So today after class, I did some second-hand store shopping. It’s apparently more popular here—there’s tons of second-hand shops, and a bunch that are like “exclusively designer” or whatnot… I found some really nice stuff (shirt from Zara for 12 euro) and stuff like that… but didn’t end up getting anything from the second-hand stores.
So much fun. I’m one of those people that can convince themselves that somewhere in the store there’s some hidden treasure and that if I just look long and hard enough it’ll show itself. I spent like 5 hours or so just perusing, eating a huge huge salad, and walking around. The place I was is Prenzlauer Berg. It’s supposed to be a little more young… I saw lots of hipsters, lots of more funky-ish things than in the neighboring Pankow or Mitte.
However, despite all my second-hand browsing, I found myself at H&M when I realized I had to dress up a little bit, and didn’t have any flats with me. I brought a pair of wedges, but they didn’t match at all. Therefore, I got a pair of cheetah print flats from H&M … so worth it.
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Anyway, afterwards we all met at Potsdamer Platz, and went to go see a musical “Hinterm Horizont.” (behind the horizon) It’s love story about Udo Lindenberg, this huge rock star from the 80s and whatnot. He’s not allowed to give a concert in the East, while he says some stuff that is sort of disrespectful to the DDR leaders. Anyway, finally he gives this concert, where he meets this girl, Jessie, who is the daughter of a pro-DDR guy. They instantly fall in love, and later on she has a kid that Udo doesn’t know about.
These advertisements are freaking everywhere
They couldn’t be together because of the wall, and some other reasons like “oh I thought you ratted me out to the Stasi” and whatnot. There’s also a side story about her brother flying over the wall, and her getting married to somebody who could take care of her, and the entire musical is framed in another story. The modern-day story is that this young journalist is trying to find out whether Udo really had a “Mädchen aus Ostberlin” (title of one of his songs “young girl from east berlin” or something to that effect) and so she finds that girl, and asks her about her life. Then the entire story plays out. Then Jessie’s now 23 year old son totters home and is like “wait, my dad’s not my dad?” then he meets his real dad, Jessie sees Udo for the first time in 23 years, and they sing the title song once more, they appear to still be in love with each other, but Jessie’s still married, and then the musical ends.
The end.
Udo is perpetually a little drunk. Unfortunately, he has this really distinctive muttering voice, and everything’s a little slurred, so I think we understood maybe like 20% of the words, and most of it we had to infer from context. It’s a good thing we went over it together in class… because context is so easy to get wrong. He also always wears this hat with a little star on it.
The hat. And the characters too I guess.
To tell you how much I actually understood, here’s an example.
We read this song—the title song of the musical, called “Hinterm Horizont” (Side note: the old guy didn't exist in the actual musical-- he's the real Udo Lindenberg, and wrote all the music... then had a younger guy play him in the musical) before we went to go see it, and in this song, there’s this line:
“Dun und ich das war einfach unschlagbar ein Paar wie Blitz und Donner”
“You and I were simply unbeatable- a pair like thunder and lightning.”
It’s very very dramatic, they’re singing it, lights, stage smoke, etc.
I had read it as “a pair like Blitz and Donner”… the reindeer. I was like “okay this makes no sense. You guys were like a pair of crappy reindeer? And isn’t it Donner and Blitzen?
Then the next day I saw the word “Donner” in the context of weather… “oh. That all makes a lot more sense.”
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