Seeing Lady Gaga in Berlin

The florescent glow inside my S-Bahn train cannot compete with the blue neon lights of O2 World, a massive stadium which sits near the border between Friedrischain and Kreuzberg. This is where the wall between East and West Berlin once stood, now home to murals with messages of peace and intercontinental understanding. 

I'm on the phone with my friend Matthew, trying to decide whether or not I want to scalp tickets to the Lady Gaga concert, which starts in less than one hour. On the one hand, how can I not? This is Gaga we're talking about: an extraordinary machine, an outrageous provocateur, a larger than life drag queen who stands up for the gays. She is Berlin, commodified. And according to various gossip magazines, it was Berlin that inspired Gaga to create her latest album.

On the other hand, I feel haggard and stressed from my day spent blogging about the latest tech news. My Value Village V-neck sweater is pelting and has a prominent hole near one nipple. I'm not sure I'm ready for the prying eyes of the House of Ga.  

In Gaga's album, German is embraced. But it's actually a bullshit version of German. I asked a few German people if they could understand what GaGa was trying to say in her song "Scheisse" and they told me...no. It is not German. It is some weird gobbledeegook Gaga invented to seem more worldly (or perhaps attract more attention in the largest economy in Europe). I decide that I have to see how the German audience reacts to her. 

Under the U-Bahn tracks, an Indian man sells me a 2nd-mezzanine ticket for $50 that he promises is "really okay!" I ask him if I'll be able to see anything. "Yes, you will be able to see many things!" he says. I honestly feel like the luckiest boy in the world.   

I walk inside the stadium, and a security guard searches my bag. "You can't bring this in here," he says, holding up my Kindle. "What? It's an e-reader?" "We don't allow Kindles." "Really? Its sole function is displaying text in a legible format. Are you afraid I'm going to read?" The security guard passes it to a colleague, who inspects it thoroughly before giving it back to me. "Nice case!" she says, and lets me in.

Inside the stadium, the crowd is strangely quiet. There aren't a whole lot of people dressed up, although I was able to get a picture of these two crazed fans buying a Döner (Berlin meat sandwich):

Berlin meat sandwich.

I find my seat after taking three escalators from the lobby. I have to stand up and look down to get a good view of the stage, where a large and haunted-looking house is being lit up by strobes. The lights go off and suddenly an inflated alien vagina is rolled on to the stage."Uuuuuuuuuaaaaaahhhhhh, uuuuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhaaaaaaaaaahhhhh," Gaga moans. She emerges from the vagina and is lead around the stage. 

"How are all my monsters in Berlin doing tonight?!?!" she yells like a maniac.

"We're doing great, GaGa!!!" I yell. 

"I love you Berliners," Gaga says. She grabs a German flag and starts waving it. At first, the crowd is unsure how to react (this is Germany; nationalism is a touchy subject). But a few seconds later, they go wild.   

Gaga does 6 songs in rapid procession, all from her earlier albums (Poker Face, LoveGame, Just Dance, etc.). Everything's going by so quickly, I can barely keep up. The stage is writhing mass of near-naked body parts.

An orb featuring Gaga's alien face flies down from the top of the Haunted House, talking about the end of the world. Now it's time for "Born This Way," which Gaga sings in her weird alien make-up.

After that's over, the haunted house opens up like a toy and Gaga begins singing "Alejandro" while strapped to a rack of meat. "This is for everyone who's ever felt like a piece of meat!" she yells. Three meat grinders are rolled on to the stage and dancers dive down into them headfirst, their legs twirling to the beat as they're ground into hamburgers.  

Next, she sits down next to the piano for the introspective, inspiring section of the concert. 

I'm not going to lie and pretend I remember everything she said, so I've made up some lines of dialogue that should give you the gist:

"I used to be just like you! But then I believed in myself and now look at me: I'm a rockstar and I don't give a fuck!"

Gaga then grabs a girl from the "Monster Pit" who is clearly high on something. She smells her armpits. "Oh my god, you smell amazing," she says. "Folks, this girl smells AMAZING." 

Gaga begins singing on a motorcycle with a piano built into it. The girl holds on to her from behind. 

"She's touching my boob," Gaga says, in between singing "Speechless" and "Hair." The crowd is slightly confused by the high girl, but Gaga doesn't break character for a moment. Her voice soars. 

 Terrible in-concert photo of all the groping action

"I love you Germany!" she yells. "I hope you love me too! But even if you don't, I don't really give a fuck!" Gaga brings out a gorgeous black dancer. "Patrique? Do you give a fuck?" 

"I don't give a FUCK!" Patrique says. 

"What about you pancake?"

"Nuh uh!"

"See, they don't give a fuck, either! Do you give a fuck, Berlin?"

"NOOOO!!" I yell. 

"I've walked your streets, Berlin. I like it here. I love the Laboratory!" she says. The Laboratory is a gay sex club in the basement of the most famous club in Germany, legendary for poop nights and lots of dangerous unprotected sex.  

A few gay men in the audience laugh. There aren't many of them. The stadium is mostly filled with parents and children.

Gaga disappears again, then re-emerges for a final "we are the world" procession around a stage which surrounds the Monster Pit. She picks a few well-dressed monsters to join her. Everyone is screaming. 

Then it's over. 

I walk downstairs and find the crowd calmly packing the escalators, as if nothing has even happened. Everyone is either exhausted or they were secretly bored the entire time. 

I wonder to myself: does Germany need a Gaga? It's a radically different cultural landscape than in the U.S. This is a country where children learn about sex at a very young age. There is no abstinence-only education. Sex shops are everywhere. Gay saunas are everywhere. She's not going to shock anyone with her scandalous ways.   

At the same time, there's still fear and bigotry here. Lady Gaga's message of empowerment isn't anything to scoff at. I take the train home, feeling 10% gayer than three hours ago. It was totally worth the $50.

12 Things You're Likely to See While Riding the Subway in Berlin

You're waiting for the subway at Alexanderplatz. It's rush hour. You're exhausted. All you want to do is get home and eat something. But there's a bunch of shit to mentally process on the way back to your WG. Here's what you're likely to see out of the corner of your eye while you're trying to read a magazine:

1. Lots of frowns.

2. Ads asking if you're depressed below TVs silently displaying depressing news.

2. Germans who are wearing very practical winter clothing by Jack Wolfskin.

4. Someone who is looking around for high-fives after rushing into the subway doors at the last minute.

5. Someone who smells like he took a shower in fermented cheese.

6. At least five older women who are dressed elegantly and staring lackadaisically at nothing in particular.

7. A few kids who are trying to act tough and getting disappointed that no one is recognizing their toughness.

8. Someone who really doesn't like that your shoes accidentally touched theirs for a millisecond.

9.  A dude wearing a tracksuit and his bulldog.

10. At least one couple who are ferociously making out.

11. A hipster dressed like a homeless person who is rejecting money from an actual homeless person.

12. An American dude who is talking dramatically in English on his cell phone and trying, fruitlessly, not to be a bother. (THAT'S ME)

Crying in the Frozen Pizza Aisle at Aldi

The Germans take thrift shopping super seriously. You aren't likely to run into fancy marketing gimmicks at the neighborhood budget grocery store. This is the country where bread is labeled "BREAD." The Germans appreciate stores with a no-bullshit approach.

The failure of Walmart in Germany attests to this. When even the richest family in America can't buy their way into the German retailing sector, you know something is up. A 2006 NYT article contains quite hilarious anecdotes about how Walmart tried --and failed -- to adapt to German culture:

In Germany, Wal-Mart stopped requiring sales clerks to smile at customers — a practice that some male shoppers interpreted as flirting — and scrapped the morning Wal-Mart chant by staff members.

“People found these things strange; Germans just don’t behave that way,” said Hans-Martin Poschmann, the secretary of the Verdi union, which represents 5,000 Wal-Mart employees here.

Want service with a smile? MOVE SOMEWHERE ELSE, YOU INSUFFERABLE YUPPIE.

Besides failing to adapt to local culture, Walmart simply couldn't compete with its biggest German rival, Aldi. The budget behemoth attracts 95% of blue-collar workers, 88% of white-collar workers, 84% of public servants, and 80% of self-employed Germans, according to a 2002 survey conducted by the German market research institute Forsa. The company's enormous success has made its owner, Karl Albrecht, the richest man in Germany and the fourth richest in Europe.

Aldi may make $53 billion in revenue every year, but you don't see the money when you walk into its stores, which look like food prisons. Wanna talk to the brocolli? You'll need to pick up a corded phone and stand behind the bulletproof glass.

In America, I find comfort in wandering the aisles of local grocery stores, perusing the packaging, fondling the candy. The advertising makes me fantasize about all the wonderful lives I might live. Here, not so much. If you want to picture Aldi, imagine a place with the florescent lighting of Target, the cramped ceilings of a parking lot and the screaming neon color schemes of a 99 cent store. You just want to get the hell out of there before someone calls your name over the intercom and you're turned over to the Stasi for loitering around the pickle jars.

It's so comically miserable that I often want to stage some kind of theatrical intervention. The store I frequent is primarily visited by Turkish families and broke artists, and I sometimes envision the two demographics breaking character and engaging in political rapartee.

Of course, in the real world, this will never happen. And so I take a selfie in the frozen pizza aisle instead, hoping someone will notice me and mutter to themselves something delightfully disparaging about Americans.

Having a Near-Death New Years in Berlin

What's funny to me about Germany is that it's a country where you cannot, under most any circumstances, buy a gun but you can buy 10 near professional-grade fireworks and set them all off at once mere inches from someone's face. Every year in Berlin, I almost die on New Years Eve. Every fricking year.

There was the year someone across the street set off a firework diagonally, narrowly missing my forehead and the year someone near me lit off an explosive under a cop car and I ran away before the cops struck back.

This year, I decided to just stay home. "New years poo years," I muttered to myself while reading random blogs on the Internet. It was admittedly hard to concentrate because there were so many explosions going off near my apartment, but I was determined to sit and read. Who cares if it sounded like Baghdad outside? I was in my happy place. My Enya place.

Unfortunately, this feeling didn't last.

After hearing one particularly squealy firework go off somewhere out of my field of vision, I suddenly became interested in what a professional fireworks show looks like. Let's get one thing straight: my fear of roving squads carrying dynamite in no way negates my love of good spectacles. Not cheap ones, like the poorly orchestrated shit show going on outside my window, but the kind endorsed by corporations and performed with professional aplomb.

The biggest fireworks show in Berlin was at the Brandenburger Tor, a grand, 18th century gate in the center of the city. The gate was originally commissioned by King Frederick William II of Prussia as a gesture of peace, but was later used by the Nazis for their processions of war (CONTRASTS). Today, the gate was a relatively inoffensive, yet unmistakable, historic background for presidential speeches, protests and a memorably bad David Hasselhoff performance. Tonight, Bonnie Tyler was expected to perform in front of it, since she missed out on last year's New Years shindig. I switched on the TV, if just to see what a German audience thought of Bonnie.

Tyler was lackluster, and the crowd's disinterest almost comical, but watching the count down clock tick towards its inevitable demise was making my heart race. The year was almost over, and what had I done to commemorate it? "I'm going to celebrate new years at home? In my low-self-worth-shirt and spaghetti-stained sweatpants?" I thought to myself. I began whining to no one in particular. "What now?" Eyal asked. I began undressing myself. Eyal got excited. Then I put on my jacket. "HONEY WE NEED TO GO WATCH SOME SHIT EXPLODE!"

As soon as we had left the apartment, I regretted my decision. The street outside was like one long booby trap. People were crouched in dark alley ways, fiddling with their explosives. Shadowy figures were poised across the street and I couldn't tell if their fireworks were pointed towards the sky or towards us. Big booms sounded in far-away locales.

 

(Video by me)

A halo of fire shot up near me and I ducked. "Save yourselves!" I yelled. Then I realized it was a toddler holding a sparkler.

We walked quickly yet purposefully towards the park closest to our house. There, a gaggle of puffy-coated spectators were staring up. A sting of fireworks were shooting into the sky from somewhere near the top of the park. Gracefully. Majestically. Like a real fireworks show.

But there were also un-guaded, squealing fireworks spinning into the air from a can dropped on a street corner, sparklers dripping fire from someone's balcony and a person on the other side of the street who was literally throwing fireworks at people walking by him.

I could see Eyal was PISSED. He walked across the street and yelled at the man. "Do you look before you throw?" he asked, gesturing at his eyes. "You have to LOOK! Don't be an idiot!" The man just laughed and took a sip of his beer. Eyal crossed back towards me and we discussed what an idiot this dude was.

Crazy man aside, I was once again taken aback by how democratic the experience of New Years is here. Once I found a safe place to watch all the mayhem, there was something inspiring about it. Every group of friends, celebrating New Years with their own fireworks, their own parties. Nobody was watching the ball drop on some TV, or fighting for space to watch a massive, corporate display of explosives. It was barely-controlled mayhem, sure, but at least it was on a human scale. 

It was only my second night back in Berlin, but I was already happy to be home. "What an insane city," I remarked to Eyal, with a wild grin on my face. Yeah, I was glad to be back.

The German Government Would Like You to Know That People with HIV Are Not Lecherous Cretins

From a public health standpoint, HIV is a tricky beast. How do you address prevention without demonizing those already infected? How do you show people that you can have a meaningful, fulfilling life with the disease without making it seem as if having the disease is a walk in the park?

The way Berlin deals with HIV is quite inspiring. On subway platforms throughout the city, you can see billboards with people who are HIV positive, and the message is always very empowering. This one says, in German (obviously): "I have HIV, and the respect of my colleagues." There are other variants of this billboard featuring fathers, older women, and gay men outing themselves as HIV positive. The message is always "you can have HIV and get on with your life."

These messages have a powerful affect on me. After I first came out in 2005, I was so terrified of getting HIV that I isolated myself from the gay community at my university. Whenever I was at a gay bar, I was afraid I would drink too much and have sex with someone and forget the condom and wind up with the illness. Sure, wearing a condom and not getting blackout drunk are two very important college lessons, but I took it to the extreme. I even tried to pass judgements on others based on whether or not it looked like they had the illness. I was one more gay dude stereotyping other gay dudes...I was part of the problem. It was even hard for me to make friends because I was such a nervous wreck all the time.

It wasn't until I joined Student Global AIDS Campaign and then later traveled to South Africa, that the fear began to lessen. I exposed myself to people who had the illness so I would be forced to see them as people, not diseases. I didn't have any desire to have unsafe sex, but I didn't want to be so afraid of people already infected. What was the point? It's not as if seeing them as real people would magically make me throw away all my condoms and head on down to the nearest bathhouse. Fear is important; we shouldn't ever pretend this is an easy disease. But scare campaigns can have huge, unintended consequences.They can further isolate the already infected, thus beating up on an already HUGELY stigmatized group. And for neurotic gay Jewish boys like me, they can make a trip to the gay bar a hair-raising and hellish experience.

Seeing those smiling, confident faces staring down on the subway platform made me happy to be living in a country that didn't equate sex with death. One could even argue that fear-based AIDS campaigns DISCOURAGE prevention because they make those who might be infected afraid to get tested. But a de-stigmatizing campaign which outs HIV-positive people as productive members of society is a much more humanistic approach towards tackling the illness. People with HIV are more than just walking illnesses! They actually have jobs and families and musical talents and stuff! What a novel revelation!

This particular poster I spotted while waiting for my train at Hermannplatz, a station which services the immigrant enclave of Neukoln. When I turned away, I caught a Muslim woman wearing a headscarf staring at the billboard while talking on the phone. Maybe the message was sinking in, maybe it wasn't. But it's hard to imagine that subconsciously this campaign isn't messing with people's perceptions. I could be stretching it big time here, but I think this kind of advertising really changes people.

What do you think?

How Deutsch Is It?

French culture is fetishized in the United States to a point of absurdity. Just a glance at the most-emailed New York Times articles will make one feel that the French are better at dressing, eating, parenting than you. Once I was in Paris and overheard a girl telling her friend "I just love Parisien girls because they're feminists but they're also into dressing well." We project our wildest fantasies on to France, while choosing to ignore the rise of anti-immigrant parties Le Penn. Croissants! Cute streets! Lalalalala!

Germany is another story. The prevailing assumption among U.S. editors seems to be that the public lacks a similar fascination for the cultural habits of Germanic people. German culture is hardly ever analyzed on a scale similar to French culture, besides a few articles here and there about the country's fondness for thrift shopping. More often than not, the article will find a way to tie a cultural trend to the country grappling with World War 2 or right wing extremists. Perhaps that's to be expected. But I still feel what's missing is real cultural engagement with Germany. I mean, the country has emerged as the strongest economy on the continent and the only articles about it are about the debt crisis? So much is being missed. What I'd really like is for this blog to become a conduit for discussing what's really happening in Germany. How has immigration affected the country's identity? How do people relate to American culture? Jewish culture? What might the U.S. learn from how Germany treats gay people? What about taxes and capitalism...how are they regulated here? What about guns?

I've spent so long in Berlin and only now do I find myself with oodles of free time for exploring what it means to actually be here. I hope you'll continue to read as I explore what the fuck Germany stands for these days. I'll try my best to bring you stories that are moving, heartfelt and revalant. Stick with me here!

Mykonos!

So Greece has been in the news a lot recently, and not for good reasons. The birthplace of democracy, and famed exporter of dolmatas and charmingly long last names, has been ridiculed as a place with a shitty work ethic, enormously overpaid state-employees and a blushingly bad credit history. Anyone who listened to This American Life's "Continental Breakup" episode knows that there are construction projects in the country that were started 15 years ago, still languishing under the Mediterranean sun, as well as an ever-increasing poverty rate, and a whole lot of resentment towards the German autocrats who want to keep the country from borrowing their way into a new debt hole.

What's interesting about actually traveling to Greece is analyzing how the crisis actually affects ordinary Greek people's lives. After all, pitying Greeks is a whole lot easier (meaning lazier) than trying to understand all the messy undertones of life there. Greece is not just a country with failing banks and inept politicians; it's also one of the most beautiful places I've ever been. And throughout my admittedly brief trip to Mykonos, an island famed for celebrity sitings and gay beaches, I couldn't figure out whether I should feel good or bad for the Greek people. Yes, yes, the economy is a mess, but life goes on. And life is often beautiful in Greece.

I'm aware of the fact that any armchair anthropology I perform here will be severly limited by the short time I spent in the country, my own romanticism for warm locations and the fact that I was traveling from the cold and soggy city of Berlin, but more than understand the psyche of Greeks I mostly just want to explain to you, in the most emphatic terms, like a travel agent on crack, why you should forget absolutely everything you've read about the supposed looming breakup of the European Union and go to Greece immediately.

After landing in the miniscule Mykonos airport, my boyfriend and I were picked up by Yannis, the propetier of a hotel called Omiros. Yannis was a charming and tan 30-something man with a buoyant air. He asked about our lives in Berlin and we answered somewhat hesitantly, suddenly aware of the politics of being residents of Germany traveling in Greece. But our fears were completely unfounded as Yannis told us his own tails of traveling around Berlin; he'd even stayed in our neighborhood of Kreuzberg. "Lots of gays there," he noted. "Lots of gays here, too." Then Yannis turned around in his chair winked at us from the driver's seat, narrowly missing a motorcyclist. 

As his minivan rounded the tightly cornered roads hugging this mountainous island, the contrast between this vacation destination and Germany began to sink in. The discombobulating experience of jetting over the Mediterranean and landing in a completely separate world in a mere two hours provides an addictive rush. Like smoking a joint, every minute spent in an entirely new place feels like its own discreet bubble in time; the world slows down so that you can soak in every new detail.

Bright white houses and dazzling turqoise waters: the contrast was intoxicating. I think I let out my first real breath in 24 hours when we pulled up to the hotel. It was exactly the way it was portrayed in the pictures on Trip Advisor, and I almost gasped thinking about the fact that I would soon have the exact same view staring back at me as I saw in the pictures. I grabbed Eyal.

"What. The. Fuck," I said, eloquently.

"I KNOW," he responded.

Both of us sat, mouths gaping, as Yannis opened the door. The hotel, for which we were paying an insanely reasonable $95 a night, was perched on a cliff overlooking the Mediterranean. A white catamaran floated by as I entertained dreams of purchasing the entire coastline. The sultry warm air enveloped both of us in a bear hug and I almost died of a happiness heart attack right then and there. I felt like Julia Roberts in Eat Pray Love, minus the Medicine man and delusions of enlightenment.

The days which followed consisted of startlingly little. We woke up, went to the beach, sat on our asses, came home, showered, ate, went out for a drink. On the second night, we found ourselves out on the town with two chatty women from the East Coast. We made our way through the white stucco labirynth shopping district and found a quiet restaurant.

These girls would not shut up about their jobs! You just cannot take America out of Americans. But it was fun to talk trashy TV with equally devoted fans. Additionally, it was fun to turn my relationship into a Jewish stand-up routine with the kind of schticky humor that Germans would never appreciate. I wish I could encapsulate the schtick for you right now, but I don't remember the specifics. Suffice to say, it was funny enough that I felt simultaneously proud and embarrassed before, during and after. Weirdly, these are feelings I associate with a successful comedy routine.

Weirder still, I was super happy all the time. Like, maniacally happy. One thing about being happy is that when it happens, you always want to investigate and find out why. So you narrow down all the usual suspects -- Sun: check. Fantasies that you're in an Abba music video: check. A gaggle of intelligent, funny women: check. A charming, loving, warm boyfriend face to stare at: check, check, check.

Naturally, I wish I could repeat Mykonos over and over again. I wish I was there right now, honestly. I would happily be buried there just to force my family to visit the damn place (is that morbid? DON'T CARE). And now, of course, whenever I read about the Greek crisis and imagine German readers tsking their papers, I think: you (anonymous stranger) obviously haven't been to Mykonos. Because you wouldn't pity anyone who lived there. In fact, they are much happier than you.

And obviously, I'm sure the story is completely different in Athens, and that's a whole 'nother blog post but DAMN: MYKONOS. YOU ARE SO FINE.

Having a Mental Illness is Not the Same As Having a Gun

I'm into having a rousing debate about the state of mental health services in America, but the difference between debating guns and debating treatment for the mentally ill is immense. Guns are literally engineered to kill people. Mentally ill people are people -- with hopes, frustrations and needs. Many have been failed by their community, parents and the government. 

I know I shouldn't be shocked that the way Fox News has jumped into the mental health care debate in the wake of the Sandy Hook shootings shows an utter disregard for mentally ill people as people, and instead characterizes them as ticking time bombs waiting to explode and shoot everyone in their vicinity, but it's endlessly frustrating nonetheless.

After shamefully burying the debate over gun control, Fox is now convinced the way to prevent another Sandy Hook is to institutionalize more people with mental illness.  

The tragedy in Connecticut has reopened a difficult debate over whether states should be allowed to involuntarily commit the mentally ill.  

The trend over the decades has been to release mental health patients, with a number of court cases restricting involuntary commitment. Last week’s deadly rampage at Sandy Hook Elementary School exposed cracks and inconsistencies within the nation’s mental health system. Many say that until those problems are fixed, it’s only a matter of time before another national nightmare unfolds. 

Ironically, a Connecticut mental health bill calling for changes that could have taken someone like shooter Adam Lanza off the streets was defeated earlier this year in the state legislature. 

Fox News then goes on to talk about how little money is given to states to help people with mental disabilities (most of whom are not psycho killers). But it's because of Fox News's RELENTLESS focus on government-expenditures-as-the-root-of-all-evil that makes it harder for states to pass comprehensive mental health reform in the first place.

The answer is not to commit every bipolar schizophrenic person to a mental hospital. We need more money for social workers, therapists and doctors. We need to provide parents of the mentally-ill with more state support. We need well-run hospitals that can provide better care. We need people who can SPOT mental health problems that may lead to violence. And all of this requires raising taxes -- which is exactly what Fox News has been rallying against.

But now that mental illness is seen as a national security threat, Fox News believes money should be thrown to mental hospitals. It's kind of like, "Oh, now that someone blew up the World Trade Center, everyone who's brown needs to submit to a full body check." GUYS, WHAT THE FUCK.

Let's focus just a BIT on what Lanza was able to get his hands on: a GUN. Crazy people can't kill without a weapon. Demonizing the hundreds of thousands of people with mental illness in America and stoking fears of them rising up and killing everyone is just going to cause more pain for innocent people.  

Want to know why so many people suffer from mental illness? Let's look at our society. Let's look at how alienated our young people feel. It's easy to just say "lock up all the depressed / paranoid / schizophrenic people out there!!!" but much harder to take a broader look at the systemic issues in our society which may have lead to the massacre. 

And while we're doing that, let's get rid of guns for god's sake. 

If someone with a mental illness threatens to hurt themselves or others, mental health professionals should know about it. But let's stop demonizing people with mental disabilities, and making sweeping generalizations about them. The only generalizations we can really make are about guns. They're designed to kill. People are infinitely more complex. As we grapple with the immensity of the shootings, let's not jump to conclusions about the mentally ill. 

Nazis, Wedgies and Waterslides -- My Trip to Tropical Islands

Tropical Islands -- AKA"Europe's largest tropical holiday world!" -- is filled with a myriad of things, including Germany's tallest water slide, hot-air balloons, rides (AKA a slight jostling while seated) tipis, Mayan temples (not real), and clouds (totes not real).

Remember that scene in the Truman Show when Jim Carrey's character opened a small door in a wall painted with clouds? Well, spend a day at Tropical Island and eventually you'll want to pull a Jim Carrey and escape its fake, plastic world, too.

Why did I feel like I was in a Russian commercial for Disneyland? And how many Pina Coladas would I have to drink before it felt fun?

Like most attractions in Germany (even heavily-marketed family-friendly vacation destinations, apparently), Tropical Islands has a bloody history. The area surrounding the park was first used by the Nazis as an airfield, then taken over by the Red Army as a training ground for fighter planes. 10 years after the reunification of Germany, a company called Cargolifter AG decided to use the site to create world's largest airship hanger.

Construction began in 2000 on what would become the world's largest building (by volume). 360 meters long, 210 meters wide and 107 meters high, the hanger was large enough to contain the Eiffel Tower. But apparently the market for Zeppelins was not enough to sustain Cargolifter, and the company went bankrupt soon after the building was completed. Seizing the opportunity to own such an enormous building, a Malaysian company called Tanjong installed the world's largest tropical indoor resort inside of it because really, why the fuck not?

(Pic from Lightstalkers.org)

But no matter how hard you try to keep your eyes below tree line at Tropical Island, you can never quite forget you're inside a giant hanger. The scenery comes close, but not quite close enough, to add up to something greater than the sum of its parts; a strawberry daiquiri might help, but they're 8 euros. A more convincing wall of clouds might also help, but that would cost 5,000 more euros, and you're basically next door to Poland so stop complaining (no offense, Poland).

After spending about an hour trying to find a comfortable way of "enjoying" the fake beach, my boyfriend and I gave up and made our way to the water slides.

I was climbing up the stairs to the water slide when I decided I wanted to climb down them instead so I could see Eyal's face as he emerged from the tallest water slide of them all. Called simply "Water Slide A," it was a covered blue slide which curved around the structure like a snake. It was so fast that when someone slid down it, the entire staircase shook.

I suddenly really wanted to see Eyal's face after experiencing that kind of insanity, so I switched directions and walked down the stairs, clutching the railings. But the stairs were covered with water. That's when I lost control of my feet and, like an old lady, slid down a dozen wet, steel stairs until I hit my knee on a pole. I tried to get up but my leg was numb and tingly, like a prosthesis. I watched helplessly as a thin stream of blood weaved its way down my kneecap, through the metal stairs and (probably) on to someone's head.

The rest of the day was spent clutching my leg, limping, and enduring the sting of chlorine to gain access to the pools. I'm a loser.

But still, I can say this: tropical Islands is weeeeeird. And oddly unsatisfying.

An entire day could be spent searching for a convincing illusion of paradise. Walking through the park's "rainforest" was kind of like watching a film and constantly seeing the boom mics above the actors or McDonald's golden arches peeking through a studio set supposed to look like the desert: no matter where you looked, you could see not only the beautiful lush greenery but also the ugly airport hanger behind it.

The German design team tried to take their cues from Walt Disney, but it's hard to create multiple themed lands on a limited budget so you see lots of symbolism jutting up against each other; one area that's themed like a beach side bar sits adjacent to a shack house made of sheet metal. Poverty chic meets island resort. Perhaps they're aiming for some commentary on globalization? It's hard to tell.

Next time I want to spend 10 hours in an artificial universe with a bunch of people I don't know, I'll just watch TV.

I'm Back, Bitches!

After nearly a year hiatus, I'm entering back into Blogger mode to tell jokes to myself, entertain Internet strangers and try to turn tragic events into comedic gold. I hope you'll ignore the rest of the web and listen to me a few minutes a day.

When we left off, my ass had just landed in Berlin (on the Alexanderplatz TV tower to be exact [I died and my ghost is now speaking through me]) and I was musing about the charming cultural differences between Deutschland and my native Seattle. "Germans are so sophisticated and shiny!" I think I wrote. How embarrassing. There will be no more generalities on this blog. I will no longer speak in awe of "Europe," that hot mess, and will instead try to speak truthfully about my experiences here since, you know, I've now been living here for two years. I should know some stuff by now ( I hope).

I've thought a lot about what I want this blog to be (over the past five minutes) and I think I would like it to clearly articulate the experience of being an American Generation Xer (or Yer, or whatever the hell all us broke kids are called) who skipped out of town to live in a city where poverty is seen as slightly less god awful, and slightly more romantic. Berlin, after all, is a proudly thrifty city (I'm currently sitting on Ikrappa furniture. Berlin would literally not exist without cheap Swedish crap).

So guten tag! Hallo! Ach so, genau and Tschuss! Hallo fellow broke Americans. Should you move to Berlin, too? I DON'T KNOW. Read this blog as we explore what it's like to be a poor European artiste (who still religiously watches American TV shows online). What is it like to live on cheap European food and fart in chic European yoga studios after eating such food? How romantic is it to take your lover to a big beautiful European lake and then realize it was where Hitler ordered all the Jews to go and die? How can you irrigate your nasal passages during the dark and dreary Berlin winter? ALL WILL BE REVEALED.