It starts with a woman frantically playing with her three mobile phones on the counter of a local bar in Wrangelkiez. Me and Q are walking along our street, the Falcon Stone street. Pretty bad-ass right? Or is it the Stone Falcon street. The fuck if I know.

We pass the Konrad Tönz bar. Easy. It is basically under our flat. Turn left on Wrangelstraße, you know, right after the pizza place, the bike shop and the mediocre but kind of ok Kampus bakery. It has nothing to do with the café campus club in Montréal, if only the mediocrity.

Enter Walther. shapeless but good downtempo music. Near my place. Imagine permanent Portishead music, Melody Nelson style but without Beth Gibbon’s lyrics.

We sit at the bar.

“Was haben sie vom Fass?”

-Nur Astra-

“Aight, this place works out. They’ve got only one tap but it’s Astra. Could be worse.”

A corner smile at my ok-ish German (but, really, it’s terrible), my drink gets poured. She obviously would rather be home than working the mid-of-the-week graveyard shift at the bar.

Q gets a drink too. I’m thinking Negroni but remember it wasn’t. Whatever. Shit was red. The name was real fancy, and it wasn’t made with Campari.

The lady right next to us asks us something in gibberish German. Q tells her he doesn’t speak German. -Mistake- She Switches to English. Fast forward two hours later…

She’s still talking. She lost her phone. But it is in front of her, she has three mind you. She’s waiting for a phone call from home but only Louis (…or was it Jeff?) called her. She can’t call herself because apparently Telekom is a company from the government, spies on you and stuff. Yup makes no sense at all, but, that’s that.

She asks us for money. Briefly casually mentions being able to suck 12 dicks at a time to try to convince us . Q chuckles. That’s quite an achievement after all. 12 peckers. At once. He’s playing for a different team. And me? I’m hitched. Plus I only have one Pecker…

12 tho. Wow.

Our friendly server gives us help after the equivalent of the angel shot is ordered: When stare at her blankly hoping she’ll do something. She tells the lady, politely (but in German) that she’s bothering us and can’t keep ordering water, and probably that she should not advertise her, dick-related, professional activities, at the bar.

We stay there for a while. She gives us her three names for her, none of which I remember.

Was she ill or under the influence of substances obtained in Görlitzerpark?

A bit weird when someone persists to implicate themselves in a conversation. We’re talking about funny bosses, she’s pestering us about needing dick to get through the evening…and then about her friend that’s home and Jeff dying.

Mexicaner shot – tomato juice / spicy shit – “on the haus”. 

Sophia. Read here with P-H. Not F. Our bartender. She tried to help us out a few more times, from our “friend” suffering from psychosis. To no avail.

The lady with three names eventually left (I gave her a fist bump, tomorrow’s another day. The lady is happy. We convinced her no one was going to die and sucking 12 dicks was fine if that was her thing; no biggie.

Now free to shoot the breeze with our crazy haired bartender, we learn that she’s a circus performer. On antibiotics. She only works the bar shift a few nights a month for funsies. And can’t join us for a drink tonight.

The more you know

I mention missing performance art open spaces from back home. She tells me she’s preparing something of the sorts with Kalashnikov, a collective. I’m down. Nothing to do with her pretty smile. A few of my friends are into circus and she says she might not even be performing herself. She notes down the venue where shit’s going down next week. Me and Q mention that after going to Dresden we’d be thrilled to catch the show.

She says she does Aerials. As in aerial acrobatics.

Some dude shows up. He wants to talk to us, make friends. Says he’s from Mauritius, I try to hold back a “but you’re white as f-” Yeah. 1% of us are. He read my mind.

‘Chill dude. Wants to go surfing in Ireland. Ugh, okay. Sure. Why not? I guess there are better places tho. I don’t exactly think “Ireland = surf”.

We’ve been here for four hours. Two beers, or was it three? One cocktail and one shot later, we head out.

I’m craving chicken skewers.

Good night Wrangelkiez.