Oranienburger Tor

Behind an old building in eastern Berlin, with its so East side architecture, the time seems timeless, nothing new from outside. There's something like an empty and big parking lot, and the building seems to be abandonned. The kind of place that you imagine is inhabited by homeless, junkies or whatever else.

It is Saturday night and my friend is taking me there. From the street corner you realise the place is not at all empty, neither is a parking lot. People get in and out throught a 32ft door. The place is dressed with lights, live music, young people and a lot, really a lot of beer. Small carps serve as a place to sit and bar service. The walls are painted with graffitti art, pieces of wood, rims of tractors and remainders are the true furniture and no one of them is here by coincidence.

"There is a Mexican bar, Zapata, with the image of General Zapata in a 10ft wall. My friend needed to go to the toilet, but there was a 3€ charge! Some feet away from the bar's main entrance was the exit door. Breaking the rules he get in that way, and he saved 3€"

Sir, excuse me, the toilet?

The Belgium I know is not that of Brugges, the Manneken Piss, Brussels or Antwerpen. It is the French Belgium in the province of Namur: A 30km radio surrounding the city, Namur.

As elsewhere in Europe, Belgium's constructions still smell like centuries. The narrow stairs, the small steps, the wood that squeaks when stepping on it, the strong walls, the heatings in the walls, the red color that's predominates.

Suddenly, in one of the many houses I stayed at, I asked:
- Excuse me, the toilet?
- Go to the kitchen and right there, in front of the stove is the toilet.
- Thanks.

A toilet in the kitchen? in front of the stove? and what if...? there's somebody cooking?

I met the afternoon with a friend to get a drink. Now she's married, has two children and just they bought an old house at a very good price in the outskirts of Liege. It has been hard, because like so many young couples here, they have had to do the remodelings. Then she tells me that the first difficult part was to construct a toilet. A toilet? -I asked her- but if a toilet is so part of a house as the kitchen or a room. Well, not completly, in the house they bought use to live an old woman, and so during her generation they used to bath in the kitchen. At that time the toilet where outside of the house.

But with the modern times also new parameters of hygiene were stablished. But the money is always a problem, and people had to construct the toilet, wc, near the kitchen, because the needed to spend less in installing complex pipes all around the house.

Then you star to understand these things, those that seems strange. And you don't feel shame get to the bath between onions, cereal and milk.

Berlin's bottle fishing!

How many times you've bought some drink in a plastic bottle and then just throw it away? Many times right? Well, an empty bottle is supposed to be trash. Although in Berlin not completely, a plastic or glass bottle is money.

In Berlin, every time you buy any bottleled drink you are paying a 25cents deposit, no matter the bottle's size. But you don't need to throw your money, because when return back the bottle to the store, they must give you back the same amount of deposit in cash.

Many tourists don't know this, so they throw the bottles in any trash can. But Berliners know it; they're widely prepare for Bottle Fishing, from poor people and even students. To find a place for bottle fishing is the difficult part... the airport? Tiergarten? touristic areas? Almost all of them are practically taken.

You don't need to fish, just open your eyes, not only because your money, but the help that this little action means for the whole planet.

Welcome to Berlin

It's true, in Berlin the things work with strict order. The respect to pedestrians, the crossing of the streets and avenues, the places for smoking, brief, everything's in order; the scent of chaos is just not even close to here. Berlin is not like a city, well, not to the kind of city I come from.

So, Pablo and me were waiting for the bus, it was raining kind of hard, we were protected in the bus-stop cabin. In Berlin you can count the minutes for a bus to arrive, they always arrives at the exact minute. But I didn't count that the post where the schedules of the buses are posted were about six meters away from us, not a significant distance... when it's not raining as hard as that moment.

The bus was coming, I didn't try too much moving from my safe place below the bus-stop cabin, thinking that, as would happen in Mexico, the driver would be empathetic to us and he would park as close as possible and so don't let us get wet.

But I forgot that I was in Berlin, where everything is too ordered. So, the driver stopped just in front of the post, where he's supposed to stop, six meters away from us. We ran, we got wet and we laugh all laud!