So the lady is away in Washington, DC for a month. Its been about a week so far that's she has been away and its definitely different.
Last night I went to play games in Volkspark Schoeneberg with some friends that I've met through her over the past year or two. Its a bit of a trip from my 'hood and it stands in the shadows the Rathaus Schoneberg, where Kennedy gave his 'Ich bin ein Berliner' speech.
The ride was complicated. Berlin is so big and I've been holing up in my little corner of Kreuzberg for most of the summer so far. That makes it tough to navigate myself toward other parts of the city.
In the end I made it there alright, but the sun was already disappearing behind buildings and trees. It's sad to see the summer days getting shorter again. Well, not sad, because it has to happen and I'm used to it happening every year. Its just somehow a shock. One gets so used to the evenings running on forever that being in a park until 10 with the sky still bright becomes a normal thing.
Alas as we made it to the end of our first game of Carcassonne (named after this city in France) we had to use a bike headlight to illuminate things. Christopher had bought some delicious looking pizza - and lots of it - from a place called Dolce right around the corner. It looked great and I was hungry and would have eaten it but for the fact that it was covered in white flecked slices of cured meat. Not the first meat I would choose to dive into after almost 9 years of vegetarianism.
After a trip to Moritz's apartment for a rather frustrating game of Ligretto (I did terribly and was struck with extreme hiccups throughout), I got new directions and happily made my way back to good ol' Kreuzberg.
On Bergmannstraße, I hear my name called 'a-Wolf-a.' I recognized that voice for the only person it could be long to, Lorenzo from sprachschule. He's a very interesting fellow - an academic teaching and studying comparative literature. His English is mildly broken, yet sometiems I feel he's more lucid and communicative than I am. It's an odd thing to realize.
I stayed out with Lorenzo and Ana Maria for another hour or two at Melitta Sundstrom on Mehringdamm.
We spoke of naivete and cynicism and Franco and Berlusconi and Barack Obama and landing on the Moon. All in all a very gratifying set of subjects for a Spaniard an Italian and an American to discuss at 2am on a weekday.
Now its Friday and who's knows what will happen tonight.
