Arrest Yourself - Hot Chip - The Warning - 2006

After dinner we stumbled around Kruezberg for a bit until we found a bar we liked. We checked out and quickly rejected a couple of old man bars, as well as a few that seemed like meat markets for college kids, until we happened upon a place called Luzia.

Luzia at first glance seemed to be a coffee shop. The interior was all done in dark woods, and little tables with metal chairs. The clientele were mostly late 20's to 30's, either in couples or alone with a book. But the music was all speakeasy jazz and there were certainly drinks to be had.

The bartender was exceptionally friendly in recommending some fine German beers for us to try out. Actually, every Berliner we met was exceptionally friendly. It's as if the subtext of every conversation you have is "See, Ve are not Nazis! We are fun and friendly people who live in a beautiful multicultural city". If I had a Euro for every Berliner that emphatically described the city as "Multi-cultural" I'd have come back richer than I left.

Anyway, we were sitting there having our second or possibly third beverage when Anand started staring at whatever was going on over my shoulder in a mixture of amazement and curiosity...it seems that the gentlemen behind us were engaged in an activity that while we knew was legal in Amsterdam, we did not realize was something you could do publicly in Berlin. Turns out that Berlin's laws are a bit more liberal than one would expect, in this regard. We struck up a conversation with the two smokey individuals and asked for advice on what we should check out with only two days to see the city.

As stated above, Berliners seem to be very into the idea of proving to the world that their city is a wonderful place, and that they've moved past the uglier parts of the 20th century...so these two stoned germans (well only one spoke English) proceeded to advise us to basically check out every single museum and historical landmark in the city, when really what I wanted to find out was where the cool bars and shows were. Never the less, you couldn't fault the boys for their civic pride.

Ideally, I would have had this Hot Chip fall into the London portion of the trip, as it certainly is basically the mold for this type of Synthy, Dancy Brit-Pop. It's a decent song, but Andy Samburg's "Jizz In My Pants" skit on SNL has basically made this type of song unlistenable to me though. All I can think of is lame ass londoners with their bad hair cuts and sweaters tied loosely around their necks dealing with premature ejaculation.