Quiet Moments

Berlin is a cafe city. Every few storefronts, it seems, is a wee place to get coffee to go, maybe a table or two inside as well, a bench or an armchair or a long table with a couple of chairs outside. And the coffee, by and large, is zehr gut. Fucking great, quite frankly, and it's one of the things I'm sad to leave behind.

Unless Ireland is radically different from England and Scotland, they can't do coffee for shit. Booze, yes. Tea, yes. Coffee. Well, I don't think I had a decent cup of coffee on either trip I've taken to the UK.

Not long left here, in my new urban heart-throb. An hour or so until we head for the airport, and we're taking it easy. Shelley's sitting in the front-window sun of a cafe around the corner from what was our apartment. Me and my hot laptop a couple tables back in the shade.

Reading, writing, watching the tree fluff drift by in the warm breeze. Drinking tea and cafe crema. Watching people walk and bike by. Watching people watch Shelley reading in the front window.

Last night was reasonably quiet too, though when we were heading home around 12:30, the city was starting to erupt around us. For all the public beer drinking, it was the first night we'd seen public drunkenness. We were heading home after a big Indo-mix dinner and a couple of stiff mojitos, some Balkan music at the Cake Club, where we stewed in the secondhand smoke and did some cute girl watching.

That is another thing I will miss about Berlin. It's a queer queer city – 500,000 strong, according to one guide book or another. We've seen dykes everywhere, holding hands, kissing, fiddling with each other's clothes, checking us out. Though as per usual, most of the gay stuff is gay boy stuff, there seems to be a lesbian thing on somewhere most nights.

On the U-Bahn home a couple days ago, Shelley and I saw the girls with the lips. I noticed the more girly one first, since I do love a tough femme, and then swung my eyes to her paramour. Her paramour was beguilingly androgynous. Big lips, long face, hollow cheeks, olive skin, prominent dark eyes, strong jaw, pointed chin. Strange looking, bit by bit. Stunning over all.

Yesterday we shopped up a storm in our neighbourhood, Prenzlauer Berg, then headed back over for another afternoon in Kreuzberg. We got off the U-Bahn, went 'round the roundabout, walked up to Orienstrasse and hung a left. Banged nearly straight into the girls from the U-Bahn.

We smiled, they smiled. We walked our opposite ways.

Every town is a small town soon enough.