puking on yuppies

shit party last night full of trendy Berlin people. X and i had saved up a few euros to get loaded and he suggested we try and pull some yuppie girls so when we heard blasting music from a street-level residential apartment somewhere around Rigaerstrasse with a treacherous staircase made of pallets leading to a window, we gave it a knock. you know, one of those? it seems a staple in the Berlin party scene. no flyer, no entrance, no fee, just a window that opens with the right conviction or a short enough skirt. it' a sight to behold: girls - exaggerating their class with the pre-party kerfuffle - extending lashes, smoothing skin, hiding blemishes, fake smells and other effects of pamper paraphernalia - losing their glamour in the act of trying to climb ice-covered, self-made steps in high heels and a handbag. the many minor injuries of birds on stilts make me feel that maybe the world isn't such a sad place after all (if it's not already been made clear, im not a fan of high heels. trainers and boots all the way). anyway, to the slow and drunken entry and the swift and sober exit... either because of having toxin levels in my blood that could kill a small walrus, or because of the sea sickness i experience when drowning in mediocrity feigning as an elite, i realised i was going puke, only minutes after a staggering arrival. early enough, however, to make it to the bar where i made a lot of expensive clothes very cheap with my internal chemicals, fresh with the scent of the doner kebab i had eaten 20 minutes previously. the irony of it is that it was not so much my vomit that caused so much offence, as my ill-matched dress code. indeed, being a late-comer to the party, there was no shortage of poisoned bloodstreams or jolting guts; sparkling arms clutching grotty toilet rims like they're the only objects retaining their gravity. the disgust in people's faces as i pumped my unfinished digestion onto the bar, was at the way i was fashioned. no hairstyle to speak of. ripped jeans. toes sticking out of corroded trainers. dirty coat. i must have stuck out like the pope's morning glory. well, the scene i misdirected could have ended a lot worse were it not saved a few moments post-spew, by the cycling blue lights of the cops and their siren accomplices, which was more reason for the surrounding mess to be in a state of panic than my being sick on surfaces of beer-bartering-services, and so i was able to make an escape without having to face fists. and to think, i have the cops to thank? ...but alas, i conjugate too much, and the sentences in Germany are so very very long.

Leiden to Berlin

let's skip my time in Leiden, shall we? or perhaps it can be cut to: a brief trip back to normality. ...in fact no, let's not cut it to that, because it would mean the omission of having met Eve, with whom i fell in love, in the space of a few hours (a new record). to draw a comparison between us, i'll cut it short and sweet. this girl is fucking deadly. i could see the fires of the motherfucking apocalypse burning in her eyes, and i mean that in the best possible way. lips hotter than hiroshima. attraction is a difficult thing to describe, but, in stark contrast to the last few months, the pheromones were going mad. One of the things that sucks about moving around is you never have the time to build a substantial rapport, which makes getting laid, or even following up on moments of fancy, a difficult task unless you're a real quick mover, which i'm not. I've always been more of a stand around and look pretty and hopefully some confident girl will ask you to come back to their with them kind of guy. the whole game and chase of it alienates me as i really struggle to persist unless there's clear and overwhelming positive feedback coming my way. In any case, the two nights i saw Eve was not enough to seal any deals, which was annoying as there was definitely chemistry there. Still, she stuck in my head for ages after. Funny how that can happen with people you barely know. Years later I got closure on this lovelust when Melissa visited me one time in London and Eve was also in town and we went for a meal together. In the passing years, Melissa had become a real hottie and Eve had become a married woman with the features and disposition to prove it. no longer did the fires of the apocalypse burn in her eyes. now it was more like a swamp of resignation in the irises. Still, her bloke is loaded, so ...yeah. To bring us to the last few days of Holland, i hitched (with some train hopping towards the end) to Berlin with a guy who turned out to be so annoying that i tried to trick him into getting on the wrong train and sending him miles away. Incidentally he was Eve's ex, not that this had any bearing on anything. 

I'd met Robert at a party and he was so enamoured with the lifestyle that he demanded i take him to Berlin with him. He had seemed an exciting guy at first with a sort of puppy-like lust for life which was endearing. Then i spent a night at his place and he made me watch The Secret. If you're not familiar with this BS it's a sort of culty new-age self-help book and film that postulates that you can manifest whatever you want by focusing on it in your mind with the rules of attraction. This is supposedly "the secret" of all successful people. Yeah, exactly, you've probably heard some version of this before. At its most benign, it's saying if you obsess over a car you want you're eventually more likely to get that car than if you're not obsessing over it. At its most pernicious, it blames cancer victims for having "manifested" the disease due to negative thoughts; that actually, they unconsciously want to attract cancer. Yeah, i know, it's fucked up. There's a whole lexicon of terms associated with it and it makes it seem like you just need to be super positive and then positive things will come to you, which anyone who knows me will attest, is complete anathema to my own sort of positive-nihilism/cynical-realism perspective. Anyway, i make an attempt at laying out of Robert why this is all bullshit and just a way for privileged people for whom life goes well to feel really great about themselves and blame individuals for their socio-economic predicament ("just chose to stop being poor, man!". sadly this is a legit call from these types of people). In any case, Robert is making the claim that he had wanted to go travelling and that he had manifested me so this was proof in itself. I started having doubts about bringing this guy to Berlin but whatever. He gave me some Timberland boots which i proceeded to loose within a few weeks, but hey, he knew how to butter up a squatting traveller. I should have taken his brother's word on the matter, which was that Robert was a fucking idiot. His brother seemed pretty cool actually.

So we start hitching and it starts off ok using Hitchbase (god bless you) as a source for the best catch out point. I don't speak dutch so i'm trying to work through Robert to make sure the drivers know they have to let us out on petrol stations that are directly on the motorway. This is a big deal in hitch-hiking. The idea that you just stick out your thumb is kinda bogus. You can do that but it's going to be a slow ride. You want to be at one of those big petrol stations where there are loads of cars coming through and they're going long distance not just little journeys of a few 10s of miles. If you get taken off the motorway all that's going to happen is you're going to spend hours trying to get back on it.

The first couple of rides go well and we're dropped at this big station but to my dissatisfaction i see there's already some hitchers there and they're a boy and a girl, which is better than the boy-boy combo of Robert and myself. Ideal is girl-girl, you'll get a ride fast, boy-girl is ok, but boy-boy can be a bit tough, you know? a lot of lone women will be turned off by that, which of course i understand. if you've got more people with you it's probably best to split up. in fact, sometimes it's easier to split up even if you're only 2. anyway, i chat a bit with this couple and they're basically going exactly the same way so double fuckery; we'll basically have to watch their ride go first and then we'll have to start asking around in earnest. so we see this couple getting a lift after about 20 minutes and we get our mission on approaching people getting out of their cars or coming towards the little shop like "hey sorry do you speak a bit of english im trying to get to berlin and i'm looking if anyone can pick me up and take me part of the way, are you heading that way?" or something like that. i'm particularly looking for dudes with long hair, like ex-hippies, people with weird shit on their cars, sympathetic mothers, bored business people who commute long distance, those sort of demographics. Often people dont quite get what you're asking, so i might stick out a thumb as i'm talking to them to help them get the picture. people dont hitch so often any more but im trying to give them a box they can put me in as quickly as possible like "oh, hitching, i get it, sorry no". it's interesting to see how people's brains work. Some people are like "sure, yeah, what's this?": they're willing before they even know what you're asking. Others are really guarded and are clearly weighing up their kind heartedness with the inherent risks of going along with the requests of strangers. Being young and unassuming helps in such circumstances and i usually shave before hitching to lean on that parental, baby-face sympathy. Eventually some guy picks us up and he drives for about hour over as the light dies.

He's driving super fast and chatting the usual shit, about his car, about sports, a bit of racist commentary thrown in. Robert has no tact and just starts waffling back, like he has no fucking idea how to guide a conversation, like asking random questions that piss the driver off. I try to bring the conversation back to where the next petrol station is. there's nothing worse than seeing one coming up and you start shitting yourself like damn is that the last one before this person veers off onto their own exit? so it gets a bit tense. the guy assures me there's a petrol station. 20 minutes later he's taking an exit. No petrol station in sight. i enquire but he's like no no there is one, but i have the experience to know that this is the beginning of some bullshit and we have just started losing sight of the plan. after what feels like miles and miles he drops us off at this petrol station in the middle of nowhere. It's like 2 pumps, a burger king and a tiny shop. i look around and there's no light on the horizon at all. i know this is going to be shit but Robert is full of beans trying to tell me this is great and exciting and i shouldn't be a problem thinker and he's going to waltz into the burger king and the first person he asks is going to be going directly to Berlin. i raise the point that people going to Berlin are really unlikely to be hanging out in the middle of nowhere off the motorway. Turns out i was right. I walk into the little store - it's a local convenience kind of arrangement, a few truck driver types sitting there with brews watching a tiny TV. I walk in with my mange-cut hair chopped off in random places and weird clothes and all members of the room just kind of shift slightly to glance at me, look me up and down, sort of tut to themselves and get back to their newspapers. I start my spiel about rides to Berlin trying to glean some info on where we are, what direction might take us back to the motorway and the like. I don't even get an audible response. The shop owner just shrugs with as little effort as possible, his lips curling slightly. I get it. fuck off kid.

Robert and I do our best asking every new guest at the petrol stations and BK to take us further to Berlin but honestly it's not much more than one car an hour. We must have been there from about 5pm to 10pm. I eventually go back into the convenience store kinda desperate, knowing it's going to close soon and the shopkeeper actually shows the tiniest bit of sympathy in his eyebrows. He can't believe we're still there and realises we're pretty fucked, out in the middle of nowhere not knowing what we're doing. He kinda sighs and pulls out an A-Z and basically says that there is a place (i can't even remember what city any more) we can walk to that has a train station. It's 16 miles away but there's a path that goes there. This seems like a long shot, but at least it's a shot. I memorise the map i've just been shown and come back out of the store with a bit of hope. Robert acts like this is some kind of law of attraction moment. I'm too weary to argue. We start off on our journey and it turns out this little path that we eventually find is actually a pretty clear cycle path. Brilliant, we have a route.

Along the path our spirits start to pick up. I'd bought some beers at the store for the journey and we stopped to sit under a bridge where a stream had frozen over to roll spliffs on the ice. Back on the road i thought, ok, this is good. We can eventually get to the city and hop a train to Berlin. We weren't even that far. It might have been Magdeburg, i'm not sure, but we were only a 100-200 miles away, i remember that much. We smoked up and walked along this winding but flat and clear path, through various bits of countryside and business parks where we stopped for a photo shoot with a giant chair promoting a furniture store. It was built maybe to a scale of 10X. It took me ages to climb the leg with Robert's help, standing on his back and then his shoulders. Eventually i made it to the plateau of the seat, where i perched like a miniature person with my legs dangling freely with metres of space below me. Again, that photo was lost or else i'd have included it.

We eventually got to the city in the early hours of the morning. We had about an hour to wait for the next train to Berlin so we dozed for a bit before taking on the next part of the journey. It felt like success to have made it to safety but we weren't home yet and we had a whole different obstacle to navigate: train hopping. I'd hopped a few trains before and there are a number of different strategies but Robert was really going for it again with the rules of attraction. We just had to visualise ourselves not getting kicked off and the ticket fucker would unconsciously pick up on this and not ask for our ticket or else let us continue etc. At this point i was so pissed off with all the drivel about manifestation that i yielded, like, ok Robert, let's do this your way, let's actually try this fantastical idea. I even committed internally to myself to give this a real chance, to really try to wish the best outcome upon us.

We boarded the train and for about half an hour i sat there with my eyes closed, imagining the ticket fucker coming and passing us by like Jedi fucking mind tricks. i kept repeating in my head "pass us by. pass us by". I was basically meditating on this visualisation over and over again, replaying different ways we would be impervious to fate when as has happened so many time, i hear the voice "Bitte ihre Fahrkarten". I opened my eyes slightly to see the female ticket fucker standing a few metres away. This as it. I closed my eyes and visualised even harder, seeing her walk past us as if sleepwalking. This, of course, did not happen. I realised i hadn't even thought of anything smart to say when she demanded to see our tickets and Robert didn't have any ideas either. I resorted to kind of shrugging and admitting that we didn't have any. All in all it was one of the softer times i've ever been kicked off a train. I think there was a maternal sympathy there again and it was the first train of the day so she probably surmised that we had been on our way for some time and were not both simultaneously bunking the train on our way to work. We were let our at the next station. To be honest we'd already covered a fair bit of ground. In the aforementioned "number of strategies", this is the least advanced. It comprises simply not doing anything and getting kicked off several times along your journey, but this is usually where people start out coz they dont know any better. Often you'll incur fines but as you're traveling internationally it doesn't really matter that much. You just give them some bullshit details, say you don't have any ID or if they say they're gonna call the cops if you dont produce Id you can show them but then give them a bogus address. Rarely will this come back to bite you as it involves a private company contacting their country's police, who have to contact your country's police and then chasing you down to pay the fine. some companies take this sort of stuff more seriously than others. One friend of mine pointed out that they had ridden the train black from Barcelona all the way to Estonia and accumulated only 2 fines, which they duly paid because when combined still only came to a fraction of the cost of the tickets that would have gotten them there legitimately. Do not quote me on any of this. The brutal reality is that you will learn through the pain of your mistakes and this gives you the knowledge how not to have such problems in future.

Another method is what i now suggested to Robert, my voice now alive with the fire of ifuckingtoldyouso. "i told you the airy fairy pray for everything to work out system was a pile shit! Now we try my method which is constant vigilance!". i laid out that we would spend the rest of the journey in the interstitial zone between carriages. Dutch and German trains often come in double-decker varieties mean there are seats both upstairs and downstairs. This means that as the ticket fucker comes down the train, if you spot them early enough, you can position yourself such that you can loop-the-loop them as they go up or down, you go the other way and loop round to the section they have already checked. Refer to the visual aid below for further clarification. Needless to say, constant vigilance and actually understanding how the system worked proved more effective that clicking our heels three times and saying there's no place like home.

By the time i got home I was fucking wasted having been drinking the whole way and with no sleep the night before. It was bright at Berlin Haupbahnhof and once again i was the mess zig-zagging amongst working people trying to make their 9am starts. I don't remember the full details at this point but it was clear that i had given Robert some cock and bull story about needing to get on some other train and that i'd meet him in a sec but to get the train even if i wasn't there or some such prattle. I was clearly too drunk to pull off this lose-a-child manoeuvre and somehow Robert was soon back at my side trying to tell me about how he thinks i might have been wrong about the platform. "i was trying to manifest you away from me", i said, to which he simply responded "haha, you're such a joker". you had to give it to this guy, he really did stay positive in spite of everything.

I called Moli, who apparently had a new place for us to stay down on Samariterstrasse. You know when you're so drunk you forget you had a phone call with someone to arrange to meet them and then you're really surprised when they show up? yeah, so that happened. "MOLIII! what the fuck are you doing here?" and she's like "my god you're fucking wasted, do you not even remember we agreed to meet here like, 30 minutes ago? here are the fucking keys. try not to lose them before you get home". I didn't lose them and we got home to this squatted apartment above Puke Music, a punk record store at the corner of Sama and Rigaestrasse. Moli was heading out for a few days and Janis and Nico were out hustling i guess. I immediately passed out.

a few nights later i lost my camera. in the meantime, Robert had been coercing Janis and Nico, who were sharing this apartment, into liking him by buying them various crap like cameras and spray paint and whatever, only to have them realise in spite of the gifts, that he was a fucking pillock and that he was just trying to buy favour. i was quickly being accused of having brought an idiot into our midst and when was he going to leave. anyway, so this night we at the Kopi teknokellar for some breakcore night i wanted to go to, with Janis and Robert in tow and i'd been on my usual 1.5L of wine that you could get from Lidl for 1.50 euros that smelled slightly of eggs but was defo the cheapest way to get fucked up. i hadn't quite yet worked out that grape followed by grain is something on a no no and even if someone had told me that at the time i would have told them to go fuck themselves but in any case i had moved on to beers and had started minesweeping at one point which was pretty much a way of life for me as i never had any money. i was so drunk i'd already once left my camera on the bar and come back to it. honestly, i was so drunk it would have been a miracle for me NOT to have lost the camera. one of the only ways i could rationalise the loss of the camera later was that it was a complete wonder that i hadn't lost the camera earlier given my lifestyle at the time, all the raves and parties and drunken nights. of course it wasn't the camera that was the painful part of it, but the memories stored in the photos themselves. it was hundreds of photos from one of the most eventful periods of my life. in contrast, during my 8 years of studies later in life i probably generated a small handful of photos that held any meaning.

anyway, i was so wasted i'd forgotten i brought the camera and only realised i'd left it after we'd left. i demanded we all go back to look for it and spent a good hour hunting like a drunken idiot in every crevice, not only in the venue space, but also in the rest of the house in the living spaces, defiantly ignoring the near certainty that the camera was long gone by now, probably whisked miles away. Obviously we eventually got kicked out by people who were like what the fuck are you doing rummaging around in my kitchen for a camera you lost at a gig downstairs, get the fuck out of my house you fucking bum. we started walking home. i was so drunk i was falling over on the icy roads every few metres, and really that's not even an exaggeration. the next day i had bruises all up my legs and onto my hips, my arms, face, everywhere. the floor was really giving me a pummelling tonight and not for the first time. after again drunkenly demanding to go back to Kopi to hopelessly search for my camera and generally being a complete mess, Janis had had enough of me and was happy to watch me faceplant repeatedly, offering no support.

the next morning Robert was like "man, you were so drunk last night. Actually you fully clocked me in the face, like, on three separate occasions man"

"coz you're a fucking idiot Robert. i'd do it again" i said, dying in my bed, hungover to shit. I knew this was going to be one of those 3 day hangovers.

"i guess you were manifesting it", i cough-chuckled to myself.

i had tried to put this guy on the wrong train, regularly berated him for being a fucking idiot, had punched him cold in the face three times and this guy still wasn't getting the hint. Even after he finally left Berlin some weeks later (not because he finally acknowledged that he was unwelcome with us, but because suddenly something was calling him back; some lame idea/project he had) he would send me messages like "Hey, I'm running for election in Holland. Got any cool ideas?" or "Hey, i've got a plan. are you in Berlin? do you know any struggling fashion designers or hot boys?"

I think Robert was probably a narcissist.

to die for

After Pocahontas, I watched To Die For with Nicole Kidman. some Larry Clark style Shakespearian tragedy thing goin’ on. Gus van Sant is the perfect cut. sharp, surreal, sublime. made me wonder about my denial of fetishising. that claim seems to be pretty outdated these days. i couldn’t help it. all i was thinking at the funeral scene was “aww shit! she’s gonna fuck the kid at her dead husband’s funeral, right on the fucking coffin, all dressed in black! that is so hot!”. if Suzanne Stone can make me think like that, then she is truly a successful femme fatale.

brief introduction to frank

this regular wasted guy comes into joe's garage and starts talking strangeness until i get the idea to note down the conversation, str8 from the horses mouth much verbatim. take the ellipsis as muttering.


I don’t believe in no fucking god. The worst thing ever.
Boom-Boom. …some whiskey? It’s non-alcoholic.
…you don’t smoke?
………you know what’s the hell in my life?
Fucking hell.
Like a child. A baby.
– it’s like them surgeons, all the fucking,,,
I’m frank. Nice meeting you.
- so this baby is like all open and born closed.
It lived through the surgery.
* heavy breathing *
what can I do?
I go to buy surgeons. I tell them to behave.
…
space is the place, Kai.

Are you ok?
According to what?

Sieg Heil!

Pocahontas

Pocahontas just made me cry. What’s that all about? Aside from Disney’s aspartame sweet sentimentality and the fact that they inform kids of a totally distorted version of history, there are actually some really well written, heartfelt songs about prejudice and class struggle in there too. I was personally really moved and have started quoting lyrics in rants on a regular basis. I wish i was joking, but i can only claim slight exaggeration. Anyway, so i'm lying there like a true wasteman, smoking the remainder of a left-over zoot while my host is busy at work, watching this giant piece of shit, and i can't help thinking that Pocahontas is looking well fit. Turns out I have a fetish for fucking cartoon characters and I wasn't even aware. What can i say?  She has a nice figure with perfect blowjob eyes - but no femme fatale. A better seductress however, than that fishy mermaid. She was a right slut, was she not? With all her cleavage hanging out at an age that makes daddy Triton frown. and then she's gallivanting off with some randomer loser land-prince dude that she falls for after seeing, like, once, from a mile out at sea? you know, the more i think about it, the more of a clusterfuck that movie proves itself to be. a sort of aquatic coming of age get-immediately-married off inter-species whirlwind of magical confusion. Not that I’m saying I wouldn’t do her scaley ass. i mean, like, you know ... if I was a cartoon. BUT, to lay off the sexual objectification for just a moment, what I don’t get about these Disney Dolls is why they’re always giving it up for the guys?? they give up their magic, their homeland, their fins (which apparently is really painful) and the guy’s got nothing to lose. what's that about? I mean, take superman, on the other hand - he gives up being able to fly and see through walls. he gives that shit up for Lois Lane coz she knows how to work it. That’s fuckin’ quality temptressing right there. That’s what I’m fucking talking about. I'm on my fucking knees for you, Lois. Let's see a bit more of that in Disney, hmm?

Amsterdam

Ruigoord... ok, so been spending the last few days in Ruigoord (link be low. seriously, check it out), a small village on the fringes of Amsterdam. formerly squatted, the villagers now pay a grand total of €1 a year as a "symbolic" gesture to the state, though there seemed to be a few other restrictions. the story can be read about in many other places so i won't repeat it again here in full, suffice to say that it arose out of plans to extend the port of Amsterdam with industrial development in that area from the 60s, the idea being to build a harbour for the petrochemical industry. in the 70s the village was squatted and the place flourished as a place for artists and freaks while the municipalities of Amsterdam and Haarlemmerliede en Spaarnwoude argued about who had rights over it. there was a successful resistance against demolition early on but any remaining renting residents moved out with the local priest handing over the keys to the church to the squatters. Some famous artists helped build the public profile during the 80s and after many years of back and forth between the state, the squatters and the 2 bickering municipalities, it all seemed done and dusted by the 90s, with development due to finally go ahead. however a final resistance against eviction helped secure a future for Ruigoord and a compromise was reached in 2000, effectively legitimising the free-zone.

I had wanted to check out Ruigoord after having read about the history of radical housing projects in Berlin and having been part of its dying history with B183. I'd also recently been to Christiania in Kopenhagen, one of the most famous free-zones in the world, and I was interested in how radical and alternative living spaces had survived for decades and the process by which squats had resisted eviction and/or gained autonomy. I was also just interested in the lifestyles and cultures that came out of such places and how they changed with their legal situations.

Despite its fair share of shipwrecked hippie flotsam and jetsam, still spewing up superstitious seaweed, there were a few genuine pirates among the villagers. Specifically, cheers to Roland for letting me stay at his place, and his never-ending-supply of free weed. There's not much to do there in the same way there's not much to do if you go to any village and just sit around, but it's pretty good for just chatting to people and getting the history, even though you know they're probably a bit tired of tourists like myself poking their nose around and asking the same predictable questions. They do weekly parties every Sunday in a sort of psy-trance vein and bigger parties more sporadically. This provides a small economy, controlled tourism and a regular focal point for organisation. By the time Sunday came i wasn't even up for partying much and hippy parties weren't my jam anyway. It's also really draining travelling by yourself, which at this point i'd been doing for a while. 

After a few hours of feeling pretty out of place at the party (crap music and no drugs: i can do each without the other but both at the same time is a no-go), I slipped back to Roland's place and planted myself on the sofa with a joint just in time to catch the beginning of what would turn out to be an hour-long feud between Roland and his girlfriend, of course, in Dutch, so i have no clue what it was about. However, I have a sneaking suspicion it might have had something to do with letting randomers sleep on the sofa without consultation. yikes. Consequently, I didn't sleep much that night, partly due to the obvious tension that was now thick in the air putting a distinctly paranoid twist on my high, and partly due to a post-argument rebellion of banging gabba that was drowning out anything else with a vibration. the argument had been fucking loud, and im talking angry at the love of your life loud, but this gabba was louder.

In the morning I waited around until some people were going to the next place over that had a train station. Completely fulfilling the stereotype, they all had long hair and/or dreads and took me in a converted van painted every colour imaginable and completely without discrimination or taste. The van was filled with doodads and whatsits; plenty of shit to gawk at. plenty of dreamcatchers and mandalas. It just needed the word groovy written on the side. Further completing the stereotype, they were all bloody lovely.

http://www.ruigoord.nl/ 

I had started my stint in  Am*dam helping barricade a new squat, which within 72hrs had a bar and gig space set up coz they be hot-on-the-squat in holland. they crack places completely differently here than in the UK. Instead of going in the dead of night and as stealthily as possible, they basically go for the complete opposite here. They go in like it's a whole demo and just march down the street with like 50-100 people in broad daylight and just crowd out the route of entry while the crackers work their magic. the cops, if they got on the scene fast enough just watch from afar. It's a pretty cool tactic. with the crackers hidden behind a crowd of people it's a case of no one saw nothing. plus you've got 100 people there to help you set up, even if it's just to pile in, secure the place and carry some furniture. For example the famous "table, chair, bed" as decreed by the Supreme Court decision in 1914 which ruled that in order to show residential use in a property, all that was needed was a chair, a table and a bed. Still, I didn't actually know anyone involved in the squats though. I was just bumming it. Actually, by the end of my stay I'd end up having some really shit nights sleep at a homeless shelter, on a frozen canal and in an igloo. i shit you not.

Moli had hooked me up with this dude Derek, an artist student from America, who had just got back into town in time for me to get back from Ruigoord. he was alright, but i don't like lingering in people's homes, u know? A week is already pushing it if you don't really know them and you're not actively hanging out with them or contributing to their enjoyment in life or whatever. you stop becoming a visitor at some point and begin merging with the bad odours and stains on the carpet. Actually, Derek locked me out of his apartment one night when he was blind drunk and forgot about my existence, which was pretty annoying, especially when i broke back into his apartment and we argued; him angry and confused how i had broken into his flat, me that it had taken me like, 2 fucking hours to concoct a way to break into his apartment without smashing windows, and secretly I was quite pleased with my workmanship. this is part of how i ended up in the homeless shelter, coz i'd rather take my chances on the street than overstay my welcome, even in the middle of winter. the other part was pure happenchance. I wasn't looking for it or anything, it was just there all of a sudden, at exactly the right time. It was kinda weird and institutionalising, but it was ok. They didn't try to give me a bible or shake me up and down to make sure i didn't have secret change in my pockets like i'd read George Orwell talking about in Down and Out in Paris and London. 

Before i found the shelter, i had spent a night so drunk that i fell asleep on the frozen canals/grachten and woke up not knowing where i was, completely tripped out, both physically and mentally, by the frozen floor. I squeezed out a shitty poem about it, which you can read below if you want. In such circumstances, the coat i stole from my first full-time job as a baker at Sainsburys came in real handy. It was one of those enormous coats for standing in -20 freezers for hours at a time. it was better than a sleeping bag and would keep me safe on many occasion over the next few years. That same night as the frozen canal bed, i had earlier stumbled across a sort of makeshift igloo that some people had built from the snow in a small park amongst snowmen and snow angels. I had crawled into it and passed out there for a few hours. Honestly, it wasn't really big enough to do anything but sit upright so when i woke i felt like my neck was breaking and there was a distinct claustrophobia. still hotboxed it though and tbf it did keep me warm. i did have photos of all this shit but I would later lose my camera in the first few weeks back in Berlin, which is still one of the more tragic episodes of my life. I can take being homeless, being beaten up, rolling around in my own vomit, whatever, but I've never quite gotten over having lost that camera with 3 months worth of photos during a period of such hilarious gonzo journalism.

I really struggled to dumpster dive in holland - they seem to hide them in their basements (wtf?), however, i did manage to steal some enormous GM carrots down some dodgy back alley, behind a rest-or-rant, providing some vitamins which id been totally deprived of for weeks. I was getting sick of peanut butter sandwiches, which had been 90% of my diet at the time coz bread's all i can afford and honey and peanut butter go a long way so i could keep stealing to a minimum. Every day i pretty much repeated the same pattern of securing a 5-finger discount on a pack of stroopwaffels and a few cans of double strength beers from Albert Heijn and consuming them until i feel sick.

Yeah, actually i had really deteriorated during my month in Amsterdam. I had started with Derek trying all these weird belgian beers at Joe's Garage that get you drunk as a fish after 2 bottles (Joe's is an alternative bar/freeshop. 10 years later it was still there so check it out if you're ever in town. Obviously the Zappa reference immediately endeared me to the place). Those tasty Belgian beers had really kept a smile on my face, especially as the bar-lady seemed to sympathise with my empty wallet and kept sneaking me another glass. Still, the bar was the reason i also had an empty wallet in the first place as living like a real person costs a lot of money. That, and i was in fucking amsterdam so obviously i had bought myself a bag of weed and some quality hash - getting far too stoned in the super cool coffee-shops that are actually not super cool at all, but rather: rude, expensive, and often downright creepy (except for hill street blues - that place is great). yeah, i had been living beyond my means in those first few days and it meant i was out of pocket pretty quick. i think i blew like 10 euros in that first night in Joe's while listening to Momo's girlfriend doing an academic style reading of a paper on "squatting capital" and informal hierarchies of privilege that form in squats. Then i had made my last 10 euros last almost 2 weeks.

Amsterdam is for liberals and Berlin for radicals. i started to yawn and look back east. but first a detour to visit Melissa in Leiden. there is nothing left here, i thought, and another night in the homeless shelter will piss me off, so now - to the train station, spliff in hand, knowing that warmer times and friendly people await. on the way i stop for a piss in the street and am so high i momentarily forget that i was carrying a bag of my clothes and only realise i've lost them when i get to Leiden, so now there's a bag of my dirty undies just sitting there curbside. It wouldn't be the first time. I decide to stay in Leiden a few days to recuperate - then back to BLN.

I Amsterdamned (and all i got is this lousy poem)

it trickles through the veins down the social strata,

because they know that it’s smarter not to make a martyr.

4 days and 4 nights of only beer and bread:

underfed, no bed and a throbbing head.

i take to the icy grill, and stay

sparked on parked benches in bunches by the bars.

seeing red and yellow stars: struck

by light: the tilted sight of a shimmering night

by the frozen canals.

the blocked up channels of warm blooded mammals

with nowhere to go, and a slowing blood-flow.

i even test the rink bellow, and walk on water, heel to toe.

seeing double in a solid puddle,

my face muddles and warps, from magician to corpse,

and the mirror of my miracle twists and slips.

the air hits my lips and they summon an eclipse.

as i wake i try to clutch a statue,

of a saint whose name i cannot read

and whose cold body I don’t care for,

other than as a crutch,

waiting for the world to settle,

like i’m in a snow globe that’s all shook up.

too late to start a blog?

this would be a more appropriate tool, perhaps, to document my exploits in Berlin and elsewhere, than the 5 months of emails, failed journals, napkin scribbles etc, but after such a while, it seems a little late to start a blog. however! how can i resist the chance to have words that i have organised, immortalised on the world wide web? no doubt the use of this blog will be as temperamental and inconsistent as with the other mediums i've tried, but i guess that's how i like it.