island across the street.

The whole area is redolent of sewer: one of those little things that didn't get updated at reunion time. Hackescher Markt is what you'd get if you put high end boutique stores in mini-plazas made of old buildings and then glued them together. The layout is straightforward but that doesn't matter, you get turned around anyway.

Berlin is a graffiti city. Some is coarse and stupid, some is gang related, some political, but there seems to be a fair amount that relates to the art community. (I will give the benefit of the doubt for the word "art.")

When you look down a random street in this area you're apt to see a building or three older than a century, and street names and sometimes monuments for famous Germans. And tourists taking pictures of the same. Museum Island is here--lots of good art and significant reminders. I can imagine if I were a musical Berliner who wanted to make a name for myself and was faced daily with reminders that I'm not even remotely a new Beethoven, I'd be tempted to use novelty as a shortcut to innovation, or maybe just as a primal scream. "I can't paint like Durer or write like Goethe or study and think like Humboldt but I am a painter/writer/'thinker'!" OK, primal scream and thinking don't go very well together.

The Berlin Wall was graffiti-ed up as a protest--that would tend to make a big mental link to graffiti and liberty.

At any rate, it is a bit disconcerting to see an area painted up like a disputed territory in Chicago.

Restaurants all over the place too. I decided to try curry-wurst. Once is plenty--it tasted ok but I've still got a cannonball in my tum.

I'm trying to stay awake long enough to start the time shift. Gets dark earlier here than at home...

I got off at the wrong stop from the TXL bus, but still had time on the ticket so took the S42 loop on the sBahn (the S41 going the opposite direction is under construction--you've got to either take the bus or go the loonnnngg way around the loop) and asked a friendly native which direction I wanted to take. Trains often get names from the last stop, which may be off the map and is in tiny print anyway. Which direction you get depends on which platform you're on.