Paradise Lost

One day a few years back I was hanging out in Berlin, Germany.  Muck'n it up with
the squatter kids and searching for Paradise.  Living the romantic life of filth, and slums,
eating trash and stolen food, trading in cans for beer and giving the rest of the world and other life styles the big middle finger.  What the hell.. it was all fun for a little bit.
Anyways... I was really broke.  I had a few dollars left to my name which I needed for a ferry and a bus ticket to catch my flight back.  I didn't feel very welcomed with the squatter kids even though
they were nice enough to give me a space to sleep.  I didn't look or talk like them so I felt excluded.
I don't blame them you have all of these free-loading kids and hippies that have some dreamy ideals
of squats floating in and out of their home as the pleased.  Thus my naive search for utopia was coming to and end.
Anyways, so I played the part for a little bit.  Collecting beer cans where ever I could find them
and returning them for a little cash, watching people eat their food and licking their plate after they
left.  I was  garbage picking, beer steeling, can collecting scum.  I was proud of it for a while until
I realized how desperate I really was and how my life was becoming fixated on money because my
lack of it.  I hated this.  So I decided Fuck it with the cans.  Fuck it with money and a whole
new world opened up to me.  I made a friend and she invited me to go down to France and partake
in this anti-nuclear walk, where we would get fed if we marched with them.  So we hitch hiked down with some fast driving Germans in a sports car.  When we met them it was in this little french town and a local anti-nuclear supporter bought everyone pizza and let us sleep in her house.  The hospitality of the French was unbelievable fresh fruit Breads and cheeses at every town from supporters. 
I've taken 2 trips of this kind.  Both times I went with very little money, running out towards the end.  Going through of period of suffering from lack of money fallowed by me saying "fuck it" fallowed
by having some magical experience that I wouldn't have otherwise had if I did have money.