Berlin
Lonely Planet writes:
A bold claim indeed. So I spent a weekend in Berlin with Julie and her lovely German friends, who were getting married that Saturday. The bride's brother, Lars, showed us around Kreuzberg, which is a bit like San Francisco's Mission District. Every year the locals organize riots on the 1st of May, gleefully looting and smashing shop windows, burning cars and fighting the police. Fun for the whole family!
Lars, who works with abuse victims and runs a nonprofit gallery / music space for local artists, took us out Thursday night. Accompanied by a one-armed abuse victim and a hipster French artist, we drove to Tacheles, one of Julie's favorite high-school haunts. Ten years ago, it was a decomposing concrete building complex in the Mitte district of East Berlin. Its broken windows, power outages, old industrial vehicles, and secret entrance through a hole in the fence were typical of East Berlin in the 90's. While the rest of Mitte has now been restored and yuppified into condos and lounge bars, Tacheles still maintains a charming concrete-industrial feel. There's now a proper front door and a website, but such is life.
While Julie lamented the end of Mitte's underground glory days, I was duly impressed. Crazy experimental artists inhabit many of the floors, with crowded bars tucked away in some corners. We listened to painfully loud punk/electronic music in a sweaty ground-floor cafe, heated by a giant firebreathing dragon looming over the bar.
Friday evening we met Lars at an art exhibition, with disturbingly explicit paintings, including Jesus in action as a porn star. At a nearby bar, we were introduced to the local rockabilly music scene, as a dozen eerily similar dudes with 50's-style sculpted hair turned the place into a mosh pit. Julie and I ran for cover, but Lars and his friend jumped right in, explaining that it was "friendly" moshing.
We were there to hear El Ray, a Danish surf 'n' roll band who introduced each of their songs with wild-eyed enthusiasm and dramatic pauses:
Finally, late on Saturday night, after a typically marathon European wedding party, we hit up Prenzlauer Berg, another East Berlin neighborhood. We follow a cute girl biking along with a ping-pong paddle in her hand, as she leads us to an unmarked building. Inside, we find a concrete room with a single ping-pong table in the middle, watched closely by dozens of hipsters. The crowd eerily converges at the end of the match, moving around the table in a circle and hitting the ball back and forth to determine who plays next. Later I discover that they too have a website.
Conclusion? Zürich is no Berlin. It's all but impossible to compete with a city so heavily shaped by the political events of our generation. Zürich has its moments, for sure, but Berlin simply kicks ass. Photos here.
Oh, and I managed to hold a girl's attention for 30 minutes -- speaking only in German -- at the wedding party. But don't get too excited: my record with Swiss girls stands at 10 minutes. So far, crazy expats remain my specialty.
"Zürich is the new Berlin. No hesitation, no competition. This formerly staid banking capital has experienced such a creative explosion in recent years, and such a mushrooming of innovative bars, restaurants and shops that it resembles Berlin's salad days of the mid-eighties and early nineties."
A bold claim indeed. So I spent a weekend in Berlin with Julie and her lovely German friends, who were getting married that Saturday. The bride's brother, Lars, showed us around Kreuzberg, which is a bit like San Francisco's Mission District. Every year the locals organize riots on the 1st of May, gleefully looting and smashing shop windows, burning cars and fighting the police. Fun for the whole family!
Lars, who works with abuse victims and runs a nonprofit gallery / music space for local artists, took us out Thursday night. Accompanied by a one-armed abuse victim and a hipster French artist, we drove to Tacheles, one of Julie's favorite high-school haunts. Ten years ago, it was a decomposing concrete building complex in the Mitte district of East Berlin. Its broken windows, power outages, old industrial vehicles, and secret entrance through a hole in the fence were typical of East Berlin in the 90's. While the rest of Mitte has now been restored and yuppified into condos and lounge bars, Tacheles still maintains a charming concrete-industrial feel. There's now a proper front door and a website, but such is life.
While Julie lamented the end of Mitte's underground glory days, I was duly impressed. Crazy experimental artists inhabit many of the floors, with crowded bars tucked away in some corners. We listened to painfully loud punk/electronic music in a sweaty ground-floor cafe, heated by a giant firebreathing dragon looming over the bar.
Friday evening we met Lars at an art exhibition, with disturbingly explicit paintings, including Jesus in action as a porn star. At a nearby bar, we were introduced to the local rockabilly music scene, as a dozen eerily similar dudes with 50's-style sculpted hair turned the place into a mosh pit. Julie and I ran for cover, but Lars and his friend jumped right in, explaining that it was "friendly" moshing.
We were there to hear El Ray, a Danish surf 'n' roll band who introduced each of their songs with wild-eyed enthusiasm and dramatic pauses:
"THE NEXT SONG!!!"
"IS ABOUT!!!"
"PEOPLE WHO FALL FROM THE SKY!!!"
"AND THEY HURT YOU!!!!"
"PARACHUTERS!!!!!!!"
Finally, late on Saturday night, after a typically marathon European wedding party, we hit up Prenzlauer Berg, another East Berlin neighborhood. We follow a cute girl biking along with a ping-pong paddle in her hand, as she leads us to an unmarked building. Inside, we find a concrete room with a single ping-pong table in the middle, watched closely by dozens of hipsters. The crowd eerily converges at the end of the match, moving around the table in a circle and hitting the ball back and forth to determine who plays next. Later I discover that they too have a website.
Conclusion? Zürich is no Berlin. It's all but impossible to compete with a city so heavily shaped by the political events of our generation. Zürich has its moments, for sure, but Berlin simply kicks ass. Photos here.Oh, and I managed to hold a girl's attention for 30 minutes -- speaking only in German -- at the wedding party. But don't get too excited: my record with Swiss girls stands at 10 minutes. So far, crazy expats remain my specialty.