Coffee and a naked man at Cafe Einstein

Enjoy a drink at the Cafe Einstein and watch the world pass by. Photo by David Lansing.

On Sunday I found myself back at the Café Einstein, sitting in a green and white wicker chair beneath a red umbrella. It was not quite eleven and I was having a discussion with myself as to whether to order a coffee or a glass of Sekt. If you order a coffee at the Einstein, it comes with a little double-shot glass of water. I don’t know why.

I ordered a Sket. And the strawberry cake, which is quite good. A naked man, standing in the middle of the closed-off street in front of the American Embassy, was handing out fliers until two German policemen on bikes came by and put a vinyl raincoat on him and stood him up against the wall of the Café Einstein, waiting for backup. One of the policemen was laughing, obviously amused by the whole thing, and the other one stood about a foot away from the naked man, yelling at him, gesturing with his hands at where the man’s penis was now covered by the vinyl raincoat.

The backups started arriving; you could hear that scary oscillating siren noise long before you saw the police cars. Once they got there, the naked man, who’d been quite calm, suddenly got agitated. In the end, it took five polizei, including two women, to subdue the naked man and move him away from the crowd. And then another police car showed up so that now there were at least ten cops.

A German woman with red hair sitting next to me got up quickly and hurried from the café to go talk to the naked man. When she came back, I asked her what he was protesting about and in halting English she said she wasn’t sure. “He is saying something about you don’t have to be a slave, but I can’t understand him. He makes no sense. I think he is a little bit crazy, you know?”

Coffee at the Cafe Einstein always comes with two shot glasses of water. God knows why.

It is early Sunday afternoon and I am sitting outside the Café Einstein drinking Sekt around the corner from the American Embassy, watching a naked man get arrested. The day is as beautiful as the pale green linden trees flirting with the puffy white clouds above, and women more beautiful than any you  would see along the Champs-Elysées, stroll by smiling at me and shyly saying, “Guten Tag!” There are so many bicycles rolling down the boulevard and the people on them seem not to have a particular destination in mind but are simply sightseeing along the shady boulevard on this beautiful July afternoon. And there are tons of freaks walking by as well: A short, stubby blond hooker in a black mini-dress that only pretends to cover her red thong underwear; albino twin girls, about 19 or 20, with hair dyed the color of cotton candy; a transvestite who looks like Marlene Dietrich, drinking Berliner Weiss. And, of course, the naked man now being forced into a police car. Who, I notice as he is driven off, looks very much like Lenin.

I think I love Berlin.