The Berlin "Bratswurst"

So I promise I will stop updating my blog in bulks. But for now, I am going to update you all on my last weekend before I chat about my wonderful weekend in Paris.

Last weekend was quite lively in Berlin. On Friday there was the Fete de la Musique, which I unfortunately missed out on since I got out of work way too late. But I heard that there were concerts all over Berlin and it would have been amazing  :(  Saturday was the annual Christopher Street Day, which is one of the biggest pride parade in Berlin each year. But the festivities didn’t really start until midafternoon so instead I did another skateboarding tour of the city. The roads were cleared out for the parade, so I took to the middle of the road.

Street musician. Sorry about the blurriness....

I made my way to Potsdamer Platz, where the old Berlin wall use to stand (aka. Super touristy area). There was a “officer” manning a booth where you can get all the passport visa stamps you needed for Berlin back when it was divided. As I passed the guy I vaguely heard him speak French. Immediately after, he turned around and spoke Spanish to a group of teenagers. And looked at me and started speaking English. I was quite impressed. So I stayed for a bit and chatted with him. Turns out he used to be a skateboarder, but after some serious injuries decided it wasn’t worth it anymore. So because of that, he told me I was smart to wear a helmet and should definitely keep wearing it. HAHA smart…right… I already had to spend 2k doing that CT Scan back in Freshman year after getting that concussion… 

Afterwards, I decided to head to a German/English Language exchange. Figured it would be good since I’ve been in Germany for 2 weeks and still only know the bare minimum to show that I am not deaf. The exchange was hosted at this very hipster café by these two British teachers, Tom and Cilia. Turns out there are alot of British people hanging out in Berlin. Most of the English speakers were British musicians trying to make a life in Berlin. We did our language games for awhile and then had some beer and chatted. I had one of the most memorable beers ever. It was called Bier Bier. 

Anyways, so it was finally time to go to the parade. Turns out the parade part was done, and now it’s just a massive street party. Well still cool I guess.

Anyways, forget the parade, I got a better story. So as I was walking towards the parade, an Asian guy came up to me and asked for some direction to the parade. I told him I was headed the same way and we can just walk there together. He gave me a surprised look and said “oh, I don’t see many gay Asians.” And I laughed and said, “oh no, I’m not gay.” But Rommel, the guy, said “you mean not yet ;)” oops…. Miki, who was on the other end of the phone at the time laughed quite hard at this exchange. Anyways, I kept chatting with Rommel, figured it would be more fun going through the parade with someone anyways. But as we walked, he started making me quite uncomfortable. He kept asking if I wanted to try things like going into the bush and that he knows a bunch of guys who would be into me. Now, I am very open minded about homosexuality and am good friends with a bunch, but this I thought was definitely overstepping some boundaries. I decided it was too far when he offered some “Bratswurst,” which I now think aptly describes the Berlin gay scene.  Well I sort of booked it out of there after that. Turns out my lab mate, Sean, has had a similar experience in the park. He was reading one day till quite late on a park bench when a guy approached him and asked if he can suck his cock. Turns out it was THE gay park that sees a lot of sexual activity at night. Not sure what’s up with this, but something seems a bit off… Well as awkward as that was, at least I have some interesting story about Bratswurst.