"Five Go Mad in Berlin" Berlin Travelogue by antistar

German Reunification weekend, 1- 3 October 2004.

My faith in the world famous efficiency of the Germans was shattered in Lichtenfels. I'd long argued with people that, while the German economy may not be in the best of shape, at least the trains still ran on time. Some had tried to tell me that this was a myth, and that the screens of detailed itineraries I showed them from Die Bahn's website, with its connections timed down to the minute, were not evidence that the system actually worked this way. I didn't want to believe them. I had a vision of Germany's railway network that was like Japan's Shinkansen, with trains arriving and departing the very second they were scheduled to. When the ultra-modern ICE to Berlin pulled in at Lichtenfels Bahnhof nearly half an hour late, I was in shock.

The train itself looked fantastical, like someone had taken the early 70s designs for the space shuttle and stretched them for half a kilometer. It was just as impressive inside, and Craig, Martin, Hanno, Luciano and I were lucky enough to get front row seats, with a view inside the space age cockpit through the glass divider. Well, it was actually back row seats, until the train changed direction in Leipzig, but that's probably just as well. Once the driver got into his seat at the front, he greyed out the divider, which led us to believe he was covering up the fact that he didn't have anything to do between stations, other than press the stop/start button and surf the Internet from his view screen. That, or he just wanted to make the little boy, who had walked all the way from the back of the train to stare goggle-eyed through the glass screen, cry like a little baby.

The journey to Berlin itself was long and relatively uneventful, with Hanno seemingly intent on impressing his fellow passengers with his overtly flash modeling skills on his laptop. Luciano slept, and Craig sat uncomfortably next to a burlesque German woman who occasionally bawled sweetly into her mobile phone. Martin slept a lot too, sitting next to me, but did manage to provide the journey's only moment of light entertainment when he got up to go for a cigarette in the dining carriage. "How do you open this door", he asked, perplexed and somewhat dopey from sleep, head bobbing slightly in response to the gentle movements of the train, standing in front of clear and transparent nothingness. "It's already open, mate," I replied.

I have to admit my first impressions of Berlin were not good. After arriving we immediately took the underground to Warschauerstrasse, and on exiting I was presented with what looked like a super-sized Coventry. Now anyone who has been to Coventry, in the deepest West Midlands of England, will tell you it is not a pretty sight, suffering as it did from some of the worst post-war blight that any council planners inflicted on a people anywhere. Coventry is an ugly, grey, concrete corpse of a once proud city, bombed flat during the Second World War, and then rebuilt in such a way as to make the inhabitants unsure if they'd actually prefer the burnt out ruins instead. In Berlin, the streets of towering two-tone foggy grey concrete slabs stretched out along wide traffic filled boulevards of rainy grey tarmac, and were lined with dingy grey pavements that were covered in dirty brown dog ***.

A tight squeeze in Hanno's apartment.

That was East Berlin, though, and the suburbs of inner city East Berlin at that. This was the Stalinist paradise of post-war East Germany, with just a hint of Soviet bitterness thrown in, and towering two-tone concrete slabs were de rigueur in Communist architecture circles of the time. It was also Berlin, and Berlin is ten times cooler than most other cities, just by mere fact of being Berlin; Coventry just doesn't even rate. The similarities between Berlin's Friedrichshain and Coventry's Hillfields are just skin deep, and begin and end with the grey facades of the housing projects themselves. The people of East Berlin are a world apart from Coventry. Rather than being feral, knife wielding, inbred dogs, donning cheap Kappa sportswear, the population of Friedrichshain were young, relaxed, friendly, and altogether better dressed.

Hanno introduced us to his apartment on Hiedenfeld Strasse, the Heathen Fields, before we went on what was to be one of many long adventures across the city. This one was purely by foot, and took us through the park with the angry dog and the suspicious wafts of smoke of strong green cannabis, and past the shrieking looney-tune throwing plastic bollards at innocent pedestrians. Hanno took us to the San Diego Mexican Steak Bar Restaurant, which was run by grinning Argentinean ex-pats. The food was incredibly cheap, even by German standards, but also very good. Martin and Craig tucked into a mixed grill of kangaroo, ostrich and reindeer, while I took a slightly less adventurous option of hacksteak, washing it all down with a good amount of ice cold Berlin pilsner.

Hanno's apartment was not as big as he'd led us to believe. From his descriptions it would easily fit five people for the weekend. On returning to Hiedenfeld Strasse it quickly became apparent that this was going to be a tight squeeze, unless someone slept on the table or in the bath. It wasn't so much that Hanno's apartment was small, it was that it was piled high with Hanno's haphazardly placed belongings. There were no beds, there were no sofas - there were just boxes and tables, and three mattresses to be shared between five people. I quickly got the idea, and grabbed a narrow mattress to wedge between the central pile of tables and shelves, and the radiators below the windows. After some minor negotiations everyone else sorted themselves out so that nobody's feet were pushed in anybody else's faces, and we were done.

It was long past midnight by this point, but we'd only laid out the beds in order for them to be ready for when we staggered in from the clubs later on that morning. We were all planning on a quick scrub-up before we hit the bars, but for some reason Luciano was holding everyone up, hogging the bathroom like a procrastinating prima donna. We all assumed he was prettying himself up for a night out, but when he finally came out of the bathroom, he was a little shocked to see us still standing around, bouncing up and down with excitement, and talking energetically about the night ahead. "Why you not getting ready for bed?", Luciano asked suspiciously. When he discovered that we weren't planning on sleeping at all just yet, he lay face down on his pillow saying, "no no no no no no no no".

So, less one sleepy Italian, we headed off on the second of our cross-town treks with Hanno. After seemingly endless tram journeys and a quick marathon walk, we arrived at the "Roter Salon" in Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz. The club was advertising itself with posters as some kind of Indie Britpop noise session, which sounded worth the six euros the grumpy door staff were charging. However, once inside, we found that we'd been conned. It was not Indie Britpop at all, but DJ Thomas Bohnet with his Tour de France blaring out never-before-heard-by-non-francophone tunes in unfathomable French. Hanno was despondent. I was enthralled. Craig and Martin couldn't care less as long as they had beer in front of them.

Hermannstrasse

Hanno was upset because the place was relatively empty, and wasn't playing the music he'd brought us to listen to. He was unhappy that we weren't being entertained in proper Berlin fashion. I, on the other hand, was enchanted by the idea of Berliners so eclectic in their musical taste that not only would they come along to a Französicher Musik night, but they would also be such regular patrons of the event that they knew all the words to sing along to. I tried to impress this upon Hanno, but he was too far gone. Nothing was going to change his mood while we were in that club. Craig and Martin were staring, goggle-eyed like the train obsessed boy on the ICE to Berlin, at a young couple as they enthusiastically made passionate virtual love to each other on the bar, behind the bar, on the dance floor, on the sofa, before finally disappearing behind a meter high stall.

Like Hanno, I soured on the club towards the end, when I realised that the people in the club weren't actually Berliners with an eclectic musical taste, but just French people, living in Berlin. It's not that I don't like French people, and I liked the music so much I bought the album, it's just that going to Berlin to watch French people dance to French music wasn't exactly what I had envisaged of a weekend in the German capital. Still, despite being 3am, or some other god awful early hour of the morning, the night was not over yet. We headed home, but Hanno had another adventure in store for us. On the way back we were to check in on some friends of his at a bar in Prenzlauer Berg, called Scotch and Sofa.

If I'd gone home then, I would have got just enough sleep, and would have been sober enough to avoid a hangover of any note. This would have left me perfectly placed for the long action packed day ahead of me. Instead, Hanno's friends were up and active, and we were soon sat down, drinking beer and pretending to read from the tatty-edged German pulp-fiction romance booklets scattered about, with names like "Der Pirat und Die Dame". "One beer", I tried to tell myself, "just one more beer and no more." But soon the complimentary schnapps came out, plus the complimentary free beer and more free beer, and the “boy was I going to have a headache the next day” free beer. Craig and Martin had a glass of burning absinthe each, because they just didn't care.

The next day I was bad. Really, terribly, horribly bad. We'd gone to bed about 7am, and Hanno had woken us up only a few hours later, because we just had to go on another expedition to watch a 15 minute movie premier that his friend had made. From Hanno's description I'd got the impression that this film was some terrible experimental student movie-making exercise, earnestly produced on grainy super-8, or shaky digicam. All that I knew is that it had something to do with machines that had sex with each other. Whatever it was, it was not tempting enough to persuade me to rise from my sickbed, and to drag myself through the streets of Berlin on a Saturday morning. Only the thought of being left alone in East Berlin to find the sights of the city alone, without a guidebook, and with a sore head, gave me the will to get up.

There were reminders of our antics from the night before lying around the room, not least of which was Luciano himself. He hadn’t been asleep when we'd burst in that morning, as we'd believed with the kind of naivety only drunken people possess. Instead we'd woken him with our shouting, stomping and stumbling about. He'd heard every word of our plan to "spank him with spanking sticks", and had probably feared for his rectal safety. There was also a note on the floor, which read, "I'm a dirty smoker with no will power". This had been plastered to Craig's forehead in the Scotch and Sofa, but somehow had made it back to the apartment.

Alexanderplatz

So off we went on another march across the Himalayas, this time to a cinema in Hermannstrasse. I didn't really know where we were going, and was oblivious to pretty much everything but the dull throbbing in my head, and the sick pit in my stomach. We were running late, mostly because of my dawdling, and Hanno was getting anxious. Nobody could really understand why Hanno was so intent on making it on time, when it was just some stupid experimental film after all. Most of us could live without watching machines banging at each other that afternoon, but we followed after Hanno, because we had no other idea what to do. "Nearly there", said Hanno, as we hiked up the hill. "Can't we walk some more?", I replied sarcastically, "I was just starting to enjoy it."

The cinema was teeming with film types. Old women with riots of straw-blonde hair, and smears of bright white foundation and thick red lipstick, and tall gangly men with carefully styled unkempt hair and rectangular, wire rimmed spectacles. It looked surprisingly high profile for what I'd thought was a mere student production. I was expecting a sofa and a video screen, rather than a couple of hundred film geeks in a movie theatre. The poster advertisement was impressive looking too, and with a professional looking sheen. And on the poster Craig discovered the reason for Hanno's anxiety. At the bottom of the poster, were the credits for the CGI Artist: Hanno Hagedorn. For some reason he had either forgotten to tell us, or was too humble to make a big deal about it.

The film was excellent, even if I did have to fight to stay awake during the full fifteen minutes of listening to the dulcet tones of the German narrator. Rather than being an experimental movie about factory equipment inserting pipes into each other in an erotic manner, it was in fact a short sardonic skit about the life of a Volvo digger, in the style of a nature documentary. The only shagging in the whole piece was when the two diggers mated. I'd failed to see any CGI in the film, and I was going to ask Hanno if his contribution to the movie had just been the credits, when he pointed out that the shagging soil shovellers were actually his creation, and purely computer generated. I was amazed, as I'd looked at that scene wondering how they'd got the diggers to perform that motion, thinking it was completely real. That's some talent.

Once the last of the closing credits had drifted off the edge of the big screen, I thought that it was finally time to get the coffee and cakes that my body desperately hungered for. But no. The director of the film had other plans for us. To my horror he went on to thank everyone and his dog for their considerable, or not so considerable, help in producing the film, waiting for laughs after incomprehensible German anecdotes, and for applause after each name was mentioned, including those of every Indonesian factory worker that had assembled the shoes he'd worn that afternoon. To make matters worse, he seemed to be staring at the centre of the cinema seats, at me, and all I wanted to do was to drift off into a million micro-sleeps.

"Tea and cakes", I said. "Now, before I die."

Hanno knew just the place, and it so happened that it was a very long way away. We took the U-Bahn to Alexanderplatz, walked, walked and walked some more, before finally arriving at what must be one of the last remaining bastions of Soviet-era East German cuisine. The place had it all. First there was the white plastic decor, tables and seats, looking just like a state hospital food hall. Then there were queues for barely identifiable food slopped out by grim faced sour fraus. The food was all potatoes and sausage, covered in sauces containing vast amounts of unhealthy artificial colours, and served with cheap acrid coffee in white cups of paper-thin plastic. It was cheap, though, and filling, and fitting for my first meal in der Alex, as it is affectionately known by the locals.

Anti-Reformation Demonstrations

The wide-open and empty space of Alexanderplatz is the focal point of East Berlin, and the subject of major remodeling by this part of the city's former Socialist masters. Der Alex was intended to be the showpiece of a utopian socialist republic, but in retrospect looks a little sorry for itself, and barely merits a mention in my 1100 page guide book to Germany. It was also the scene of the million strong demonstration that led to the tearing down of the wall in 1989, hence its iconic use in the opening titles of the wonderful film, "Goodbye, Lenin!" Personally I loved it, and found its sad reminders of former Stalinist glories quite endearing, but then again I'm a sucker for hard luck stories, and der Alex seemed like exactly that.

From der Alex we took off on another expedition, this time to take in as many of Berlin's key sights in the few hours we had before the party for the film premier kicked off. Swiftly bypassing the Fernsehturm, bizarrely closed on the afternoon of its 35th anniversary, we headed down Karl-Liebknecht Strasse, across the elegant river Spree, and past the stupendously ugly Palast der Republic, the rectangular 70s monstrosity covered from top to bottom in bronze mirrored windows, that reflected a colour of urinary mud. The Palast der Republik was fittingly the former residence of Erich Honecker and the government of East Germany. Also fittingly, we met a large demonstration coming in the opposite direction as we crossed the bridge. Some were even waving the old East German flag with its hammer and compass, in a ring of rye, to symbolise the working class, intelligentsia and farmers.

They were marching against the reforms that are hitting Germany hard, right about now. Germany has rampant unemployment, especially in the eastern states, where it is almost 20%. These reforms are bringing Germany in line with countries like the UK, stripping the juicy German social security system down to its bones. This is painful for any country, but for the people of East Germany, who were used to 100% employment and guaranteed housing, the uncertainty that this introduces into their lives is particularly upsetting. People have become angry and bitter over a dream of re-unification that didn't quite live up to expectations, and some would even prefer a return to the safe predictability of state controlled socialist poverty.

Past the marchers, and their accompanying escort of green suited, flak-jacketed Polizei, we moved up Unter den Linden (Under the Limetrees) and onto the unmistakable Brandenburg Gate. From the eastern side the Brandenburger Tor was a magnificent sight, framing the expansive Tiergarten behind it and the long straight boulevard that separated it. The Tor had been seared into my mind the night of October 3rd, 1989, when the once divided Germans met up on that very spot to join in enormous celebrations that were televised around the world. These were possibly the most powerful symbolic images of the whole Glasnost era, especially for me, and we were standing there, on the eve of Germany's 16th anniversary of this event. However, despite the fireworks and the Brazilian band playing in Alexanderplatz, it was a strangely subdued feeling for a national holiday of this significance. It seemed that the celebration of the Fernsehturm’s birthday was garnering more excitement.

One of these guys is not like the others.

From the Tor we passed between its tall columns, and onto the Reichstag, home of the new, unified German government. My most intimate experience of the building previous to this, was in Call of Duty's excellent recreation of the Soviet's Storming of the Reichstag, and seeing it in all its restored glory gave me a momentary flashback. Sitting in the enormous Tiergarten, taking a well earned rest from Hanno's concrete jungle safari, my eyes glazed over as I remembered charging bravely through the building's doors, courageously fending off a spirited German defence, before climbing to the roof to heroically plant the Soviet flag for all the world to see. This imagery contrasted markedly from the tranquil scene we experienced, lazing in the unusually warm October sun, almost completely alone in the entire grounds in front of the building. I thought this was quite amazing for such an important national treasure.

With Hanno to dutifully guide us through the myriad of Berlin's sights, there wasn't much time to rest before he took us on to Potzdamer Platz. Once the busiest traffic centres in all of Europe, the square was divided in two by the Berlin Wall, and subsequently became a ghost of its former self. In front of the main U-Bahn station we saw one of the few remnants of the wall, a tiny upright graffiti daubed slab, which groups of tourists huddled around for photographs. We tried to locate some more overt examples of the wall, but this proved surprisingly difficult, and we were running short of time. Before we headed off for that evening's film premier party, Hanno took us to one last sight, the Sony Center in West Berlin. Here I was struck how the imposing affluence of this area of town contrasted so sharply with the rather sad concrete of the east. The place simply oozed progress and capitalism, and I wondered how it must have looked to the people of East Germany, staring down at this place from the top of the Fernsehturm, with all its acres of shiny bright windows.

It has to be said that the streets of Berlin, at least East Berlin where I spent most of my time, were plagued by dog ***. This resulted in some particular behaviours on the part of experienced Berliners, like Hanno, such as always walking down the center of the pavement, and never walking in the house without taking off your shoes first. This was such an ingrained habit that just quickly nipping back into the apartment, fully shod, resulted in Hanno blowing a gasket. Having to constantly take your shoes on and off, in Hanno's tiny entrance, filled as it was with tables and boxes, also resulted in a constant traffic jam, with all five of us falling over each other in a space not big enough for two, sometimes with people removing their shoes to come in, while others were putting them on in order to leave. By the time we headed out for the evening's party, we'd become practiced enough to make use of the stairs outside.

After the long footslog back to the apartment, we quickly ventured out on another mini-odyssey, this time over to Mitte-Berlin, and the Seven Lounge. After many hikes, tram journeys and U-bahn trips, including a brief pause to stare at the fireworks over der Alex, we finally arrived at the 7L cocktail bar. This proved to be as cramped as the entrance to Hanno's apartment, but with plenty more style and character. The four girls who seemed to be running the place were particularly distinctive. First there was the DJ with the goggles reeling off a series of classic lounging tracks from the decks crammed into one side of the confined corridor. Secondly there was the pig-tailed bar maid, frantically serving up complex cocktails for the crowded gangway. Finally, and most strikingly, were the two girls who ran the length of the narrow passage taking orders and delivering drinks. The first was a shaven headed black girl, with taut cheekbones, and the second an Asian girl with huge hair, plucked straight from the 5.6.7.8.'s garage rock band in Kill Bill.

Craig turns Vagrant

The evening was going surprisingly quickly, as I nursed a couple of ice cold Becks, and chatted with members of the crew, like director Ollie Seiter, and cameraman Volker Mai. Craig and Martin were heartily swigging back a string of JDs, and I could tell that they weren't going to be stopped by the party closing. At about 2am the two old gits, Luciano and I, parted company from the younger three, as they went off to party at the Roter Salon again, while we got our beauty sleep. My glorious slumber was interrupted a short time before 7am, though, as Martin, Craig and Hanno stumbled in, like the night before, only this time it was me being threatened with the spanking sticks. Silence quickly descended again, only to be interrupted a second time by the bodily outbursts of a certain someone who shall remain nameless, in order to prevent shame. While I forced my tired eyes tight shut in the hope that I could miracle myself asleep in spite of the tumultuous snoring, I conjured unconscious and angry images of animals asphyxiating as they chewed on their own tongue. I threw a random object at the head of the perpetrator, and he turned away from me, falling silently onto his side, but not before letting off an extraordinarily loud and explosive fart, as if to express his utter disdain at my failure to appreciate his nocturnal nasal trumpet.

The next day I felt fully refreshed from a long, and mostly undisturbed, sleep, but the three clubbers were looking as rough as I had the previous day. Martin looked ten years older, and Craig, with his hoody pulled over his head, exposing little more than a beard, had turned fully vagrant. Hanno, however, wasn't to be slowed by a mere double-hangover, and swiftly shuttled us out of the apartment for another lengthy jaunt about town. Without time for food, coffee, or even refreshment of any kind, we were energetically escorted to the top of the Fernsehturm. The Fernsehturm is an impressive and iconic sight, soaring above the skyline of Berlin like a giant glistening golf ball skewered on a concrete spike, topped with a red and white flash. This product of the old DDR towered over their western counterparts, with the only blemish on its prideful socialist status being the golden cross it cast over the city when the sun reflected on it, a slightly embarrassing marker for an officially atheist state. It also offered sensational vistas from its viewing platform, 200 meters up the 365 meter structure.

Before he could whip us off to the Zoo, the Berlin station made famous by U2's album of the same name, we made Hanno stop, and direct us to somewhere we could buy food. Hanno wandered, and wandered, unable to make up his mind where we should eat, before finally dawdling in a spot somewhere in the backstreets around der Alex. I couldn't take the indecision any longer, and just headed straight for the nearest available seat at an outdoor restaurant. It proved a great decision, as we were soon feasting on huge plates overflowing with food. The experience was slightly marred by the peculiarly aggressive German flies, and a beggar who turned up just as I was about to put the first bite of an enormous slab of hamburger into my hungry mouth. She addressed us in German, but expressing our ignorance wasn't going to enable us to eat in peace, and the same spiel was repeated again, with practiced professionalism, in perfect English. I didn't object to helping her out, I just wished I'd been able to enjoy my damn meal before being interrupted.

View from Ostbahnhof

With just ten minutes to go before the train arrived, the final step in Hanno's excellent plan was nearly complete. I sat and watched everyone's bags, with Craig and Martin, while Hanno went to the supermarket beneath the station to grab some much needed supplies for the five hour journey. Craig and Martin both stood smoking in the completely non-smoking station, directly in front of a German Polizeioberrat, who didn’t even look at them. With five minutes to go the plan went sour, as Hanno returned to our spot, less one Luciano. Hanno was starting to fret, whereas I, being coldly pragmatic, declared that it was better that four of us got on the train, and Luciano stay in a hotel in Berlin overnight, than we all miss it, and consequently all miss work the next day. Thankfully, with only two minutes left until the train pulled into the station, Luciano was spied walking casually down the platform, swigging thoughtfully from a bottle of beer, as he studied the posters on the station walls.

Again the train was late, now confirming my lost faith in the once esteemed German transport system, but this time there was a twist to the tale. When we pulled into Lichtenfels station, delayed by exactly the same number of minutes as when we'd left Berlin, and just as the last connecting train of the night to Coburg was scheduled to leave us standing in the station, something amazing happened. Instead of having to organise an expensive taxi home, the people at Die Bahn informed us that they had thoughtfully delayed the connecting train to enable us to continue our journey unaffected, and arrive back home without a thing to complain about. Now you wouldn't get that happening in Britain.