Saturday morning starts early in Berlin, where everyone is already out enjoying their breakfast. In Germany, they use breakfast as a verb. They breakfast their croissants, with waffles and cream. Next to us sit a table of three, breakfasting some waffles, using a knife and fork to cut the chaos of the waffles into tiny, chewable slices.

I’m getting flashbacks to back home, to Pancakes on the Rocks, to midnight waffles with chocolate sauce, which were far less elegant and far less French. 

“Everyone is happy at the Café Fleury,” I say.

It sounds like a film title, or an avant-garde play where it turns out that no one is truly happy and that we are all, ultimately, alone. 

A man walks past us clutching a beer, as if his night never ended. The night never does end in Berlin. The previous night, the doorman told us 3am was an early time for us to leave. “Is that so?” I asked him. “It’s the truth,” he replied. The doorman then told us he had already made two feature films. “My first feature was three hours long. This time I’m going conservative at 1.5. I know what you’re going to ask, what are my inspirations? Herzog. Mainly Herzog. I like the way he fractures reality with basic questions.”

The crowd had, since then, been covered in smoke, to the point where the individual faces were disappearing. Techno music blared out on the speakers, but with a slow beat. So slow that it could have been replaced by a tribute band playing love songs. The Berliners swayed and danced, their faces neon green flashes in the smokey husk of the night. This was how the night always ended, with a dance. They were muted and almost sad on the dance floor. But everyone was always happy at the Café Fleury.

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This is part of a short zine of mine titled: Love, Travel and Italian Wine.

This short publication is now available for pre-order on Amazon.