On Monday I went with Janina to a practice space for bands that was located in the very far east reaches of Berlin. The building had a real 80’s Robocop vibe from the outside. A black nameless box. A battery charger. We walked inside and it was a labyrinth of hallways and sounds that ranged from okay to awful. Janina was getting a bass lesson from a friend in his practice space which was not so different from the ones I have been in in America. One of the walls is covered in gear, (more big black boxes.) There were cords scattered about everywhere, a couch where I decided to do some homework and a analog recording set up on the other side of the room. After she finished her lesson we all played together. In order to be jamming on the same embarrassment level, each one of us played the instrument we’re least comfortable with. It was really fun and as Janina pointed out some ‘good’ sounds were actually made from time to time. We had to call it quits when this skinny older metal guy came in to record vocals with Toby, the person who’s space it was.

Janina and I wandered over to her friend Adam’s ‘flat’ which was set up in one of the practice rooms. When he opened the door the first thing I saw on my right was his bed, then a little hallway in front of me. I walked on expecting the hallway would lead into a room as it turned left but it just dead ended right their and I realized his flat was just an L-shaped hallway with a cubby just big enough to fit a bed. Adam is a very nice, short and stocky boy who just moved to Berlin recently from Edinburgh, Scotland. Janina had told me he was bragging to her about his cooking and said he would prove it by making us dinner. Adam began the preparations by taking us to his ‘private bathroom’ to wash the dishes, which ended up being the old women’s bathroom with a lock on it and a shower hose installed for the two guys who decided to pay 20 euros a month to live in L-shaped hallway rooms. It smelled awful but I really liked how proud of it he was. He even mentioned that he brought his mom there to show her all the facilities. We went back to his flat and he made us poor man’s pesto made of oil, garlic, peanuts, and arugula and some salt. We had it with Rotini pasta. It was not so bad tasting, actually kind of good but I felt like I had placed a bag of sand in my stomach afterwards and so shared with them the great American term: Gut Bomb. Realizing it was going to take an hour to commute back home Janina and I said our goodbyes and talked all the way until we had to change U-bahns, missing a couple of transfers in the process.