Sunday, 3 June 2012

7 EUROS WORTH OF WATER AND ME AS BEARDED LION


I went to Berlin, ate hot dogs or "wurst", drank german beer, walked around always with my back-pack, saw the sights and spent a night at a bar talking with the 45 year old bar owner about the state of Berlin and how it was 20 years ago as the bar was empty and she had nothing better to do. She also gave me a free beer and told me I'm a nice kid. This is what I'll be talking about, or I'll try to talk about in this and future posts.

But, first things first and I must say this to get it out of my chest: German people have serious issues with water. I don’t know how it is where you’re from whoever’s reading this, but water at a cafĂ© or a bar is not charged. I believe that in most parts of the world is the same, in the most parts of the world except from Germany where a small bottle of water costs minimum 2.50 and in most cases 3.50 and last but not least you also have to pay for water at a bar.

Needless to say I didn’t even touch the bottles of water from corner shops no matter how thirsty I was. I’d rather literally eat 350 1 cent coins and break my teeth than give them for water. I’d eat them good and digest them like it was the finest of meats.

One night we sat a bar opposite our hotel to have a couple of drinks before we go to bed after a long day walking around the city of Berlin. Going through the catalog, trying to decide what drink I’d have I saw that the gin prices were pretty low, 2.90, so I decided to have some gin as I wasn’t in the mood for beer or whiskey.

The waitress comes along and takes our order, brings us our drinks and I decide that I’d like some water. I go to the bar and ask the bartender if he could give me two glasses of water, for me and my friend. He gives me a weird look and says “fizzy or…” and shows me two small bottles.  I don’t return the weird look and I say that I just wanted some water in a glass. I didn’t want to buy a bottle of water just wanted some tap-water in a glass to drink as I was thirsty. Again he gives me a weird look but he takes my order.

Half an hour later and after finishing my drink, I decide to get another one. When the waitress comes along I give her my order and I also ask her if we could have some more tap-water. More specifically, I ask for a pitcher of water so I didn’t have to go back and forth at the bar.  She looks at me and says “No”. That’s when I decided to return the weird look the bartender had given me half an hour ago.

After further explanation she tells me that she can’t just give me a pitcher of water but I’d have to buy it. I think to myself that a pitcher of water couldn’t cost more than a couple of euros, even though it shouldn’t cost a damn thing as it’s just water, and I say “sure…we’ll have it”. As she goes to leave I ask “uhm before you go could you please tell me how much it’ll cost?” And that was when dinosaurs came alive, dragons started flying low, Conan the Barbarian started dancing the polka waving his sword and many other crazy shit went down. She looks at me and with a smile like it’s normal she says “that’ll be 7 euros” and then me I say with the most normal look I could have with that answer “okay that’s fine then, I’ll just have the gin.”

At the end she brought me a pitcher of tap-water for free but she asked me to hide it so the manager wouldn’t see it and everyone was happy. I had my water. I had my gin. I had the red blanket wrapped around me, complimentary from the bar for everyone who sat outside and I had my cigarettes.

Coming back home I wanted to drink all the water I'd find. Bathe in it, eat while bathing in water, drink cold water, warm water, boiling water, eat ice cubes, lick ice cubes etc etc. More to come from my Berlin experience in the next post. Till next time, keep goofing it up!

P.S: German girls have big breasts and I congratulate them for that. Plus, I looked something like that lion while I was in Berlin.

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