A while ago, Cosima, who normally lives in Hong Kong but occasionally visits her family in Berlin, took the Berlin subway to ride from the southeast of the city to the northwest. The ride takes about an hour, changing lines isn’t necessary, and usually it’s painfully boring when your on your own.
I don’t know about you, but I always have a back up book in my bag for situations like this. Only this time, I couldn’t find it. While rummaging through my bag, someone with the local tabloid newspaper “BZ” entered the train and sat down across from me. I don’t usually buy this crappy newspaper to protect my intellectual image, but hey!, if you can read it for free. Unfortunately, the newspaper left with his owner half way into my ride and I had to look for other diversions.
People watching was the only thing left to do. Their was an old lady with a bag full of groceries, three Turkish boys playing cool for a teenage girl playing even cooler, and a man with a dog the size of a calf. At the next train station, I hungrily looked outside for more. No one looked particularly interesting, until I saw a tall woman with long black hair in a trench coat standing very close to the train.
Why was she standing there, why was she not getting on the train? I got my answer, when the train started to move again. She turned around, and turned out to be a man. He smiled seductively, opened his trench coat and revealed a red and black lace corset, looking like the guy from the Rocky Horror Picture Show, only not as scary. He threw is head back, shaking his long wig hair, laughing. On a boring weekday evening, he was clearly having fun.
Now, I learned several things from this experience:
-on a good day, taking the subway is vastly more interesting than taking the car
-Berlin is always good for a surprise
-people exposing themselves, have fun doing so
With that in mind I am starting this blog.
tags: Berlin, First Post