Got some Begrüßungsgeld?

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Here I am now. Back in snowy then rainy, rainy then snowy Berlin. It does feel like coming home, but I came back even more a marginal man than I was before.

It may be a Berlin/North German thing, but people here are so rude. Incredibly impolite. On my second day back I went swimming at a leisure centre. When I and another woman wanted to enter the pool, the pool attendant said that we have to swim in the inner lanes because there are courses in the outer ones. I just said “ok”. What else could I say? I have not become English enough to say thank you. But the woman next to me said what proper Berliners say to advice by authorities: “We can see that on our own!” I’m sure she also said that on the 9^th November 1989 when the Wall came down and someone told her excitedly passing her on the street that the wall is gone: “I can see that myself! Go get your Begrüßungsgeld!”

Yes, it’s a harsh world in East Berlin leisure centres. The woman also spoke for me. Which annoyed me. But I have become English enough to avoid an argument.

I have been moaning a bit about London’s public transport. But now the Berlin transport confuses me. I don’t get off at the right stops anymore. I leave the tram too late and go in the wrong direction. Plus, I’m even confused by the houses my friends live in. Every house looks the same. And no-one lives in prefabricated buildings. It is me. I got lost. My mind is confused. It’s the lack of crumpets with salted butter, I guess.

I also miss crazy women on the bus. On my last bus ride in London, there was an old woman with a perfect witch nose and wearing an Eastern European-type shawl on her head. I’m sure she had just jumped out of a fairytale. She was singing songs that sounded a bit Jewish, but the language was not Hebrew or Yiddish. It sounded more like a made up children’s language. Maybe it was Welsh. There was a crescendo in every chorus she sang and ended in yelling, which sounded a bit like Native American whooping. I enjoyed it very much.

My last bus ride was odd. But perfect in its weirdness. It was a London salute. Just for me.

From being a borrower back to ungültig

Yes, I'm an outlaw in Berlin now. Travelwise.

This is what I did the last months (even got an ID for that): Borrower Trailer

The crazy woman bus driver connection

There is definitely something going on here.

I was on the bus (48) from London Bridge and enjoying a great bus ride upstairs in the front row with nothing else beside me except a pie from Borough Market. Ok, there was a crazy woman, too, on the other side, but she will play a role later in this post.

Whilst enjoying the smell of my steak and kidney pie, I watched London passing by and got sentimental. Happens often these days when I’m on the bus. I’m glad that I stopped listening to music on public transport, otherwise I would have cried during a sentimental song. Well, probably not. I don’t really have sentimental songs on my almost broken phone. Except a reminiscence of ‘Pieces of me’ by Britney Spears. Britney Spears does make me sad. What she went through. Everybody wants a piece of her. So she had to take Crystal Meth and shave her hair off. Poor girl. Or woman, or something in-between. (Remember the line of one song of her ‘I’m not a girl, not yet a woman’?) It’s all in the music, baby.

We slowly got into Hackney and I was starting to think about what I want to do when I’m home. But then, here enters crazy woman number 1 into the story (the aforementioned crazy woman is number 2), the bus didn’t move again. We were just starting off from Hackney Town Hall and stopped again at Hackney Empire (yes, we drove approx. 2 metres). I wasn’t sure on my throne in the first row what was happening downstairs with the ordinary-short-period-bus-drive-passengers. But I could see that car drivers and passers-by were looking at our bus. I heard some shouting from the bus driver and crazy woman number 1. I waited for ten minutes and watched how much attention my bus got. But I was too curious, so I went downstairs. Crazy woman number 2 followed me. She was whispering and rubbing her hands all the time, that’s why I labelled her as crazy.

Downstairs I could see that crazy woman number 1 was standing in front of the bus and not letting us drive. She was crying and shouting with an evil face. Apparently, as I understood from the shouts between bus driver and crazy woman number 1, the bus driver oversaw crazy woman number 1 after he let one woman on board. Crazy woman number 1 wanted that the other woman to get off the bus. But the woman was a bit scared. So was the bus driver. Nobody was allowed to leave the bus. The bus driver called the police. We were waiting and crazy woman number 2 entered the stage by getting, well, mad. She stood at the window front and shouted a lot of fun insults. My favourite sentence was “I’m gonna knock you off ”. She got a really red face and was a bit exhausted after screaming for five minutes, so she sat down and was quiet. Crazy woman number 1 tried every door to get in and the bus driver was trying to make sure that the automatic doors wouldn't open. But he failed.

Crazy woman number 1 entered the bus. Without swiping her Oyster Card. She stood there by the bus driver, murmuring about this injustice in the world. When a woman with her children wanted to enter the bus, because the door was still open, she shouted: “Yes, always using children as excuse!” The woman and her children got off again.

An old Jamaican man with a lot of black-yellow-green (oh, Hackney) necklaces looked at me and said: “I can’t stand this everyday-craziness any more”. Neither can I. I slipped past crazy woman number 1 and got off the bus.