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Not surprisingly, pot -- stories about it, hints on where to get it, (occasionally) the smell of it -- is big at youth hostels, including the one I'm currently calling home. The other night, for example, featured a Canadian stoner holding forth on bong construction techniques: For a guy who seemed amazingly out of his head even whilst sober, he had an astounding grasp of engineering principles. There is something vaguelly disturbing about somebody who measures hits in terms of liters, as he reminisced about his favorite "bong bucket," featuring a three-liter soda bottle. Then there was the Australian bloke who spent his New Year's Eve with a group of Italians who had spent two days making the 10-hour trip from Milan to Berlin. In their baggage: quart-bags filled with homegrown green stuff -- understandably leading to a longer-than-average trip.
------- Wednesday, January 2 The smell of gunpowder has finally vanished, as a chilling rain (the only sort of rain I've encountered in Hamburg) swept clean the skies. Since New Year's Eve -- known as Silvester 'round these parts -- though, the spoor of firecrackers filled the city, as the snap, crackle and pop of explosives helped usher in 2002 some six hours before I'm used to seeing the New Year show up. A traditional German way to usher out the old year and bring in the new, te fireworks brought a sense of the change to all my sense: my ears and mouth filled with the aformentioned burning saltpeter, my ears startled by the boom of an exploding quarterstick, my eyes dazzeled by the lightshow barely glimpsed around downtown building, my sense of touch brought into play with the shock of contact running up my leg when I kick the little thug who just threw a frickin' fire cracker at me.
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