In the dream, the first thing I did was wake up. I was really tired. I found myself surrounded by various painting utensils: brushes, spray cans, buckets filled with black oil paint. I had brought these to my apartment on the previous day (that was part of why I was so tired), with the intention to vandalize the housing block I live in, in a silent but visual, and hopefully viral, protest against the corporation that owns the housing block. Given, though, that I was rather tired (and it was also late at night), this appeared like a daunting task to me. So I thought why not do something much simpler, something that would double as practice for my spraying skills. I would go to go to U Mohrenstraße and rename it to U Möhrenstraße, ad hoc and on the spot. I packed my bag (probably REWE, or maybe NORMA) and left the apartment.
The elevator didn't come, and after a while, my neighbor appeared and joined me in waiting. My neighbor had once said to me: Our elevator is like the U8 - on average, you have to wait for five minutes. Tonight, it was taking considerably longer, and the dream became rather static. A metal door that wouldn't open, and a display that would display numbers, even though not always in ascending order. I was thinking about the U8, wondering if it was still running, wondering what time it was, and what day of the week, wondering if U1 (which wasn't running anyway) would be shorter, and realized that I was getting tired, and slightly dizzy. This went on for a while. But when the elevator door finally opened, and I saw my own self in the mirror (my neighbor had given up and gone back to bed), that dizzyness gave way to sudden clarity, in form of a rather fantastic idea. I wouldn't leave my neighborhood at all, just walk up one block, and rename that bar I sometimes frequent to Chez Moineau(1). (The bar will remain anonymous, but it's near Oranien Ecke Adalbert, and it's named after a flower of a specific color. Bit cliché, but who cares.) I really liked that idea. However, for some reason - the elevator was moving downwards, but at a velocity that seemed unusually slow - I was worried that everything was taking forever and that I was getting late. Even though that bar is pretty much 24/7, and renaming it wouldn't require it to be open at all, but that wasn't my line of thinking. My line of thinking was, basically: Lets go, lets do this.
I rushed out the elevator, out the front door, out the yard and up one block of Adalbertstraße, just to find out, to my absolute horror and amazement, that the bar in question had just (the red paint was still fresh) renamed itself - not to Chez Moineau, however, but to Chez Michel(2). It was immediately apparent to me that this was a *really* bold move: they would prey on tourists with a dining plan, catch them one block early and serve them fake belgian food out of a fake french bistro, just for fun and profit, even though a bit of desperation must have played a role. In fact, the "terrace" (no more than two or three tables with wooden benches) was filled with foreign visitors, and the bar staff was busy serving them moules frites - a stunt that, in a month without the letter "r" in it, and at 30+ degrees celsius (it was a hot summer night), even the original Chez Michel would have very much refrained from trying to pull off. I thought (or at least I think that I thought that, but it could be that this is a post-factum addition from when I shared the dream for the first time): Oh man, Corona will be _so_ over... food poisoning is going to be the big new thing on the block. Still awestruck, I walked into the bar, which I knew had no kitchen, only to find out that the moules were coming out of a white bucket that was sitting on the floor in front of the slot machines, that for some reason the moules were all rather white-ish, or beige at best, and that one staff member was busy painting them black with oil paint. (I had long lost the bag containing my utensils, but in the dream, I didn't realize that.)
The end of the dream came rather quickly. I must have ordered a drink at the bar, I had put some money into the Jukebox, but the interface was rather complicated, just like IRL, and I ended up selecting Nirvana's "Rape Me" twice in a row, by accident. I turned around, the bar was full of hipster tourists, I knew they wouldn't like the music, I think that someone beat me, but not very hard. Either way, I ended up on the floor, uninjured, but kind of tired, and it was also rather hot, so I decided that this was a good moment to go home. Looking at the ceiling, which had been painted red and white, including some social distancing advice, partially obscured by hipster tourists, I knew I had a plan, and in a sharp upward movement, I woke up from the dream. (I didn't find myself surrounded by painting utensils, because I had forgotten to fetch them the day before, and I would give up on that plan a few days later anyway.)
(1) https://www.google.com/search?q=chez+moineau&tbm=isch, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letterist_International