Melissa's Birthday

On Saturday it was Melissa's 19th birthday. She is an au-pair and lives with the family she is working for. Ben and I were invited to go round for cake in the afternoon. So we hopped on the S-Bahn for the 45-minute journey up to the very outskirts of Berlin. In the woods nearby there are supposedly wild boar running about, but neither Ben nor I saw any and doubt they really exist (which we pointed out to Melissa).

Once we arrived we had a quick tour of the house, which had a small swimming pool downstairs. The parents who were a very friendly couple, had prepared a birthday cake for Melissa and an assortment of smaller cakes and nibbles. After singing happy birthday and scoffing a rather large amount of cake we played board games with Jenny (the 3 year old daughter) and the family.

Once back in the centre of Berlin, we went to a shisha bar where Ben managed to negotiate us a cheap price for the 'Birthday girl'.

After the shisa we went to Cafe Zapata which is a large building with several bars scattered over a few floors and a couple of floors with artist workshops selling art. Ok, that makes it sound all nice and clean, it wasn't. The building was old and run down, and there was graffiti on every possible bit of wallspace and the artwork was weird. For those reasons I loved the place. After having a couple of drinks in the bar downstairs and looking at the art on the floors above we headed to the top floor where there was a small bar and an open view of the city.

As we were sitting, chatting near the bar a strange looking man wearing tinted black glasses and a black hat came over with what looked like a laminated photocopy of the ID part of a Passport, a photo of himself and a leaflet for a gig for the day before. Naturally I avoided attracting his attention as he didn't look like he was quite there. But Melissa started asking him various questions in German which she had to keep asking him to repeat the answers of because he was talking in a low husky voice. After she pointed out the leaflet was for the day before he ripped it up and threw it behind him, stumbling backwards slightly. He then produced a small orange glass ball which he put in my hand and then quickly snatched it away with a look as if I'd stolen it. After Melissa told him a few more times she couldn't hear him he apparently said "You shouldn't talk to me because I'm insane" so we promptly stopped.

We later decided that he was definitely the devil.

After Cafe Zapata the others went to a club (one of them somehow fell asleep inside) whilst Ben and I and went home via Hermanplatz grabbing a Doner on the way.