“How was Germany? Did you go clubbing?”
Why does absolutely everyone assume that the first thing I do upon coming back home is to go clubbing? Is it because I spent time in Saudi Arabia and am naturally expected to do all the ‘forbidden’ things every chance I get?
“No, I didn’t. I was busy with other things”, I replied to my classmate who decided to stat a conversation with me out of the blue, a few minutes before Spanish class was about to start.
“Then what do you do in Germany? Don’t you have clubs and all?”
For those of you who might have been wondering, yes, there are clubs in Berlin. I am, in fact, astonished every single time about what audiences are being targeted with the posters announcing an upcoming party somewhere like Goya or the old Tempelhof airport where planes neither land nor take off since 2008 but people meet to party. ‘Under 18 Party’, ‘Over 30 Party’ and even an ‘Over 50 Party’ is being announced every now and then on simple A3 sized posters all around Berlin.
However, there are also alternatives to how to spend your free time with people that are important to you. You know, even in today’s generation there are people who can enjoy themselves by spending the afternoon just drinking tea and talking to each other.
I sometimes feel like true friends are those with whom you spontaneously rent a boat, take some Chinese food and malt beer and listen to Andrea Bocelli and Bon Iver in the middle of the lake while everybody else probably thinks you two are nuts, letting your bare feet float in the water, looking up at the sky and all. True friends are those with whom you can spend several minutes without saying a word and still it doesn’t feel awkward. They are the type of people around whom it doesn’t matter whether these shoes go with that dress and whether you should be wearing blue eye shadow because your favorite color is blue.
There are days when all you do is sit together in the garden, both thinking about where in God’s name H.P. Lovecraft took his ideas for stories that make Edgar Allan Poe sound like a lullaby. Meanwhile a calm, deep voice reads out loud to you through the speakers of a phone that is considered ‘smart’ nowadays. And while all this is happening the first rain drops of the day start to fall down from the sky. Before you know it, you two are standing in the rain, feeling the heat drop off you.
It’s not about clubs or the renting of expensive cars. It’s more about the people you have around you. Maybe you don’t like clubbing or big groups of other people but if you have someone with you, with whom you feel like the world is a better place, then maybe even clubbing or going to prom or attending a wedding will seem less frustrating even in mutual silence.
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