Bizarre Public Scenes

Menopaws

While in Madrid, I ran into an enormous group of people playing a life-sized game of Pac-Man. There were people dressed up as ghosts, people holding "power pellets" and, of course, Pac-Man himself.

Zombie Kohlhaas

In Berlin, I saw an overweight, middle-aged, shirtless man (mind you, this was in February during the coldest winter since 1976) running down the street and into the U-Bahn station. The whole time, he was shouting, "Ich bin der Bundeskanzler! Ich bin der Bundeskanzler!" ("I'm the federal chancellor!")

A couple months later, someone came up to a group I was standing with outside a movie theater and said to us, in German, "I'm the President of the United States." My professor wasn't even weirded out and just casually replied, "Nice to meet you!"

I guess some Berliners like to pretend to be heads of state.

Zeus McBadass

I was talking to a friend of mine at school about our classes; specifically what subjects we really didn't like. We ended up getting into a pretty serious discussion and went on like that for a while until we both spotted the same guy coming down the path toward us. He was tall and lanky with long, unwashed hair and what I can only think to describe as improvised roller-skates on his feet. They were just normal shoes with big hinged wheels nailed to them; the kind of wheels you'd find on a wooden dolly. You know the kind, they never move in one direction, they always shake about and make moving anything impossible. This dude has to convulse his body in such a strange way to propel himself in these goofy things that my friend and I just stared at him until he was out of sight.

Nibelheim

I saw a what seemed to be 10 year old child playing with a Rubik's cube.

The thoughts that went through my mind: "Wow, it's good to see SOME kids are exerting mental activity in this damned neighborhood".

And then, the kid proceeded to throw the cube, and play fetch with it for 5 minutes. In a grocery store.

Spookypen

I remember walking in downtown Minneapolis one night (always a good idea) and coming up on two guys waiting at an intersection for the light to change, I overheard the last part of their conversation where one of the guys said to the other "I don't care what he says, I'll MAKE him smoke crack.", then they drove off.