I Got Punched in the Face on the Kurfürstendamm

This is a story about an idiot, a piece of shit, and looong spoons.

Yesterday after taking a nice coffee and croissant with my friend Nick, we rounded the corner back onto the high street Kurfürstendamm, which is filled with fancy clothes and self-care shops.

I saw him coming. An "Albanian", a witness would later say, with his arm around his woman, walking on the wrong, (aka right) side of the sidewalk. He did not move, leaving no room for us to pass, and as we crossed, I brushed his woman.

Having that bovine inability to self-reflect, he took it as a grave insult that he navigated his woman into on-coming traffic, and the whole world did not get out of his way.

So he turned and started shouting at me.

Now, a quick digression…

There is… as I have heard it… an old African tale of Heaven and Hell.

If you go down to Hell, you find a group of people sitting in a circle around a big soup pot, all with looong spoons, but all the people are getting shitty because the spoons are too long to reach their mouths, so they cannot eat.

Then, you go up to heaven, and the scene is the same. A bunch of people sitting around a big soup pot, all with these looong spoons. Only in Heaven all the people are feeding each other.

Being from the future, I make for myself great misery out of the fact that we choose (and are induced) to live in Hell instead of Heaven. And often my responses to this situation make me an idiot.

I take great offense when we choose not to think of each other, even in something as simple as making room for each other on the sidewalk.

So this guy yelling at me because he was thoughtless, it bothered me, and I turned and told him so, gesticulating for him to come make something of it.

Then I woke up on the sidewalk, bleeding profusely from the nose.

I stood up. Nick was there, and several kind Germans. An old woman gave me some tissues. A young couple ran and got the police. People from the fancy stores brought me water and paper towels.

Soon I stopped bleeding, and cleaned the blood from my face and hands.

But my beautiful new hoodie, my overcoat, my pants and my Mephistos were all sprayed with blood.

And worse, there was an enormous knot on the back of my head, and a pain in my jaw and across the bridge of my nose. I felt queasy and woozy. And deeply embarassed. I didn’t even see the punch coming. He knocked me out cold… and seemingly worried that I was dead… tried to help me up before running away like the piece of shit that he is.

After some debate, Nick and I agreed that I should go to the hospital, something I would NEVER have done at home in the USA. That way lies financial ruin.

But the kindly bike cops called the ambulance, and after some minutes, two strapping firemen showed up in an ambulance, checked me, and told me that for a more thorough evaluation I would need to go to the hospital.

Again, after some debate, Nick and I agreed I would go, and he would stay, and the firemen drove me out to the Western edge of the city, the only conscious ride I can ever remember taking in an ambulance.

The young doctor named Daniel told me they wanted to do a CT scan, but that it would take some time, so they put me in a bed with an ice pack and I went into a fugue state, finally emerging some hours later, convinced I was fine. I almost left.

But as I connected to the internet to communicate with Nick, I texted my mom, and as soon as I did, I knew I would stay for the scan. Of course she would tell me to do it. So I had a few more hours in the German hospital, watching the ailments of the people of Berlin trickle in and out.

I saw the aftermath of a panic attack, a heart attack, and some things that looked much worse.

And I had time to reflect on what it means to be in a high-trust society, where the system, if not the people, feed each other with long spoons.

Despite the over-conformity and the fear of embarrassment I touched on the other day, people looked out for me, and the system looked out for me, in a way it wouldn’t back home in the U.S.

From the kindly strangers, to the friendly bike cops and the helpful shop workers, and the ambulance drivers and the hospital staff, I felt taken care of. Looong spoons.

Because Germany is a country, not a business, unlike the good ol’ USA.

Finally, Doctor Daniel re-appeared and told me that my skull was intact, but that my nose was ever-so-slightly broken, probably in the same spot where that dim-witted marine head-butted me all those years ago on a cold December night out front of Bernie’s Bungalow in Anchorage, when I bled upon the snow. (I never did get that checked out.)

Also, I don’t seem to have brain cancer, which was a mild concern I never could have resolved for just $250 back in New York.

After 5 hours in the hospital, and after paying them the relatively modest fee, Doctor Daniel gave me some papers in German, and a CD with my brain scan on it, and I briskly walked my ass the four miles back to the hotel.

Nick and I did some hypno, had dinner, and then I had a long semi-sleepless night filled with shame, fear and regret.

By this morning, a decent shiner had appeared under my eye, the bruise on my ass had knotted up, and the bump on my skull had all but evaporated. And I was able to get most of the blood out of my clothes.

So I got knocked out cold in Berlin. But we all know what Nietzsche had to say about damage.

I‘m a firm believer in doing soft things in hard ways.

Editing this at Berlin Hauptbahnhof, waiting on my train to Schwerin, which my great-great grandfather left for Wisconsin 130 years ago. Don’t know where I’ll sleep. But I trust in the wander. And the German medical system.

Written at Taqueria Florian, which doesn’t serve tacos, but does serve decent coffee, with old men smoking and flipping through their newspapers, in the Kreuzberg district of old West Berlin.