28/05/2014

#189 Fail: How to not get to a Berlin club

This is a cautionary tale of Berlin

Welcome back,
If you like posts with detailed stories written out like in this one, then press the like button up here so I know next time.


To make up for not telling you the nights out stories in the last post and the one before, I took my time to give you a full report of last Saturday night, which wasn't special in other way than that the fact that nothing much happened. It could be called a fail. It is however a good account of how time disappears in Berlin, we went through 8 hours as it was nothing.

There's always something to see on the walls.

This weekend we decided to go to a club. The only available night for us was the Saturday and so we chose that. We met up at Kotbusser Tor at eleven pm and decided it was too early for a club and we should hit the bars first to go to a club later. The first stop was a bar on Oranienstrasse, which is quite a good street for going to a bar and I have witnessed more action here than at the Kreutzberg area (feel free to disagree with this in the comments).

Enjoying the park and beer.

We went to a bar I had spotted last weekend, but hadn't gone in yet. When buying beer the standard "also pay the DJ with the 1st drink" rule applied. We reluctantly accepted our stamps as we had planned to only stay for one drink and the DJ was playing some boring reggae or something else. The bar was packed and after circling it we found a sitting place on a ledge. Soon after sitting down I was asked to take a photo of the girls and a boy at the table next to us. They were using the "small" Fuji instax that prints out the photo straight away. It was a fun toy, but it takes forever for the photo to appear on the paper. It took significantly less time for a waitress to appear and to tell me it was forbidden to take photos, I forwarded her to the owner of the camera. This didn't faze them at all and as the waitress left they took a photo of us too and handed it to me, saying that it's very expensive.

The expensive Instax photo of us in that bar.

Soon after that we continued on. We had to decide between Berghain, Stattbad, About Blank, Louche and Renate. As Stattbad had Elektro Guzzi and Cassegrain playing lives and it was really close to our home we decided to go for that. We agreed that the night wasn't right for the Berghain line. We still had a bottle of bubbly to chug and we decided to take everything from being in the south before we headed back towards the calmer north. I managed to storm a rock bar only to discover it had a ticket when I backed out of there ten minutes later. We spent some time sitting in a park and tried out an obnoxious Australian accent we had heard on the street.

The bar where everyone drinks their own drinks.

We then continued to a bar in Kotbusser Tor where I was told it's "okay" to go there with your own drink. We got to a random door opened it and pushed a side the thick dark curtains. Inside there were people sitting and smoking on furniture made of wooden storage pallets. Old monitors were used as interior design and the vibe was strange. We finished our drinks in there and continued on to look for something more vibrant. By then it was around 3 am.

Rosenthaler platz bar.

We got the Ubahn to Rosenthaler platz at 3:30 to see if it had more action than the nights before. We stopped by a Spätkauf and got a couple of Sternburgs and Peeter whipped out a pair of sandwiches from his backpack. You see he had come straight from work and there were some catering sandwiches left over as he left. So we enjoyed the sandwiches and beer outside of the Späti and tried to out talk the loud Spaniard youths sitting at the next table. Needless to say we lost that competition.

Sandwiches are a good alternative to kebab...

So we continued further at around 4:30 am. I remembered from the internet that there was supposed to be Trust bar on Torstrasse. It turned out that internet was a senile liar and the bar had since moved. We found a bar with a mirror door on the way, which seemed to only let in models. As we approached the door a random looking woman denied us entrance because of Peeter's work clothes, which weren't dirty, just worn. We continued on to Chelsea bar and wanted to check if this was the night when someone would actually be there. Yet again we were denied entrance, this time because of his steel tip boots. I knew I looked fine, because just ten minutes ago a passing stranger had complimented my shirt to me. As I had mentally prepared myself to get turned down by Sven at Berghain, these random bars didn't hurt more than a mosquito bite after a broken arm.

...kebab is a good alternative to sandwiches...

So we continued on towards Stattbad and watched the dawn near the Berlin wall at 5:17am. As our home was on the way, Peeter insisted that he could leave his backpack and change clothes before we go to Stattbad to start a fresh. We left our place at around 6 and headed towards the club. On the way I stopped a couple of girls and asked them about the state of the party. They told us that everyone was leaving and it was pretty much over. We were somewhat disappointed.

...all in all there's food lying everywhere.

Once we arrived there at 6:30 we were still asked to pay the full cover fee, the two live shows were over and the last Dj was about to go on. Didn't seem like it was worth it. So we went to check out Panke across the street. It was closed, but someone was having a party in the house next to it. We tried our luck on crashing it, but after ten minutes of looking for the right door, we realized they were already cleaning up the party. At that point the bed seemed like the best private club for me. Peeter still insisted on going to club Humboldthain and we split ways.

One of the last things I saw when I went home.

From 7 I slept till 11 to perfectly hit a sleep cycle and possibly go to Club Der Visionaere or another Sunday morning after party, possibly an Open Air. We however only had the energy to go to the Mauer park fleamarket, which was packed full because it was a beautiful day. The sun, a friend from England and Club Mate made the perfect Sunday.




See you,