Run As Fast As You Can, Bear.

October 29th 2019. Noon. Schöneberg. Sat at the bar in the Café Nostalgie at Crellestrasse 22 with the locals at noon, drinking Berliner Kindls, Monika’s little hound, Shirley, listens to the scraps of German, scraps of English being passed between us. A Jimi Hendrix bootleg plays over the old system. After sometime I ask for directions to Nollendorfstrasse. I’m determined to find Christopher Isherwood’s old flat. It’d be easy to google, but who wants that when friendships can be made? Monika, the old men, discuss this, pointing this way, that way. Finally, an old man draws a little map on the back of a beer mat. Shirley, Monika, the men, me, we are stone free.