21:31
Just like a tsunami sucks water out to sea before unleashing it in a irresistible torrent, there's a moment of complete silence, an intake of breath, a gasp and then, a roar. I jump up in the air and hug Mike. I hug the man to my right. I hug the woman to my left. I jump, and I bellow. It's a pure orgasm of delight.
I realise that there is blood and Guinness swilling around the table in front of me. I notice that there is a lump of flesh missing from my little finger. I don't care. I shout again. I jump again.
22:12
I realise that I am crying. I can't take the stress. There is too much of me invested in this. I wipe the tears away and swig some Guinness.
23:11
There's another tsunami. This one is in such stark contrast to the other that no-one believes it has actually hit. We bellow again, but this time not with joy or pride or relief.
I am walking home from the cinema after seeing 2012 with my friend. I am, as I expected, embarrassed at having seen such an unashamed pile of plop, but am also pleased at having witnessed the perfect way to die.
A young man, unable to stand still, approaches me unsteadily.
He speaks. I pause tersely, half interested in what he's about to say, half irritated at myself for stopping in the cold for a drunk when I am (arguably) not one myself.
"Where are the hot girls?", he slurs in German.
"Right down there", I say, without a moment's hesitation, pointing down a cul-de-sac.
"How far away are they?", he mumbles, his body already focussing itself for the effort required to haul its worthless self down Imaginary Hot Girl Alley.
"Oh, five minutes at most" I reply, my shitty day well and truly made.
I've never been such a fan. Aside for allowing me to quickly and efficiently send out a weekly mail to my fellow football players, and allowing me to track them down by simply knowing their name rather than email address, there seemed to be no other real purpose.
I had toyed with the idea deleting my account altogether, and would have, were it not for the fact that my social life would disintegrate as quickly as it takes to click 'create an event' and 'invite all except Stephen because he's dead, or deleted'. And, of course, having to explain to real-life friends that removing the virtual proof of our friendship is by no means any sort of slight on them would just be too much to have to go through. Over one hundred and fifty times.
So we ticked along together, That Other Social Networking Site and I, without really seeing the point of each other. After all, I have neither a mafia mob nor farm, am not a huge photo uploader or quiz-taker. I'm a lurker, a status-reader, occasional liker and infrequent commenter. I resent having to block some irrelevant people, simply because I don't want to have to delete them, but I also don't want them knowing about my life.
Well, after last night, all these complaints have been forgiven, That Other Social Networking Site. Because last night I was on my way home on the tram when I realised I was sitting across from a guy I worked with for a week over two years ago. A nice guy, no doubt, we got on very well, but never enough to become actual real friends. That Other Social Networking Site friends, luckily, has a much lower standard of friendship than real life.
So, after we covered the usual, 'so what are you doing now?', 'oh, much the same, what about you', 'yeah, pretty much the same too', we didn't have that awful, awful silence. Not the one where you just can't be arsed with the person. No, its kindly but inept little brother, the one where you are genuinely happy to see the person, but have just been out of touch for so long that you simply can't think of a single interesting or coherent thing to say. You blibber for a while, before resorting to the conversational death sentence that forces one or other of the mortified participants to get off at a stop much, much earlier than intended and walk home in the freezing cold, simply to avoid having to talk about THE WEATHER.
But, That Other Social Networking Site to the rescue! Over the last two years, it has allowed me to see my tram buddy's interesting photos from a variety of trips to Africa, Asia and South America and allowed me to know, from his status updates, that he is a fellow Europhile with a freakish knowledge of world geography, and even that a mutual friend has invited us both to a thanksgiving gathering at the end of the month.
Take that, awkward silence! Hurrah for That Other Social Networking Site!
Today, as every Monday morning, I had class with a group of German pensioners. This morning, I asked them what they were up to on this day twenty years ago, the day the Berlin Wall fell.
On November 9th, 1989, the four of them, all resident in the East, simply didn't believe the stories that the Wall had opened, even after seeing the press conference by Günter Schabowski that triggered the thousands of East Germans descending on the Wall, asking to be let through.
Two even went to work as normal the next day and really only began to believe the stories due to the fact that most of their colleagues simply hadn't shown up for work. One of the others, a dedicated traveller who has visited over one hundred different countries, went straight to the West's main airport, Tegel, to check it out, believing that it must be much better than the eastern airport. He was disappointed by how small it was, and noted that the West was just as dirty as the East. The fourth, a lady who worked as a graphic designer, went straight across to the West the next day to visit friends.
I found it surprising that none of them seem to have seen it as momentous an occasion as the rest of the world. After all, most of them had popped over to West Berlin at least once over the previous years on tourist visas. All of them had known West Berlin before the Wall had been erected, and felt that nothing had really changed in the twenty-eight years of isolation. All were comfortably employed with families and did not want for anything, aside from perhaps tropical fruits like bananas and pineapples. Since they were only available at Christmas, if at all, they were the biggest treat an East German child could imagine. Cuban oranges, however, were plentiful despite the fact that they were green and'tasted like straw'.
Only one, the graphic designer, ever thought of attempting to flee to the West. By the eighties, however, she was already in her fifties and didn't consider it to be worth the risk. In her younger years, she had got into trouble because of her 'big mouth', and initially was refused entry to university because of her criticism of the regime. When the Wall came down, she realised that graphic design in the West was far ahead that of the East - they used computers. She bought her first computer, a Macintosh, for a small fortune soon after.
The other three suffered initially after the Wall fell. Two of them lost their jobs and the third, the head of a railway station before die Wende, was soon relegated to selling tickets. Pragmatically, none of them minded very much, seeing how close they all were to retirement age anyway.
All four agreed that the major change brought about by the fall of the Wall is the amount of money that normal people these days have at their disposal. On a personal level, most felt that life was safer in the GDR - every neighborhood was constantly patrolled by a variety of police services and mugging and other crimes against the individual were practically unknown. None ever felt personally threatened by the regime, realising that it wasn't a bad system provided you were happy to say what the government wanted to hear. They even went as far as to suggest that it would have worked, if only someone in power had been willing to listen to their unvoiced criticisms.
Before the class, I had been worried that asking them questions about Germany's difficult past might dredge up bad memories. The horror stories are plentiful, but none of my four students had any of their own. They seemed to have been, and indeed still are, model GDR citizens, with no overt criticism crossing their lips over the ninety-minute conversation. Praise, interestingly, was in equally short supply. Born just before World War Two, their generation is one that learned to accept the status quo through being shunted from one flawed ideology to another. They left the revolution to their sons and daughters, who were all too aware of the injustice they had been born into.
I got fined on the train today. I probably deserved it, after several years of travelling with various different kinds of invalid ticket, and up until today had never been too bitter about having to cough up the €40 - after all, I have probably saved a lot more than that over the years.
This time, however, I feel aggrieved. My ticket was expired by about seven minutes, which I had not noticed. I tried to appeal to the decent, kind side of the fucking asshole, also explaining that I had validated it long before the train arrived, thus wasting a few valuable minutes of its validity. No deal though. He was simply a fucking asshole, and wouldn't give in. So, of course, I started being rude to him as soon as I realised that he was never going to budge, and called him the asshole that he very clearly is.
But it just got me thinking about the huge number of occasions since I moved here in which I have not been seen as a human being, but rather as some sort of disobedient robot who needs to be taught to obey without question, something which is very much not in my nature. It's not as though I am any sort of anarchist, not by any stretch of the imagination. I know that rules are there for a reason, and it certainly is not for them to be broken. But why not look on people as (mostly) cognisant individuals on occasion, ones who sometimes deserve a break and a bit of kindness?
I would just love it if that guy had appreciated that I was not trying to get a free ride, and that my impassioned pleas for leniency did not come easily to me.
I would love it if the woman in the post office would accept my old student ID, my bank card, my credit card, my health insurance card and my Hertha season ticket as clear proof that I am who I say I am, without insisting I walk home in the rain and bring back my passport in order to get my package.
I wish the German Catholic Church would appreciate that I am not Catholic and should not have to pay tax to them simply because I was baptised twenty-six years ago and was not aware of their ridiculous rules that require people to specifically withdraw from the German Church even though they never actually joined in the first place.
I would love it if my doctor could see that charging me €20 for a thirty-second consultation every three days while my finger was busted is profiteering at best, outright greed at worst.
It's no secret that Berliners can be rude, obnoxious, unfriendly and unpleasant, but today (and I am not ruling out the possibility that the dreary November rain and the fact that I had to walk to work in it is having a very negative effect on me) they just seemed a little heartless too.
- no more shouting in my ear
- no more dealing with individuals who have no appreciation of the potential benefits of spending time with me in a classroom
- no more sand in my ears
- no more tiny little safety scissors cramping my hands
- no more betting with my colleagues about how many little people are going to cry today
- no more stodgy kid's food
- no more having to repeat myself
- no more having to repeat myself
- no more having to repeat myself
- no more having to repeat myself
- no more having to repeat myself
- no more sweeping up the incredible amounts of dirt that the little people manage to drag in (although I admit that I really quite enjoy sweeping up)
- no more having to watch my fucking language
- no more having to share a toilet with people who have not yet learned the concepts fundamental to basic personal hygiene
- no more of that odd fusty feet smell that seems to follow little kids around
- no more having to hide the sugar from grasping little fingers at lunchtime in the interests of making the afternoon a little less hyperactive
- no more conflict resolutions
- no more conflict
- no more pretending to big people that their little people are anything other than little angels
Wow, the idea of sitting in an office deleting spam never seemed so attractive.
I got hit by a car today. No need to worry, bar a slightly bruised cheek and a scratched elbow, I am perfectly OK. My friend alleges that after a stressful event such as a car accident, the victim feels the need to tell as many people as possible in order to somehow cleanse him/herself of the event. I disagree - I think I am posting here 1). because being hit by a car is pretty exciting and 2). I am kinda tired of telling everyone the story, and since most people I know read my blog, this will save me repeating myself.
So I was crossing the road in front of my house on my way home from the u-bahn. As most of you know, in Germany there are snipers in the buildings around most major intersections, instructed to snipe any pedestrian who attempts to cross the road when the man isn't green. Having lived here for almost four years, German civic obedience is well ingrained into my psyche and the thought of crossing before the green man didn't even enter my head.
It's also important to note that there are often cars coming even when the man is green (cars that are turning on to the street you are crossing, rather than cars that are already on it and driving straight on), but the pedestrian still has the absolute right of way.
So I stepped happily onto the road when the green man appeared, and a car whizzed past me, going far too fast and ignoring my right of way. I irritably pointed to the green man, he held up his hand in apology and slowed down. So out I stepped again, and got hit by the car coming behind him. I've blogged before about how quickly one can think when an accident is taking place, and this time was no different.
I thought about how the driver was clearly looking over to his left and not at me.
I thought about how shit it was that I was going to be hit by a car.
I felt happy that he wasn't going all that fast, and that it probably wouldn't hurt very much.
And then I was getting up off the ground and looking for my glasses, feeling very much like I had escaped lightly and feeling that I should try to look more confused and hurt to make the idiot feel bad. My cheekbone hurt a bit, as did my elbow, and my glasses were a little bent. I don't know whether I hit them off the car or the ground.
There was a crowd of people around me within seconds, one of whom called an ambulance and the police despite my protestations that I really was absolutely OK. I think it must have looked quite spectacular, as one onlooker alleged 'you flew!'
It all became quickly quite embarrassing as we all stood around waiting for the police and ambulance, with the driver standing sheepishly beside me as the onlookers berated him on my behalf. He was, without any doubt, 100% at fault, which he accepted when the police arrived. The ambulance people gave me a quick check-up and the all-clear.
So here I am, alive and well. My housemates and houseguest are supervising me intimately so I am in good hands.
It's 0800 on Saturday morning on the top of Zawrat, a peak in the Polish Tatra mountains 2,159m above sea level. It's cold, it's foggy, it's rainy and visibility is little more than nil. I am terribly, terribly hungover and hungry. My mountain climbing buddy has already succumbed to those particular afflictions and gone back to our hut, leaving me with an enthusiastic young Polish guy called Vitek, who is trying his best to convince me to cross a ridge that, in normal visibility, would be incredibly petrifying, but at the moment isn't - simply due to the fact that the cloud cover doesn't allow you to see how long it would take you to fall to your death.
I agree to go along, mostly because I didn't want to go the other, less terrifying way on my own. A broad grin cracks across his face as he tells me how happy that makes him - apparently it is 'strongly advised' to not take this route alone, due to the amount of people who fall to their death on it. My loudly-voiced second thoughts fall on deaf ears as Vitek is already bounding happily over the loose rocks, declaring what fun he's having.
He's right though - it is incredibly fun. There are chains embedded into the rock on the particularly difficult parts, and at one point there is a ladder that allows you to descend down a sheer cliff face. Vitek points down into the cloudy gloom and says "down there, you vould be fallink for a long time". We move swiftly on.
Three hours and a couple of heart-in-mouth moments later, we are back in the hut, having crossed over three other peaks; got a tiny bit lost on the way down; nearly caused an avalanche; got terribly drenched, and slipping and falling on my bum, which luckily happened well away from the scary ridge that was just waiting to punish such clumsiness.
It's the perfect end to three wonderful days in the mountains. We had aimed to get three peaks in three days, including Rysy, Poland's highest, but ended up with five. I ate goulash every single day, drank a nice amount of Tyskie, Zywiec and Okocim, and took an insane amount of beautiful photos. True, I did get woken up from my uncomfortable slumber on the train home by the man in front of me - I have never in my life experienced such a rancid body odour, which is saying something, coming from someone who occasionally gets a little whiffy too.
All in all though, a marvellous trip. I love the Tatra mountains.
It's called Rysy and, at 2,501m, is Poland's highest mountain.
I'll be staying on the shores of this little lake:
It's called Morskie Oko and lies at a pleasant 1,395m above sea level.
I also intend to drink quite a lot of this once I have achieved my goal:
It's called Tyskie and it's my current favourite beer.
However, being a firm believer in equalising pleasure and pain, tomorrow morning I will get on a crowded train in Berlin Hauptbahnhof and stay on it for ten cramped hours, before getting on a crowded bus in Krakow and staying on it for two homicidal hours, a process that will be carried out in reverse next Monday.
It'll most definitely be worth it though. Poland's highest will fall to the Irish invaders!
So Ireland has voted overwhelmingly in favour of accepting the Lisbon Treaty, and the whole of Europe has breathed a sigh of relief.
On a personal level, this will mean that I have to spend a lot less time defending the nation of my birth to people who know nothing more about it than it's a wartorn, anti-European but pretty little island on the Western edges of the continent, that also just happens to produce some tasty butter. Yes, Kerrygold and stereotypes based on nationality are available over here too.
As most of you know, I am staunchly pro-Europe, and consider my European identity much more important to me than my Irish one. This is a stance that is generally greeted with a significant amount of distrust whenever I am back on the island, as though my appreciation of the bigger picture is some sort of subversion or rejection of my Irishness.
This is entirely not that case.
Every single person is made up of many, many different identities. We're like onions - peel away one level and there's another one lying just beneath it. It's up to the individual to decide which one is more important.
I, for example, am a European, an Irishman, a Westmeathman, a Mullingarman, a Rathcolmaner and a Glennon. First and foremost, I am my father's son, a Glennon. This is the only aspect of my identity that is completely sacred and will never be compromised.
At the moment, I value my European identity the highest of the others, however this is not to say that this will always be the case. I agree very strongly with the concept that the European Union is based upon - a borderless union of states that agree to help each other out economically, politically, culturally and militarily (if necessary) through international co-operation, shared values and above all, free movement of their citizens. There's no doubt that every member of the EU benefits from this. It's the biggest and most widespread session of backscratching that the world has ever seen, and I am inordinately proud to be taking part.
Ireland affirms its commitment to the European Union within which the member states of that Union work together to promote peace, shared values and the well-being of their peoples.
Seeing as a quite large amount of the people who are reading this have also tried a Mustafas kebab, it won't surprise most of you that I was there again during the week. After all, I did have a visiting friend to feed, and I did want him to spread Mustafa's message of love, joy and gluttony all over Sweden.
I also did something that I have vowed never to do again on at least four occasions - I did the Double Mustafa - two kebabs in a row. Being entirely sober this time, it actually made the experience much more pleasant, as the kebabular joy did not have to jostle for position with litres of beer in my (probably) limited-capacity belly.
If the Double Mustafa sounds like a bad idea to you, I have but one thing to say - the following morning, I ran a half-marathon in well under two hours, something I had never even attempted before. However, I will wait and carry out further research before suggesting Mustafa kebabs as a replacement for the world's ever-dwindling fossil fuels. For the good of humanity, of course.
Anyway, while I was consuming the wedge of meaty joy at the tables beside the kebab stand, something seemed wrong. I stopped for a moment (please try to imagine the willpower that that required) to take stock. My three companions were completely immersed in their respective feasts, seemingly unaware of anything else. The queue was, as per usual, about twenty-strong, and the kebab-givers, as per usual, working flat out with shouts of "Salat komplett?" renting the air.
And then it struck me. The people beside us were TALKING! They were talking to each other, despite holding Mustafa kebabs in their hands! How could this be? Were these people performing exercises of restraint so elaborate and twisted that they would send Buddhist monks running screaming to the nearest brothel while swigging vast mouthfuls of cheap vodka? Or had they lost their taste buds in a horrific accident involving less appetizing kebabs with spicy sauce made by the devil himself? Or (and this must be considered the least likely of all) did they simply not appreciate the gift from the gods above that they were holding in their hands? I was so shocked that I simply had no choice but to get a second to verify the tastiness.
...but the good news is that this afternoon, I will have yet another visitor arriving, one who already knows of the joys of Mustafas, to stand in complete silence with beside that Temple of Perfect Kebabs.
EDIT: Landers has had one, and it loved him as much as he loved it.
I don't know what provokes it, but it seems that people challenge me to do ridiculous things on a basis so regular that I really should wonder about what gives them the impression that I am the sort of person who will do stupid things just for my own amusement.
Most of them have to do with eating, both of huge amounts of food and really unpleasant things. Whole chilis, acorns and probably many many other nasty and barely edible substances have all be dropped down the hatch in the interests of scientific research, or cheap laughs.
But, either signaling that I am either growing up or becoming a coward, the last two challenges presented to me have been turned down. True, they would have involved the destruction of private property, something that I have a little more respect for than my own digestive system (if only for the fact that I'd have to pay to replace it).
So, since I won't be accepting these challenges, I will pass them over to blogland in the hope that some brave and reckless soul will take them over and answer the following two burning questions:
1). Would a hard-boiled egg be hard enough to break a single pane of glass if projected with a human arm from a distance of, say, five metres?
2). Are bowling lanes oiled so much that a human being performing a Klinsmann dive would be able to slide all the way down and knock over the pins?
No, I am not airbrushing out my pimples and imperfections (what imperfections!? I hear you holler) - my little finger has finally been released from its gauze prison.
It is definitely still a little bent, and quite a lot bigger and bluer than a finger should be. I am also a little sad about losing the bandage, as it made me look somewhat threatening. I saw some rough-looking types checking it out while walking down the street a while back, and I know they were thinking that I got it in a fight and were imagining what the other poor sucker looked like.
Instead, I am now also carrying a cylindrical roll of soft cloth around with me to squeeze to get the strength back. Not nearly as threatening.
Either way, it is definitely pleasing to have got my this year's annual summer injury out of the way. I wonder what Summer 2010 holds in store for my poor ravaged body. Broken neck? Squished brain? Ingrown ball sac? Time will tell.
A friend of mine became a father late last year. He described his feelings towards his newborn son to me when he was about a month old.
He was frank, brutally so. In an effort to convey how his feelings had grown from the day of the young one's birth to what they are now, he compared his initial emotions towards the infant to those that he has for a plate. I was left in no doubt that the feelings of love that a father has for his offspring need to develop over time and can by no means be presumed right from the off.
Last week, my eagerly-anticipated MacBook Pro and iPod Touch arrived. I had spend a knee-tremblingly enormous amount of money on them, notwithstanding the various discounts and special offers I had managed to somehow take advantage of.
Having been a Windows user all my life, for the first few days I thought I had made a hideously expensive mistake. Now, however, the feelings of love have had a week to develop. No, not develop. Flourish, flower, blossom, shout messages of heartfelt affection from the rooftops.
I can't get enough of the beautiful, beautiful design, the fabulously efficient interface, they way it seems like everything was designed by someone who wants to use it themselves and therefore makes it as good as it could possibly be.
Another friend has left Berlin (bringing it to a friendship-circle decimating five in the last month) and has left something very special in my care.
Fishies!
They don't have names yet, apart from 'the kinda dead one' and 'the hyperactive one'. They are my first pets of my very own and even though I probably won't be able to teach them any tricks, I am excited about trying my best not to kill them.
It's been difficult finding a place to put the little guys - on the desk was too wobbly, beside the window was too bright, on one shelf they were too close to the speakers, so some books have been shunted aside to give them pride of place in the centre of everything.
I'm sure we're going to have lots of exciting adventures together, my little fishies and I.
