tuesday had possibilities ...

hello jello. i am awake at 6-something am because i need to pack for my flight to copenhagen at 9 am this morning. so am i packing? well smarty-pantses, i finished packing. i have one carry-on too many. i'm flying on sterling, a danish budget airline. i realize now that i should have just booked flights on well-known airlines since with my over-luggage, they'll probably make me give them 6 litres of blood to keep the weight of the plane down so they can accommodate my extra baggage. or they will just ask me to part with my much coveted euros. oh coloured money again.

i had a lot to do today. hanging around is definitely my speed, but there also are a few things i did want to check out. so i started off by going to an amazing store (yes, i realize that many of my activities involve shopping. & yes, i live in nyc, where all and sundry can be bought. but the sheer bliss of saying "oh this. i got it in berlin" makes me both shallow and very happy.) i go to the most amazing store in berlin, and possibly all of germany: knopf paul. this is a store run by a man named paul. this store sells only buttons. but oh those buttons. breathtaking buttons. buttons made of any natural and man-made object you can find. did buttons ever seem so complex. i spent too much money here, buying buttons. there is, as a side note, a very cool store in toronto on west queen west that sells only ribbon. i am obsessed with ribbon and with buttons. i especially like to combine them in an orgy of button-ribbon. so knopf paul blew my mind. and paul stole my heart. i cannot express to you how deliriously happy this store made me. my eyes mist up just thinking about how much i will miss it when i get back to nyc. even if i found a buttons-only store in nyc (which i probably could) it will not be knopf paul. and that's more than a little sad.

my next stop was another shopping experience: KaDeWe. which purports to be the largest department store in europe. i believe it. now this place i had to leave quickly before i started selling my organs to buy the beautiful things. i wisely stayed away from their button section. but the most amazing thing about this store. well there are two. one is the array of stationary items. as many of you know, i am mad about stationary. i practically collect it. and kate's paperie in both victoria & ottawa has been a place of solace, reflection and (dare i say it) worship for me. the second thing that rocks about this place above any other department store is the 6th floor. what is there, you ask? well, imagine a place where every gourmet food you could possibly conceive of is available, both for on the spot eating and purchase for wild-pig-faced consumption later. i went crazy here. so crazy that i actually lost my shopping bag with stuff i had bought on other floors. i ran around looking for my bag, hitting all my stops. finally someone told me that there was a lost & found at customer service. i went there after the woman at the most amazing CHOCOLATE counter told me she saw that i left my bag there and gave it to customer service. i ran skipping to customer service. there was my bag. i picked up my bag of many euros and walked up to lingerie. oh actually i went there before i went to the 6th floor. gotta say, the lingerie floor was lacking. nyc department stores have better. but there is amazing lingerie in europe. so eventually i will find something to wear on my honeymoon, should there be one.

next stop was cultural. see, i can be classy too. the photographie museum rocked. there was an awesome exhibit of helmut newton. seriously awesome. there was also as part of the same exhibition some amazing photographs by larry clark and ralph gibson. okay, not much to say about this. you had to be there, to see some of the most fabu nudes i have ever seen. but i have not seen many.

then i went all luxe on my ass. well on my back anyway. i had booked an appointment at the spa at the hyatt hotel for a backfacial and a deep-tissue massage. oh heavenly bliss. i wanted to take four showers there because the water pressure was really strong. it practically had kickback. as many know, the shower pressure in my apartment is shite. my apartment in brooklyn. the shower pressure at M.D.'s apartment was also nothing to write about. which is why i didn't. well i just did. anyway.

after the spa, i walked over to the memorial for the murdered jews of europe. this was quite a remarkable place. upon first blush, it just looks like a bunch of concrete rectangles of different heights standing in a grid. but the beauty is in the engagement with the memorial. walking around it was a reflective experience and peaceful. it felt like walking through a graveyard of possibilities, of lives that had meaning, were important but incomplete. cut down. the other thing that i really liked about the memorial was that people were really engaging with it. many people were walking through the memorial. many germans. and because it is accessible 24 hours a day, everyday there was something ordinary and extraordinary about it.

oh i went also to brandenberg gate which was under major construction (renovation?). i took a picture of the top because, well, the rest of it had cranes behind it. and men in hard hats. i also took a picture of the reichstag from far away. i was hoping to run into chancellor merkel so i could talk to her about nicolas sarkozy and what she thinks is going on between germany & france. but no such luck.

[i want to add here that i have also hit up a bunch of bookstores, practically every one i walk past. as an interesting side-side note: does anyone from g.p. french 30 remember those books we read about le petit nicolas. well, there is a german version - der kleiner nicolas (something like that). i freaked out with joy and bought the two they had in stock.]

so the next part of my day had the real possibility. there was a cool-sounding cafe/restaurant that my guidebook said was a good place to get dinner. i found it (it was a bit off the beaten path) and might i add that i found it without getting lost. radical. it is on this main street, kurfurfenmeisterbergen strasse (or something like that). so i went in and ordered way too much food because i was starving (eyes bigger than stomach or something). anyway my waiter was SUPER CUTE. and SUPER NICE. i was flirting with him like mad. and not like the grade 5 flirting of punching him in the arm and threatening noogies. i mean the 31 y.o. sophisticated world traveler flirting (i.e., smiling alot and basically giving him shy glances. i have come a long way.) anyway, we totally hit it off. oh yeah the food was awesome too. and he came over to tell me his shift was ending. so we chatted a bit about my visit. i told him that i was just playing it by ear. (this was all in english because my german is not THAT good.) i started off in german (and btw germans are really great about people trying to speak german, at least berlin-people. very encouraging and do not correct in a mean way (hello paris. wake up.)) so he said, well you need a guide. what are you doing tomorrow. i said well i'm leaving on thursday so i think i will just be doing very little tomorrow. i said i have a guidebook. it's pretty good. he said, no you need a tour guide. i said in my coquettish voice, are you offering. and he smiled his gorgeous smile and said yes. so we made a plan to meet up wednesday at 1:30 near the kottbusser tor u-bahn station, where i could swear he said there was a water fountain (be tuned in for wednesday to hear about this water fountain). so we exchanged cards to have one another's email addresses. (i have to say i'm kind of running out of business cards. i brought them to pass out at the hague, begging for cool international law type contacts, but i've been basically throwing them at everyone who looks halfway decent. argh.) he smiled his irresistable smile. and on the way home i thought about how he could definitely get to second base with me.

HUGE GRIN home.

oh, and before i forget. that korfenforfenbergenstrasse i walked down (where the restaurant is) turned into prostitute alley by 10:30 when i left cafe einstein. seriously. prostitutes of various degrees of mild-fetish. i was amazed and curious. so what did i do? of course, i chatted with them. because i will chat with anyone. except for people who smell really bad (because i have extrasensitive olfactory skillz which is a curse if you live in nyc (at least in the summertime - i can actually tell (9 times out of 10) how many layers of urine there are in random spots.) so i talked to them and they were willing to chat. at least some of them. but then i realized that i was not helping them attract clients, so i decided to leave. i said be safe and call me when you are in nyc. here's my card. okay, i didn't give them my card. but i would have.