April, April, der weiss nicht, was er will...

You know, considering all German months are masculine (der Dezember, der Januar, der Februar...), April sure is a bitch.  It's a common saying here in Germany (and Berlin in particular) that April has no idea what it wants.  One minute the sun is shining and you’re singing praises to the gods, and the next moment you're freezing your balls off.  Such was Ebe's and my experience just this past Saturday...

After having gained renewed vigor in our German lives after our trip back to the States, Ebe and I promised one another to take full advantage of everything Berlin has to offer and not stay stuck in our apartment playing with the animals while embarking on another TV series marathon.  With this is mind, we headed down all 111stairs of our apartment shortly after noon (of course we had to sneak in a few episodes of Ru Paul’s Drag Race before we took off, but the sun was going to stay around all day right?).

We decided to head to Görlitzer Park and try our hand at Schwarzlicht-Minigolf.  It was a beautiful sunny day as we got off the U1 and walked through Kreuzberg enjoying the graffiti and people lining the streets.  Ah ,one of those days you just love being in Berlin.  “Geez, I wish I brought my sweatshirt instead of this jacket, “ I told my equally jacketed wife.  O ye of little faith..

Having not yet eaten lunch, we grabbed a cheap bite at Restaurant Rissani (which is a post in of itself) and waddled, stuffed as honey badgers, into the mysterious and graffiti covered building of the Schwarzlicht-Minigolf.

Now we had heard many a story of this magical playland of blacklight minigolf, but it was damn time we discovered it ourselves!  Now if you haven’t had the pleasure of queuing up with the lovely people of Berlin, consider yourself ONE LUCKY BASTARD!!!  Now, I don’t know what it is about Berliners, whether they still think they need to shove and push and fight and bite (ok, maybe a tad worse than it is) to the front for their food ration card, or if they just see the weakness in our passive-aggressive Seattle eyes, but there really is no such thing as a line in Berlin.  Such was the case here.  All in all we made it to the front in a relatively short time to find out that we needed reservations in order to get in that day…  Scheiße, verdammte Touristen!!!  Oh well, we found 10 Euros on the floor and made our speedy getaway.

As we meandered our way back outside and through the park we noticed a few dark clouds making their way towards us.  One thing is for sure here in Berlin, the clouds travel fast.  Before we knew it they were overhead making us glad we brought our heavy jackets.  Despite the malicious look of the clouds, I convinced Ebe to take a longer route to public transportation across the Oberbaumbrücke when the proverbial shit hit the fan (or just started snowing).

Gusts of wind lashed at us as we forced our way across the bridge into Friedrichshain not daring to pay the musicians playing for drinking money hiding behind one of the brick columns.  Snow started drifting across the intersection as we picked up our pace trying to catch the M10 back up north to escape April’s indecisive fury.  Just in time we made it to the M10 with fellow survivors, laughing and mocking the poor souls who were unable to make it into the tram’s warm confines.  Little did they know that they would have to wait a whole four minutes before the next tram’s arrival!  Hahahaha, poor bastards!  See you in hell!!!

Stop after stop our brave and true M10 tram picked up survivors until we were shoulder to shoulder toasting the courageous driver, who hath saved our lives!  The closer we came to our transfer, the harder April tried to show us the truth of the aforementioned saying.

Ebe and I paid our respects to the driver and wished our fellow travelers luck as we pushed the green and red button to open the tram doors.  Out into the cold with about 10 others we tried to find our U-Bahnhof.   Even though it was right across the street from where we left the tram, three of our fellow passengers fell to April’s wrath, only to be discovered 10 minutes later when the sun came out. 

Okay, okay.  So maybe the story did get a little convoluted towards the end, but the weather was really shitty.  The sun was shining.  Then it started to snow.  It snowed a little harder.  Then we got home to our U-Bahnhof, the sun was shining again.  I mean, what the fuck April?  What DO you want?

More posts about the weather...

• May ends with a bang! Literally
• Perfect Summer Day...in September
• Gardens in the Rain
• Welcome to December