it turns out that bard has moved its campus to berlin. i mean, thats what it feels like. anna and i are here, staying with aya mckeen, visiting with and hanging out with willy crichton and emma hagendorf, as is abbey hart. emma lives with sara frier, and somewhere else in this city is natalia dzodziak. camilla geld might be around. shay howell was just here and later this week, after i have left, jess loudis will be here too.
friday was abbey's 21st birthday, and you can bet that we celebrated with style. in fact we celebrated from the time it became her birthday here to the time it was no longer her birthday in new york.
we (anna, aya, and ella) met up with willy, abbey, and willy's brother harlan outside of the hauptbahnhof (main train station) and headed to the edge of tiergarten, a large park in west berlin, along the banks of the spree, where we proceeded to watch the police and tourist boats meander past, sipping beers, and snacking on "african flavored" chips. it was a beautiful day filled with laughter, sunshine, and friends. anna and aya left around 6 to go grocery shopping, and the rest of us headed to willy's neighborhood to check out his flat (very impressive) before we headed to the main turkish neighborhood in berlin, kreuzberg, to watch the turkey-croatia game and score some schwarma for dinner.
for the record, berlin is the fourth largest turkish city in the world, so this game was kind of Big Deal. we found a bar/restaurant with lots of chairs and a huge television screen, and having eating dinner in a playground, we all settled in to watch the game. willy's parents joined us, as did about 35-40 turks as the game started. it was maybe the most boring game in the history of football. there were about 10 minutes that were exciting, and since the game went to double overtime and sudden death, that meant there were about 118 minutes of boredom, plus halftime and the breaks between overtime.
with three minutes left in the second overtime, the croatians scored. you could literally feel the sadness coming from the turks sitting all around us. it was almost impossible to come back with so little time left. to their credit, however, the turkish team held it together, bidding again and again for a shot. in the LAST second of injury time, with an impressive pass, the turks scored. had they missed, the game would have been over. their goal meant that we now went to sudden death and that everything around us exploded with screaming and jumping and dancing and all the turks in germany freaking out. this explosion of excitement was matched by the each goal the turks made in sudden death and each miss by the croatian team, and then on large scale when the croatians missed their last shot. suddenly we were leaping out of seats, screaming, and freaking out as well. the only comparison i can think of in sporting experience is game 4 of the world series in 2004. if you live in red sox nation, you know what i am talking about.
as we boarded the ubahn to go back to willy's, we encountered rioting, dancing in the streets, riot police, and turkish fans singing and banging on the windows of ubahn cars. it was absolute joyful chaos. on wednesday the turks play germany to advance to the finals. germany and especially berlin might....implode. pray for aya's safety as she is a deutschland fan in a türkiye section of the city.
the rest of the night was spent in the strangest club i can imagine encountering (bunny suits? thongs over short shots? bathrobes? gold lamé? tutus? leopard print? tiaras? where are we? only in BERLIN.) dancing and celebrating the birth of abbey gail hart. willy, harlan, abbey, emma and i ended up having a sleepover at emma's, the perfect end to a truly great, and truly berlin, day.
check back later for more on our berlin adventures. i'll post again later today.
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