German youth wearing gas mask

Today I took the train to the Olympic Stadium AKA Olympiastadion that was built for the 1936 Summer games.

My parents are going to the 2009 World Track & Field Championships in Berlin and I wanted to see how long it takes to get to the Stadium so that I can give them good advice on where to stay.

As I was walking from the train station to the Olympischer Platz, I passed two men holding hands and I thought that was nice. Then I walked behind a group of teenagers, one of whom was wearing a GAS MASK.

Um, what?

There wasn't a cloud in the sky of regular old water vapor much less a cloud of noxious gases or any obvious chemical warfare taking place.

Nope, it was a beautiful, bright, hot spring day, the kind of day that makes me fixate on beer gardens and feta salads, the kind of experience that would be completely f'ed up in a gas mask.

Oh well, I wore safety pins as earrings at one point and made up a fake band with Sunny called Jaysus and Jessica, the A in Jaysus being an anarchy symbol so I may know what that kid is going through.

After strolling down Jesse-Owens-Allee, I took the train to the beer garden. I busted out my order in German for a feta salad after rehearsing in line for ten minutes only to get a verbal slap down: they were out of feta.

Okay, I said, I'll have the salad with spargel even though for all I knew, spargel is German for dogshit. Bring it.

And they did: grilled white asparagus with the kind of lettuce English people call rocket, AND pumpkin seeds, AND strawberries. It was so good I would have spooned it through my gas mask if I'd needed.