Downtown
A weekly activity during my teenage years in ██████████ was going "into the city," which meant taking either my bike or the tram to downtown and following an almost ritually fixed path that took a few hours to complete, incorporating stops that satisfied all my special interests.
I usually started at Cocktail, a small but well-stocked comic book store where I would spend at least an hour browsing graphic novels, peeking into the rather explicitly pornographic pages of Heavy Metal, getting lost in the works of Moebius, or checking the latest arrivals in the manga section, especially anything involving mechas or cyberpunk themes. I became a devoted fan of the Appleseed series and bought each German translation as it was released.
One snack option was then to head to McDonald's, find a corner, stuff myself with a McRib or Big Mac, and lose myself in Kino News, the free periodical from the counter featuring reviews of upcoming films. That generally provided enough energy to handle the next obvious destination: Galeria Horten, an enormous seven-floor department store in a horrendous post-war modernist style, instantly recognizable for its glass facade and dizzying tile patterns wrapped around its cubiform mass.
Caring nothing for the excessively intrusive nightmare of surplus goods and squirming hordes of consumers, I usually entered through a side-entrance and headed straight for the book section in the rear left corner of the ground floor to check the latest science fiction paperback releases. Then I'd sneak into the tucked-away elevator just around the corner, avoiding the horror of having to navigate the deliberately deceptive escalator maze, and ride up to the music CD section on the fourth floor. Back when I was still in my pre-metal alternative rock phase, I discovered a huge amount of music here by choosing random releases based purely on the album art, and asking the guy at the counter if I could give them a listen. The fastest escape route from here was up to the next floor, a huge cafeteria with panoramic windows overlooking the 1960s vision of progress below: tramlines, bus platforms, and multilane roads tangled together in a pedestrian nightmare. A separate glass elevator connected the cafeteria directly to ground zero, providing a swift escape.
To recover from the exhausting experience of Horten, I avoided the main pedestrian shopping mile of Hauptstraße and strolled along a much quieter parallel street all the way into the heart of the old town. The only reason to venture into this tourist-trap was a small, easily overlooked shop in a side alley called Fantasy Island. In its dark, cramped room, packed to the ceiling with board games, tabletop role-playing games, model-building kits, dice in every imaginable shape and color, books, and collectibles I felt like in a hidden sanctuary for nerds. At random times, half of the already far too small shop would be blocked by groups of highly concentrated, long-haired, bearded adepts of Warhammer, carefully moving platoons of self-painted dwarfs, orcs, and other armored creatures across large tables covered in minutely detailed three-dimensional landscapes resembling distant planets or fantasy worlds, where epic wars were underway. I watched these events in envy and awe or sat in a corner studying books filled with schematic blueprints of mechs I recalled from the Battletech novels I was into at the time.
My social batteries recharged but now hungry, I would usually head back through the Hauptstraße, sometimes grabbing a taco or bratwurst on the way. My last destination before heading home was a large toy store tucked away in a crowded shopping arcade, where I would try out the latest releases for Nintendo and Sega consoles if other kids allowed me or browse through card games and toy weapons.
In later years, when my tastes in music and reading had evolved toward more sophisticated niche genres, I tended to avoid the crowded places altogether and spend more time in some of the more off-the-beaten-path shops. Bookstores aimed at a more academic or university student crowd attracted me like magnets, and I would take detours to hidden backyard record stores that had lesser-known artists in stock for me to discover, with staff who were generally far more knowledgeable and patient than those in the mainstream places.
Another option was always the public library, a place I had loved ever since I first stepped into it as a child. I remember spending hours and hours poring over comics and scientific picture books, and later discovering authors I would read obsessively, such as Stanisław Lem or H.P. Lovecraft. They even had a small occult book section in which I spent far too much time. And CDs to borrow (and illegally copy to cassette tapes). I vividly recall countless afternoons in that library, carrying around notes of things I needed to research to satisfy my curiosity and fill in gaps that our Encarta '95 CD-ROM encyclopedia at home could only insufficiently cover.
In retrospect, "downtown" was the chronotope of my teenage becoming. Those weekly trips were how I discovered music, books, art, ideas, and subcultures that shaped my identity. When I'm in ██████████ I still occasionally walk the same route, though almost none of the shops still exist. And yet these ghosts of places continue to carry my memories: specific albums, books, games, moments of discovery, even moods I was in when they happened. Encountering culture then felt tangible and biographical, tied to places, moments, chance, rather than the timeless, placeless abundance of the digital today. God, I sound old.