nightwalker

It is late. I am restless, and descend from my tower to pace. survey the realm.
Places should all be closed by this hour, concerts over, kids asleep. And there is a certain stillness, quietness to a Sunday midnight. Still, there are many many exceptions. Oranienburger is decked in its perpetual post dusk glow (tourists roam drunken, lost, loud, overwhelmed, euphoric; prostitutes pout—dotting the way like sugar candy in plastic pink wrapping and black laces; dealers lounge in the gated doorways of Tacheles courtyard; the new 24 hour health food snack store glares green from across the tram station, and all is right with the mitte world). So I wander in a wide circle, past these lights, around to Tor (the last fruit and beer stands still open, grapes for sale) peer in schokoladen as I pass, then back down through some winding way finding the right path half by instinct and half by following the blinking light of the tv tower.
It is still one of the things I love about berlin that you can walk down not just one, but even two or three streets in the very middle of the city and not see a soul. As though the night retains a certain sacredness.