2021-10-02 52 13

Location

This Geohash is located just outside the borders of a colony of allotent gardens in Berlin-Karow.

Participants

Jan

Expedition

In the afternoon of a so far uneventful day of chronically sleeping in and translating between a computer and a calculator to help them solve a physics problem, I decided to commence on the epic journey my brother so eagerly enticed me to undertake. So I left my partners in computation, packed a fanny pack with my items of necessity, and stepped out the door into to world of the great and grand outdoors.

The Berlin's urban railway, the S-Bahn, was swift that day. In the blink of an eye, I found myself at the main train station – and made a false exit. I spend an awful amount of time searching for the next train that should take me to my destination – for nought. Battered and ashamed I glimpsed at Google Maps, knowing that I look like a damn foreigner, a tramp, a wannabe, like no one who belongs in this place or knows it. When I saw what had happened to me, I was shuck by mere feeling of disappointment in myself. I had exited the train one station too early.

Finally getting off at the right station, a man in a wheelchair caught my eye. He was trying to get into the train that went in the opposite direction as the one I just left, but his wheels were stuck in the gap between the train's entrance and the platform. So I helped the man in pushing him into the train. But when I saw him sitting there in his wheelchair in this train all on his lonesome, I felt responsible. Had I known what I was getting myself into, I would have left the train then and there.

But I didn't. And so I found myself with this man on our way back to the main train station. Up until then, it didn't seem bad at all. I was just helping out an old disabled man. My perspective changed when I asked him where he had to get off. The man's voice – if it could even be called a voice – was a conglomerate of incomprehensible hissing and choking noises. Hearing this, I noticed more odd details about this fellow: he wasn't wearing a face mask, as everyone on Berlin's public transport is obliged to; his hands were covered on ominous tattoos; and in his lap he kept a can of Jack Daniel's out of which he occasionally took a sip. After a gruesome few minutes of conversation that consisted of the man making dying sounds and me politely asking him again and again what he was trying to say, it turned out he had to exit at the main train station.

Arriving and exiting there, I chauffeured him to the next working elevator, where I and an Asian couple waited an unusually long time for it to arrive and Wheelchairman had a practical outrage and smashed the call button time and time again while complaining to me in his unintelligible tongue. The couple looked frightened. They talked to each other in an Asian language, so I figured they were visiting Berlin and their first impression of it was some whacked up alcoholic wheelchair dude screaming at an elevator and some poor young guy who had the liability for this one. When the elevator finally arrived, they politely offered us to step in first. At this time, I had seriously thought about just leaving the man, but something didn't let me do it.

After another rough session of communicating, I brought him to the streetcar station where it said that his next train would be arriving in 9 minutes. Not feeling like waiting all that time – especially not with this man – I asked a woman who was also waiting for the streetcar where whether she waited for the one the man told me he had to get into. She answered with no; maybe knowing what I was plotting on putting on her.

After pushing Wheely into his tram, I gave him a thumbs up and left him.

Awful relief came upon me.

In contrast to this event, the following trip to the hash itself was underwhelming. It was located just outside the borders of a colony of allotment gardens. Lurking in the bushes, I felt like a mischievous fiend preying on pedestrians. The photos were quickly snatched and I left the scene unnoticed.