Stories from all categories

beats like butter, baby
Cavernous cafe in Berlin during the changeover period from Friday afternoon caff to Friday night bar. The music is gradually speeding up and the staff become flirtier, including with each other. People still working on ...read more
for quitters
I've a German-speaking friend who since quitting tobacco suffers terribly from grievings. 'Grievings' are what happens when you depend on a drug and then give it up: heroin grievings, nicotine grievings. I quit coffee in ...read more
I am god.
A friend of mine driving her nephew and niece said, they were arguing in the back. One of them had a goldfish that had died. Girl, 3, asked, But why do we die? She kept ...read more
feeding the swains
Yesterday I saw two people having a very cute picnic in a park. They were sitting side by side on one of the benches facing in to the path and had a card table set ...read more
Eddie McGuire & Adam Goodes
Eddie McGuire, prominent Australian broadcaster, compares Adam Goodes, respected Aboriginal footballer, to King Kong. The conversation, outraged on both sides, focuses on whether or not Eddie "is" racist. Thus it gets nowhere because no one ...read more
for beer and weed
Two li'l punks on the footbridge to the Warschauerstrasse station, lounging with legs crossed and outstretched, dog lying between them, begging bowl out and a large sign propped on her legs which says in English: ...read more
everywhere at work
Berlin by night. Candles in the windows of quiet roadside bars. Soundless cyclists ignoring the lights. Puddles from the rain glinting under the trees, on the path alongside the canal. Pizza restaurant which has set ...read more
a bush tissue
Almost a year ago I left Brisbane, on three days' notice, to come to Berlin. I had looked up the weather map and packed a small suitcase and figured I would stay about a week. ...read more
Tom Waits for no man
I somehow forgot Berlin's imaginative beggars. This guy held open the door to the autotellers in the foyer of the bank, with a grand flourish, saying, "Welcome!" He was as confident as though he owned ...read more