Neon lights shine brine by night. Where Karl Marx Straße lacks in charm and aes­thet­ics by day­light, this street knows how to be flashy as soon as the sun goes down and the neon shop– and head­lights go on.

The patch between Rathaus Neuk­ölln and Karl-Marx-Str. U-Bahn sta­tion seems espe­cially mag­netic to pecu­liar situ­ations. The shops, flank­ing each foot­path, are on their cheap & trashy A-Game. Here’s a list of things you’re bound to find on Karl-Marx-Strasse (if you’re ever look­ing for them):

- fake new gen­er­a­tion iPods for 5 €
 – chop­sticks of every god­damn pos­sible kind
 – weird neo-goth-pop-electronic con­certs (includ­ing awk­ward per­form­ance) in thug headquar­ters Pic­aldi
 – people who will not let you go unless take their pic­ture and then have someone else take a pic­ture of you with them

Fun times were had. We had an ini­tial reason for going down to Karl-Marx-Straße: there was sup­posed to be a Fest­ival of Lights type of hap­pen­ing called the “Late Light Shop­ping”. We found three or four build­ings that were enlightened, but were more pas­sion­ate about dis­cov­er­ing the street in its “nat­ural” state. In the course of the night, Elisa and I:

- acci­dently set off the alarm of a park­ing lot exit door and ran away
 – had pic­tures taken with four dif­fer­ent guys
 – had our pic­tures taken (six times) to be dis­played on a bill­board above the C&A
 – were given free mandarins

One of the greater things about Ber­lin is how you can just go out on the street, with no plans or inten­tions, and sud­denly you’ll be caught up for hours in excite­ment and hap­pi­ness. No clubs, no res­taur­ants, no cafés: basic inter­ac­tions with other people and an open mind are some­times all that’s neces­sary for a good por­tion of entertainment.

Also: neon lights are awesome.