Yesterday I walked to the späti near my place to grab a package that had been delivered there. In Germany, the delivery guy will give your package to someone else if you’re not home (and oftentimes even if you are), usually a neighbor you’ve never even heard of before. Otherwise they take it to any nearby store that accepts deliveries, which is pretty much all of them. I’ve had to pick up packages from hair salons and coffeeshops. But more often than not, they drop them off at the closest späti.

A späti, which is a cute nickname for spätkauf (literally “late shop”), is a sort of corner store. It’s a Berlin Thing. There’s a späti every thirty feet or so, many with their own unique personalities, and they resemble American gas station convenience stores. At minimum, they will have food and drinks and sell cigarettes and lotto tickets and aspirin and condoms and iPhone chargers, and on and on, but sometimes you find a really nice späti that has hot food and beer on tap. There are spätis with full-blown restaurant areas or little rooms in the back where you can play slot machines and smoke cigarettes with old dudes until the sun comes up. Most of them will have tables and chairs outside, and people really do hang out there, especially on weekends. In the US, there are signs posted everywhere saying you can’t loiter outside a 7-11, for instance, or else suffer the police . . . but in Berlin, chillin around a späti is an honest-to-god Thing To Do on a Friday night.

My neighborhood späti, which is about a hundred feet from my front door, is named after an insect and is run by a small family. They have fresh pastries every morning and an espresso machine. Usually in the afternoon there will be a bunch of old dudes in there playing chess or cards. You can always find the neighborhood homeless dude drinking coffee there too. And all day every day, people sit on the picnic tables outside as though it were a cafe in Paris. Listen: I love it.

For whatever reason, this particular package was not sent to my späti, but to the one next to the looming cathedral by the U-bahn station. I had never been to this one. Inside, a nice lady behind the counter said hello to me. I asked her in German if she spoke English, and she said, “Of course I do.” I told her I had a package there and handed her my Austrian ID. She looked at it, then raised her head up to compare it to my face, and smiled. She leaned down and pulled out a small package with my last name written on the side.

She said: “I remember this package specifically because you live in the same building as my mother. I’m there all the time, so I’m surprised I’ve never seen you.”

I told her I lived like Count Dracula, and unless she was in the stairwell after midnight, it wasn’t likely that she’d have seen me. I said: “Well, I’m on the fourth floor, so if you ever need me to check on her, just let me know . . .” And you know what: I meant it. Why not?

I said goodbye and went back out onto the street. It was so beautiful outside that I wanted to cry. It was breezy and balmy, a real summer day. Despite being utterly cursed until the day I die, and a sort of disaster of a person in some regards, I have somehow fallen ass-backgrounds into living in one of the nicest neighborhoods I can think of. And I don’t even pay much money to live here! I thought this as I walked down tree-lined streets filled with happy people and lined with restaurants and coffeeshops and pet stores and spätis. I thought: “You really pulled it off, you dumb son of a bitch . . .”

Anyway: It’s always nice to have a reason to visit another späti. I have so many of them within a half-mile radius, some of them quite nice, and for god’s sake I want to see all of them. As someone whose only weakness is the sun, I of course like stores that stay open real late, and so of course I love spätis. Seeing one glowing in the darkness on an empty street in the middle of the night is a source of comfort when you’re feeling rotten as hell and wandering around, AS I AM WONT TO DO. And knowing that I can stroll inside at 3 am ripped out of my skull on psychedelics and buy a €2 beer and a novelty lighter that says “Livin’ el Dream” without judgement? Well baby, then aloha~