Dublin loves you

It’s just bad at showing its feelings

On cold nights when the wind rushes at you from up and under and the walk home is long, and the home itself is cold as the dead and the milk in the fridge might still be in date but probably isn’t and who knows what tomorrow will bring but maybe Youtube will cough up something fresh, love descends on Dublin like a raggedy fire blanket suffocating a flame.

It’s not easy to be alone here. The beds are too cold. The windows were installed by monkeys. You wake three times in the middle of the night to beat life back into your hands and feet. The couch needs a counterbalance or it flips you on your arse and the cheap wine makes you depressed if you drink it alone. You build a home on an island that eyeballs the cold side of the Atlantic and you won’t convince anyone you’re a fan of easy.

See, Dublin is a problem, so you share it by giving a half to someone else.

And that’s what brings them together. There are no Cupid arrows, but there are darts and last buses and no one wants to take one on their own. Love is not blind in Dublin, it’s just able to compromise and strip away looks and personality until all you’re left with is some warm bones and hopefully enough loose change to bring your combined buying power to the price of bread and rashers Sunday morning.

And in Dublin that’s enough ingredient to make a whole batch of love.

Expectations aren’t high, because the need is strong. Couples have a shared enemy in the wind and the rain and the mess. The shit makes your love shine.

Dublin knows this. It’s part of its dirty charm. You take a step out of any bar at any hour of the night with a slight feeling of regret that you didn’t have the stones to talk to that person who was throwing you signals across the room, and a sudden pitter patter of rain or a howling gale will send you right back inside to force destiny.

It’s like you’re on a plane and the captain’s just come on the tannoy to say ‘Ladies and Gentleman, that large bang you just heard was the left engine exploding. And the bang before that one was the right engine doing the same.’

And you look around and land on a pair of brown eyes looking back and you think to yourself, why the fuck not?

Dublin loves you. It may feel like the plane is falling out of the sky, and you may ask if wet socks, neck cricks and a constant runny nose are the way this city shows it cares, wouldn’t I rather be alone? But no, Dublin loves you. It’s just playing bad so you’ll see the good in others. And when you’re staring into your lovers eyes, and those eyes are jumping two different directions around a face more lunar than lovely and you say ‘I love you’ and they say ‘I love you’ back and it’s impossible that you can but you do, then you know this grand ugly mess of attraction has occurred for one reason, and that reason is Dublin loves you.

This text comes from a bundle of old diaries my girlfriend found when she was moving out of her apartment. They were under her sink in a plastic shopping bag.  She’s nosey, and it was her place after all, so she had to look inside. Even though they were badly damaged we could still make out the incredible tale of a man’s life. This is an excerpt.

Friday Dec 1

Blue skies. I’ve fallen in with a gang who I don’t trust for even a minute. There’s four of them. Grizzly street men. Their smell reminds me – as if I needed reminding – that if I don’t turn my fortunes around fast, I’ll be so far removed from the real world that they’ll never allow me back. They spotted me begging in Defiled Square*. I’m a good beggar. It’s because I’m recently on the streets and I’m young and I guess people imagine a few cents here and there might save me, so they’re generous. The other guys are so much a part of the streets that people just walk past them. They might as well have plaques at their feet instead of cups. Anyway they came over all aggressive at first so I offered them some of my takings. They liked that and it’s then they started talking about heading south. They’re leaving on Monday they told me. If I didn’t want to freeze to death during Polish winter I should join them. I have nothing to loose. I’m in.

*Defiled Square is probably a reference to Defilad Place in Central Warsaw

Saturday Dec 2

I worked especially hard today hitting up the chapels and the offices for weekend workers. I’m lucky. I still don’t look so bad that I scare people. The other guys couldn’t get within two feet of a ‘donor’ without them screaming. I made more money today than the rest of the men combined. They invited me for dinner – bought for with my money – but I’m happy for the company, even though they look like the meanest, nastiest men I’ve ever set my eyes on. One of the gang showed me a scar that followed his spine right down to his ass. One long stretch of red. It looked like he’d been run over by a truck. I asked him and he said, no, he’d been run over by a train.

Sunday Dec 3

Jesus Christ this goddamn rain, won’t someone put me on a train. Preparations. Pavel is the friendliest guy in the group. He brought me lifting today. We’re going to need good sleeping bags and boots for the trip, so we hit the market. Pavel could steal the teeth out of your head. It’s mine, he says, then walks right over and takes it. Jesus, he has some stones. He started a fight with a trader. He told him that the record player on his stall was originally his, and he was going to take it back. The trader got into a big fuss and half of the market congregated to see the face off. In the middle of the madness, I slipped between legs and tables and stole a fine pair of hiking boots. I was so scared I nearly shit myself. I didn’t stick around long enough to see but Pavel told me he spat in the guy’s face then walked away. I believe him. Pavel isn’t scared of anything. The boots are too small, but Pavel fixed that when he sliced out the tongues with his hunting knife.

Monday Dec 4

We took the train this morning at 6am. When you sleep rough, you always wake up early so it was no big deal. We sat between carriages and passed time seeing how far along the aisle we could roll a penny. It was just an excuse to crawl around on the floor looking up the skirts of passengers. We had sardines two days ago. I still get the taste every time I burp… The oldest guy explained our trip like this – because so many homeless men die every winter in Poland, the rail authorities don’t check for tickets if you want to head south somewhere warmer, and survive. In this way, Poland exports its problems and we get a free road trip right into the heart of Czechoslovakia *. We arrived into Prague and marched straight out of town in a hurry. Keep your head pointed at the ground and don’t look up until you see suburb, they said to me. My gang are all big men. Sure they’re withered and broken from years on the street but their shoulders were made working ploughs and factories. Still, they were so scared of running into Czech bums that we spent less time in that capital than the sun does in winter. As we walked the gang traded stories of hapless tramps getting their legs set on fire and dangerous bastards only too happy to chew off an ear to prove a point. I listened and didn’t miss Prague for a second.

*This actually still happens today in Poland. It’s been an unofficial arrangement since the winter of 1977 when temperatures in Poland dropped to minus 40 and almost two hundred homeless men died.  Also, our author’s reference to Czechoslovakia suggests that the trip was made pre-1993.

Wednesday Dec 6

We made it to Vienna yesterday but we lost one. The old guy. No one seemed to care that much. As much as we’re a gang, it’s pretty evident that everyone would rather cut loose on their own. We’re together for safety and to pool money, but after that no one gives a shit about each other. It all happened because we split up to hitch into Austria. We spread out along the motorway. I got a lift pretty quickly with a truck driver who only took me because I spoke German. He’d passed the other guys, he told me, because the last thing he needed in his cab was some mute he couldn’t chinwag with. He was a decent skin and even fed me some of his packed lunch. Sausage and potato salad… (text missing)* When we met up again in Vienna, Pavel told me that the old guy had got himself arrested for vagrancy. The Czech Police had grabbed him before he could dive into the bushes on the edge of the motorway. They laughed about the rough time he’d have in the Czech prison. We slept in a park in full view of the city. The boys aren’t worried about Austrian bums. Diluted Germans, is what they call them. No Slav could ever be scared of that.

* This page was badly damaged with water stains. There are about six lines that are completely indecipherable. I can only assume that he described the sausage and potato salad at length, and hope that it was good.

Wednesday Dec 6

I have two new holes in my socks. They look like cheese. Man is Vienna ever rich. It’s been decided that we’ll stay here till Friday to clean up. Soon as we hit Hungary we won’t get a penny and the best way to see Serbia, they say, is quickly. They told me this morning that the plan was to make Athens early next week. It’s strange, since I set off I didn’t know where we were going, I just knew that we were getting away from a winter that might kill us. Now that I know we’re going to Greece, I’m excited. Austrians don’t have too many bums to contend with so it’s a lot like taking candy from a baby. Pavel stole a scooter. He just walked up to the bike, ripped the plastic off the ignition and had it hot-wired in a minute. We bombed around Vienna like clowns. Whenever we ran out of petrol, we’d just pull up beside another car, Pavel would pop the petrol cap and make me suck and spit the gas from the car into the bike. Every time a drop managed to squeeze past my tongue I’d wrench and Pavel would laugh at me. Next time you can steal the bike and I’ll get the gas, he joked. It was only when he crashed the bike into a lamppost and were both running away, I realised we hadn’t even been wearing any helmets. Pavel’s the luckiest hobo I’ve ever met.

Friday Dec 8

(text missing)* I’ve got a black eye all of a sudden. We had to sleep in a bus station. It was miserable. The other lads were mad. One of them had got a head butt and his nose wouldn’t stop bleeding. Pavel told him to go fuck himself and another fight started. We stopped them by telling them it was too cold to fight. Then the police came and we legged it. I was so tired that I wanted to give myself up, but they’d probably just send me back north again and I wanted to see Greece more than anything. It was a miserable day. It snowed and I’ve no sleeping bag anymore since the mess in the hostel. We got refused from nearly every supermarket in town and the lads were dying for booze. Eventually we had to ask this scumbag to pick us up a few bottles. He said he would but for a price. We paid, got the beer, then the gang followed him round a corner and rolled him. They kicked him until he stopped moving. As the trip goes on everyone’s becoming that bit nastier. I’ve decided I’m going to spend one more night with them than take off on my own.

*The top of this page and the page before were ripped out. Something happened in Vienna. Either they were set upon by another gang, got roughed up by the police or maybe even just fought amongst each other.

Saturday Dec 9

One of the men robbed a commuter this morning so we’re travelling by bus through Hungary to Serbia and I suppose I’m still with this gang. It’s a six-hour trip. I saw an angel on the bus. She was travelling Vienna to Budapest. I patted my hands on my laps for about half an hour before getting up the nerve to sit beside her. What are you reading, I asked. It was a book of religious poems by an Austrian nun *. It was part of her studies. I asked if I could share a page and we both sat there reading couplets about John the Baptist and the Last Judgment as the bus flung its way through corners and over hills and deep into the Hungarian countryside. At one stage I tried to hold her hand. Damn I was so close. I thought it was my chance to skip this crazy gang. I started fishing. I’ve never been to Budapest, I told her. You should come visit, she said. It was teed up. She gave me an address. Then Pavel came rolling up the aisle and grabbed me by the shoulder. We share everything, remember, he whispered in my ear then leaned across my lap and introduced himself. My Hungarian sweetheart had never felt anything close to as rough or dirty as that handshake. She skipped off the bus as it pulled into Budapest station without so much as looking back at me. When I checked the address I realised she hadn’t even put a street number down. I’ve as much chance of finding her as I do of finding a real angel.

* Ava was an Austrian poet who was also a nun. It’s not impossible that the ‘angel’ was in fact on her way to join a Catholic monastery in Budapest.

Monday Dec 11

Oh man, what a couple of days. First we all got quizzed at the Serbian border by these military hard asses. Pavel and I were the only ones who got through the net as we had passports rather than state ID. The rest of them were told to go home. Pavel laughed. Then we started hitching and got a lift into Belgrade. We were rich on the Serbian Dinar and had huge plates of kebab meat and salad, washed down with cokes and cigarettes and ice cream. We paid then Pavel got in a fight with the guy at the counter. It was ridiculous. Pavel could barely count so how would he have a clue if he was being short changed. Anyway we left but then the guy came running out of the shop and made a dive at Pavel with a cleaver. Jesus, we didn’t know what was happening. The knife tore all the way from the top of Pavel’s plaid shirt to the bottom. It fell open like a boat’s sail. We ran giggling all the way to the train station. When we eventually stopped we were both dripping in sweat and shaking. We didn’t have time to talk as a huge freighter was pulling out of the yards going south. We ran after it and climbed onto the bearings pulling ourselves high into a compartment between a passenger and cargo carriage. We had to glue ourselves tight to the metal girders or else we’d slip under. That evening we made Macedonia and it was only while we were bedding down on the banks of a river and Pavel was taking off the two parts of his shirt, we remembered the kebab shop attack.

Tuesday Dec 12

The Greeks have no love for the Macedonians apparently and it was almost impossible to get any lifts going south. That wasn’t so bad. Today for the first time in weeks we felt warm air and lay around on park benches idling in the sun. At around 4pm Pavel decided that we’d been moving too fast and running too many risks. We’re pushing the flow too much, he said mystically, we need to allow it to take us. So I bought a bag of black olives and spat the pips into the river *. The current took them out along and towards the Adriatic. Pavel approved. I’m excited about Greece now. We decided to spend the night and slept on the steps of a mosque beside the canal. Pavel told me he was Muslim. The only Muslim Pole, he said. The next morning he went to prayer and wrangled us a lift to the Greek border with another believer. He gave me a wink which meant he was no more Muslim than me. Pavel was born conning. The Greek border guards were half asleep at their posts accepting passports and IDs in tiny smoke-filled booths. We were through and only a short drive and a boat trip away from Athens.

* The reference to a river and a mosque, and considering how they arrived in Macedonia, lead us to believe that they’re probably in Skopje.

Fri Dec 15

Maybe it was the sun or the endless possibilities presented by the clear blue waters stretching out to Turkey but something down in Greece made Pavel bid farewell to his last drop of decency. We were at the port of Thessaloniki about to sneak on a ferry to Athens when he flipped. We were caught and should have walked away but instead he knocked the guy on the ground and jumped on his face till the narrow gangway was soaked in blood. Jesus, did we run and when he stopped for a breath I kept going. I ran practically all the way back across the country and must have skipped right through Albania as I’m writing this on a freighter bound for Italy. Luigi’s beside me. He’s just bought an Albanian motorbike. It would have cost him to bring a vehicle on to the ship so he dismantled the bike in the harbour and brought it on in pieces as hand luggage. He’s assembling it as I write. It looks like sculpture. We land in Italy in the morning, and after all that I’ve been no more than one long hot day in Greece. Luigi’s plan is to go to Palermo. I asked him for a lift. He said sure if I covered the petrol. I told him if he got me a long tube and a bucket, I’d find him enough petrol to drive to Africa.

It’s impossible to tell if the author made it to Palermo or not. The following pages are just a collection of shopping lists, doodles and phone numbers. They continue for almost twenty pages and then his next adventure begins.

I’m publishing a new magazine. It’s called Dear John – a magazine for men written by women. It’s been a lot of fun to make and we hope to bring out two issues a year: the summer collection and the winter collection. What you see beneath the writing is our winter collection. Fiction, illustration, interview and witty page fillers that so far seems to have drawn as large a female audience as males. If you can’t find the magazine in your local magazine specialist then I’d advise you to order it here: Dear John

I did this piece for a Dublin magazine just before Christmas. Bill lives in my neighbourhood in Berlin. You’d like him if you met him.

Speed Demon

Drug smuggling, border hopping and sailing the seven seas with the inventor of really quick badminton.

This is a story about Bill Bandes, the man who invented speedminton. What, you’ve never heard of speedminton before? Well, soon as I clear that up, I’ll continue. See speedminton is a marriage of racket sports. But just like Princess Diana’s old situation, there are three in this marriage too. You take a basic squash racket, modify the shuttlecock from badminton and steal tennis’s style of playing and you’ve got speedminton. Speedminton is the hipster summer sport. It can be played with a cigarette on your lip and a cold beer in your hand. Bill, the inventor and mascot-in-chief, wouldn’t have wanted it any other way, so lets get back to his story.

Bill Bandes was born in Eastern Germany in a small town famous for having the biggest cement factory in all Europe. Nothing else. Big personalities don’t last long in small towns, but it was Bill’s mother, not Bill, who set him travelling for the first time. She had just been divorced. She was broke. She said to Bill, “We have two options: we turn the gas on or we escape to the West.” Luckily for you, me and Bill they went with option two and took an illegal train ride into West Berlin and freedom. It was 1960 in West Germany, and Bill and his mother were sent from refugee camp to refugee camp before they were given a home. They were Germans all right, just not the right kind.

Some youngsters get used to not having homes. They find their security in other deeper, hidden places instead of between front and back gardens. So for Bill it made perfect sense to leave his mother when he was fifteen and go make a life for himself at sea. He hitchhiked to Hamburg and applied for work on the first ship he saw.

‘It was the golden age of sea travel,’ says Bill. ‘Jamaica, Haiti, Puerto Rico, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Morocco.’ He lists off the countries like old friends. Bill got work as a steward meaning his job was to serve the captain and to wash dishes. By the time he’d turned sixteen he could speak Spanish, had broken a few Latin American hearts and was building the mental muscle that would get him through the rough times ahead.

Now a thing about Bill. He talks slowly. His words come out with the lazy speed of bowling balls returning from the gutter because Bill’s a pothead. He canes anything from nothing to ten joints a day.

What this means is that time undergoes an alteration when you’re in Bill’s company. Minutes stretch into hours, afternoon slides into evening, and you find yourself cancelling further appointments until it’s just you, Bill and the moonlight. But the stories grip.

‘I got fired on my second tour at sea,’ says Bill. He was sent to the kitchen to wash the crew’s dishes. Bill only washed up for the captain, remember? He did it but told the cook in charge that he didn’t like to be spoken to like a skivvy. He got a slap across the face and left for his cabin. His first officer followed him in and said that if he didn’t get down to the kitchen fast he’d hit him so hard he’d go head first through the cabin window. “I offered him my  cheek,” Bill says, “and he fired me on the spot. We were near the Azores in the middle of the trip, and I had to pay the rest of the way from my wages.”

He arrived home owing more than he made, but on the upshot, Bill now had a motto. “Head first through the window, that’s my way,” he says.

Bill wasn’t just hard-necked, he was cute too. One time his ship docked in Russia. It was winter and minus forty degrees. The Russians saw Bill’s good German boots , scarf and coat and paid big money for them. Bill then did a little currency exchange with the rest of his crew and doubled his Rubles into Deutschmarks.

But truth be told, apart from the odd up, Bill’s economic fortunes have always been down. He’s fifty-eight now and in spite of being the inventor of a very successful product, he’s no tycoon and he’s got no living legacy.

‘Sure, maybe I would have married,’ Bill says, ‘But I’ve always been broke and it’s hard for a woman to understand a man obsessed with shuttlecocks.’

The shuttlecock obsession began late for Bill. But he’d have to fight the law on a couple of occasions before that came about.

Bill came home to Germany and started living in Bavaria. Problem is, Bill was no typical Bavarian; he was a hippie with the take-no-shit attitude of a sailor and the drug appetite of a Rastafarian.

“People like me were hunted like criminals,” says Bill. “I was arrested for possession and given a ten month suspended sentence.”

A suspended sentence is not a get out of jail card, it’s more like a swinging axe hanging over your head, and if you so much as fuck up the once, it’ll chop you down. Bill took off to Copenhagen and the hippie commune of Christiania. When his parole officer eventually caught up with him, he said he’d have to come back and do the time for breaking probation. Authority has never had much luck with Bill. He’s a friendly character. Charming as a crooner, with the gift of turning simple speech into magic spells. But you wouldn’t want to tell him what to do. And so it followed that instead of coming back to Bavaria to serve his time, Bill moved to Berlin and went underground until the police finally caught him three years later. He was thrown in a Berlin prison. He took it with the usual stoic attitude that he’d taken every other setback with.

“When you’ve already crossed two oceans at the age of sixteen, what can hurt you?” he says, “I was formed at sea. It makes you strong. Many popular people have visited jail. I was only in there for drugs. For green leaves. I’ve never felt like a criminal.”

But that’s how he was seen, and it didn’t help that his drug of choice had recently upgraded to heroin. He got caught again. This time it looked like he’d go down for a decent stretch. He fled to Venezuela and stayed in South America for ten years. In that time he quit heroin. The ten years ground the last hard German corners from his character.

“I feel more like a Latino than a German,” says Bill. “I walk slowly. I don’t rush. I like to say manana to everything.”

And that’s the god’s honest truth. Bill always schedules meetings for late in the afternoon and can hang out shooting the breeze like he was raised under a Sombrero in a rain-parched plaza.

When Bill began to miss home he flew back to Germany and slipped into Berlin again. This time he’d really have to go underground and wait for his wanted order to go stale. He found a girl and lived with her for seven years. He fell in love but it’s hard to let yourself go when even the slightest bit of police attention could send you back to prison.

“If I crossed the street and the green man turned red, I’d freeze in fear,” Bill says.

Bill didn’t have much to do in that time apart from fretting and this is where the speedminton part kicks in. Berlin is full of parks. Bill hung out in those parks all day playing racket sports.

“We played different,” Bill explains, “We had no rules and we played harder. Shit got broken all the time. Yamazaki, Yamaha, Victor, all the shit kept breaking down.”

This is when Bill began work on speedminton. He’d develop a game that could not only withstand his rough treatment but also continue to work in the wind and in the darkness. Bill began to sketch his ideas and visit sports factories.

“I’m no engineer,” he says, “I just love to play. It makes you very happy if you do it the right way.”

Speedminton was invented, but first it was called shuttleball.

“That was a bad name,” Bill admits but through these early mistakes, the long nights taking scissors to shuttlecocks and the trips to the patent office, speedminton as the hipsters in parks and the surfers on beaches know it today, was born.

Each man kills the thing he loves, said an Irishman not a German. Bill sold speedminton and it was, he says, like ‘losing a child’. His business partners took the sport away from him and put him on a small salary that keeps the wolf from the front of the door but doesn’t afford for much comfort behind it.

“As an inventor you sacrifice everything,” Bill says, “It’s like monotheism and all my life I wanted to be plural.”

The next step for Bill is to get out of Germany. The wandering feet haven’t left him. He plans to hit up his partners for some more money, and travel the world as a tourist playing speedminton on the best beaches in the world.

“Waikiki, Peru, Lake Titikaka – the altitude would make the distance much further, can you imagine it?”

Who knows if this is going to happen. Speedminton has become a big industry and Bill is growing superfluous to its needs.

You still find Bill hanging out in the parks in Berlin handing out signed autographs if you’ll take one. He’ll bend your ear for a moment if you encourage him, and he’ll charm the pants off your girl without any encouragement. There’s some magic in the old sailor yet. It makes you think his fortunes will rise and he’ll come up smelling of roses. Bill always dresses for the beach, and soon as things work out you can bet that’s where you’ll find him. Racket in one hand, cocktail in the other with one eye on the game and the other on the beauties walking by.

“Many inventors died unhappy. Many killed themselves because an inventor has to sell everything to make his dream come true. You’re like a spider in your own net and it’s dangerous. Luckily my invention is just a few grammes of plastic. So it won’t kill me.”

this is the documentary:

www.oddisee.tv

You’ll not find a more independent populus than the inhabitants of Berlin and sadly independence and love come together like oil and water.

But deep down. I mean once you’ve crawled beneath the lack of attention and the me, myself and I outlook of a typical Berlin relationship, you do find love, and you’ll also find someone who loves you. You just might not notice it straightaway.

And that’s because love in Berlin is lazy. At the weekend, the girls don’t put on their glad rags and the boys don’t take off their dirt rags. You can bat your eyelids and throw come-to-bed eyes like ninja stars across the floor, but it ain’t going to move even the most desperate of us if we’ve found a comfy chair to drop on.

Love is also brutally honest. If something better comes up, you’re entitled to flip all other plans out the window. If the person you thought you were about to have breakfast with gets wind of an after party, they’re completely in their rights to drop you at the U-bahn station and burn off into the night on a squeaky bicycle. You shouldn’t be offended. It happens to the best of people. You see no matter how hot, interesting and ‘going places’ you are, you’re never going to be able to compete with what Berlin might have to offer next.

But in spite of the laziness and the honesty, there is still a good dollop of love for everyone who wants it in Berlin. You just got to keep your chin high and your eyes peeled. It’s there. This city is a baby factory. We’ve all got jobs on the assembly line and the orders keep on coming, and it looks like it’ll be another weekend working our asses off to fill them. Thousands of babies, everyone wants one, and if we can remember anything from our schooling, it’s that the number one ingredient in a baby recipe is love. Berlin creates more babies per capita than anywhere else in Germany. Adding it up that means Berlin’s got more love to give than anywhere else.

And if you don’t believe that, fine. You can just go join the other cynics and find your love floating on top of a lukewarm späti cappuccino at 5am in the morning.

Everybody in here can tell you some tale about a 52-hour session that nearly stole their life. Or a drunk bicycle crash that almost robbed them of walking. And even a dodgy kebab that might have given them advanced Botulism. But in spite of the legends and the close calls, we’re all still breathing, cycling and eating Turkish. That’s because, contrary to how it seems, Berlin is actually good for you.

Lets start off with time. Berlin gives you another ten years just like that. In the bag. You never even asked for it, but you got it. In all other cities across the world people are buying homes, growing bellies and settling into a rhythm that begins with an alarm clock and closes with a bad reality TV show. But not in Berlin. The thirtysomethings act lie twentysomethings, and the fortysomethings act like thirtysomethings. My dad visited here a year ago. He described it as a town full of kids with a few token grown-ups to drive the trains. Dad, you were almost right. This place is full of grown-ups, they’re just another ten years off acting that way yet.

In Berlin you can eat really well. That’s not saying everyone does – these people invented cream quark after all. But you can eat really well here. And not only is the food good for you, it’s fashionable too. The Berlin food markets are clubbing for people who go to bed at a reasonable time. You find your bohemians haggling over a quarter kilo of bruised tomatoes and your arthouse yuppies quizzing the farmer over the size of his free range eggs, but they’ve all got one eye on the dancefloor. In another place it’s the watch on your arm or the car in your drive, in Berlin it’s the size of your beets and the length of their food miles that determine whether you’re going home alone tonight.

But more than this, the main reason Berlin is good for you, is because of something that’s been around longer than you and I put together: the trees. In New York you’re never more than five foot from a rat. In London, you can switch rat for free newspaper, and in Berlin you can substitute the word tree. They’re everywhere. I’m writing this surrounded by them. Big wooden bodyguards watching over us all, filtering our air and protecting us from UV rays and heavy downfalls. Next time, you’re strolling through Berlin and feeling younger, healthier and more energised than you’ve ever done before, you should pick out a trunk and give it a hug. Plant a kiss too and say thanks, for being a tree, for being there and for being good to you.

When you’re at a free party under a bridge and the police still haven’t shown up – that’s punk for you. When you’ve gone three days without a shower and you could still walk into a job interview – that’s punk for you. And when you cycle a bike home at 3am with no lights and no brakes and you’re getting away with it that’s punk too.

Now you might be the type of person who changes carriages or even swaps footpaths when one of these heavily-pierced dinosaurs come into view, and that’s OK. But what’s not OK is forgetting the debt of service you owe them. Cross the street but doff your cap because the punks of Berlin have made it easier for you, and here’s why.

They did it by setting the bar low and rebelling against everything else. They walk their dogs without a leash. They drink and smoke wherever the hell they like and when they party, they turn the noise up loud and don’t consider the neighbours. What this means for you and me non-punks is that we can get away with more than we would in any other city.

It’s a lot like the big sister syndrome and I know because I have an older sister. When we were kids she used to sneak out and not come home for days. She was drinking and acting like most teenagers do and when my parents came down hard on her, it was worse than dousing flames with paraffin. It was all out war in a small windswept bungalow in the Irish midlands. So by the time I decided to hit puberty, my parents had had enough of being disciplinarians and let me do as I pleased. I could have brought go-go dancers back to my room and all they’d have said was ‘Do your friends need pyjamas?’.

My sister made life easier for me. And the punks make it easier for you. You might come from the generation who feel punk died the day Margaret Thatcher took office, or the other one who feel it took the plunge soon as Billie Joe Armstrong started singing, but next time you’re sat in a bar with some stranger’s dog at your heels, and you’re smoking a cigarette and you run a hand through your unwashed hair and think ‘chip fat’ and in that exact same heartbeat a pretty young thing sidles up to you and smiles, don’t thank your lucky stars, and don’t even thank fortune, thank Berlin and thank the punks for making things easier for you.

Berlin’s a talker’s paradise. There are so many ears just lazing around waiting for you to unload. If you ever feel lonely here all you got to do is stop dead in your tracks and wait for a conversation to sneak up and bite.

I guess it’s got a lot to with what’s at stake. You see Berlin’s an experiment first and a city second. You take a giant handful of lefty radicals and mix in a healthy dose of college educated fortunates and their freshly-ground politics. Then you move them into the same streets as old communists and new immigrants and set to cook for twenty years. And what you pull out of the oven looks a little like Berlin today. It’s a sweet batch but it’s crunchy. Not everyone loves their neighbour but they will do everything in their power to not end up hating them. And this is why they talk so much in this town. And if you don’t mind putting in the time, eventually they’ll listen as well.

Berlin is a hotbed of characters and personalities but there just aren’t enough stages in this town to accommodate them all comfortably. So they take their shows onto the street and that means you’re participating. It might just be a bark from a drunk, or a shriek from some corner shop diva, but it all derives from that same citywide drama that’s just waiting for you to step front and centre and deliver your lines.

Take this picture for an example. This is a friend of mine called Bill. Bill is not from Berlin but he’s a typical Berliner. He takes things slow. He has a sweet tooth and he loves to chit-chat the day away. He’s interesting, witty, jovial and most importantly Bill has got time for you. You can find him in the parks or maybe along by the canal. He’ll listen to your life story and in exchange will tell you his.  It’s interesting and kinda magical. If you’re lucky he might have some biscuits on him. He’ll share but don’t be too greedy.

Bill sits amongst a gigantic cast of small talk champions who live in this city. Wisdom dispensers, available at all times of the day and night.

And that’s why you should always pack a box of biscuits when you’re on the roll. Carry them in your pocket or somewhere they won’t melt or crumble. And the next time you meet a Bill or a Benni or even a Steffi and a conversation develops that might take in lifetimes, dreams or just passing comments on the crippled pigeons, you’ll be prepared.