Its been my third time in Berlin and possibly the most enthrallingly and exhustingly epic. My 3 hour journey from Wolfsburg wasn't so bad, although Braunschweig is as bleak as it sounds, and I met my friend Sach, who had flown in from back home, as soon as I got in to Berlin. We headed to the hostel with the intention of dumping our stuff before going off to explore, but ended up grabbing a few drinks in the sports bar downstairs to watch the cricket for a bit instead. We were soaking up the Berlin culture like champs right then, I can tell you. When we finally decided we'd been English clichés for long enough, we headed up Schöenhauser Allee so I could show Sach some places I've grown quite fond of during my previous visits.
Pratergarten is a really lovely, simple beer hall, and for the first time ever, as it's always been winter when I've visited Berlin before, we were actually able to sit IN the garden. As the evening wound on, and the temperature started to cool, we headed across the road to Hotdog World, which has turned into a bit of a tradition for me. I get a chilli cheese hotdog and a bottle of Augustiner helles beer every single time I go there, and it's awesome. When I went to Berlin with my friends Thom and Mariella they took the right royal piss out of me for banging on about it so much before I dragged them there, but when I text Thom to tell him I was there on Friday, I got a simple 'I hate you' back. I know it sounds stupid to point a simple hotdog out as a highlight, but my mouth has started watering just writing about it. After that, we headed across the road to the Absinth bar, which sounds extreme but is actually quite a civilised place to just sip and be. Yes OK, so my memory gets a little hazy after that, but it's always an enjoyable experience there.
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| YES! |
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| Some absinthe |
Wandering further on, we spotted a bar which was also signposted as a cinema. We went in to get a beer at the bar and to ask if anything was showing, expecting it to be an arthouse film of some kind, but it was actually arthouse "music". I say "music" like that because it was certainly not anything anyone would ever have on their iPod. The first performer played some electronic noise machines whose buttons and knobs didn't seem to make any impact on the horrendous din that was pumping out of the speakers. The next performer up was a girl who played the inside of an upright piano, using spoons, hammers and other lumps of metal to strike, mash and stroke the wire inside. A camera displayed what she was doing on the cinema screen behind her, which seemed to show absolutely no method whatsoever. Where we were at the back, Sach leant against what he thought was a solid wall, but was actually a metal sheet partition, which buckled inwards with an echoing thunk, then loudly popped back into shape as he stood upright sharply in shock. I don't think there was a need for everyone to shush him, as it wasn't like they were going to miss any subtleties in the sound of a girl smashing a piano with a hammer, but after sending a vodka and coke flying all over a bar earlier in the evening, we were definitely living up to the image of the uncouth hooligan Brits abroad.
After that, for some unknown reason, we decided to pay to get into a club called Fraanz where almost everyone was a clear 10 years younger than us. I'm not sure why we thought it was the perfect place to make friends either, but we were brutally blanked by everyone we tried to approach. Realising we didn't belong there whatsoever, we decided to head back to the hostel. For one more drink. Probably not wise.
Mmmmmm hotdog.
ReplyDeleteOh and please tell me you did the 'absinthe makes the heart grow fonder' comment.
When you were in the club, did you feel really old and say "we used to have proper music in my days"?
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