2010 → 2011

Merry Xmas and happy new year! As noted before, time flies incredibly fast, I can‘t believe it! December went by faster that I could even grasp. I was in Finland for a little over a week and it was fabulous – so nice to see those oh so dear friends and family, love you guys ♥ Christmas was wonderful but so short, as always. But no reason to mope around, for straight after Xmas comes new year, which this year meant that a load (I mean LOTS, some 40–50) Finns came to Berlin, one young lady staying at my place for a week :)

It must have been one of the best new years ever!! I started partying on Thursday and finally called it quits on Monday morning somewhere around 8 AM. Of course I slept a few hours here and there, too, but still it was one of the craziest weekends I‘ve ever experienced – in a good way, definitely! On Thursday we were in My Name is Barbarella (Skalitzer Straße 36), which had just re-opened its doors. I came in rather late (around 4–5 AM) so I missed Ian Pooley, but I still had a blast and stayed until they closed :) Then we headed to Golden Gate (at Jannowitzbrücke), which is famous for its wicked Thursday techno nights, but this time I‘m not entirely convinced that it was a good idea, after all. It was packed, as always, but all of us (save one crazy Estonian) suddenly lost all our energy and spirit and ended up heading home pretty soon. Given that I still had all of NYE ahead of me, I started to have doubts that maybe crawling home at nine in the morning wasn’t the brightest idea.

Despite feeling not-that-good until Friday evening, NYE got started fantastically :) We dined at a Vietnamese restaurant in Kreuzberg, which was probably the most chaotic restaurant visit I’ve experienced so far. What do you mean you don’t frequently have 30 Finns all ordering at the same time, can’t be that hard...? Well, despite the challenging (to say the least) order process, everyone more or less got their dishes and drinks and left more or less satisfied. Time to turn 2010 into 2011!

On midnight, we stood on the roof of a house in Friedrichshain and saw the fireworks in all possible directions. One of us had even bought a bottle of real champagne, so it definitely was a turn of the year with every detail in place. A night I’ll reminiscence about when I’m an ooold granny sitting in a rocking chair. :)

We went for a drink to mini.mal Elektrokneipe (Rigaer Straße 31), a very nice little bar in the northern part of Friedrichshain. I had dragged along a bag with a bottle of sparkling wine and a pair of high-heeled shoes and had nearly forgotten it already twice, and finally then left it in mini. Efficient as I am, I still haven’t been there to ask whether it’s still left... Mañana, mañana. And morning it nearly was when we got to our final destination around 4 or 5 AM: Feieralarm! It was a huge party on Storkower Straße, absolutely magnificent :) Lots of friends, good music, neat venue, horrid toilets and great atmosphere! We stayed for 12 hours or so, so I guess that speaks for itself :)

Next stop was Berghain, which I’m not especially fond of, and definitely not for the price of 26€ (ok it was for the whole NYE-weekend and the line-up was juicy, and apparently the party was good). When the doorman announced that a friend and I wouldn’t get in (for reasons that remained a mystery), I of course was humiliated and disappointed, as the rest of our group went inside. Nevertheless it was a good turn in plans: I finally got some sleep and saved some money. And there’s a first time for everything; I hadn’t been turned back at Berghain before, now I can cross that out on my list, hehe.

On Sunday I was well rested and fresh as a day drop, what could be a better setting for some a museum visit. We went to see the exhibition “Hitler und die Deutschen” (“Hitler and the Germans”) at Deutsches Historisches Museum. It was supposed to explain the relationship between Hitler/the NS-rule and the German people and how it was possible that Nazi-Germany happened in the first place. The exhibition was “ok” but I think it completely failed to answer the question “why?”, it rather just presented “what?”, and I didn’t come out especially enlightened or informed. We did have only 1,5 hours, which wasn’t really enough, but still. Well, I’ve heard a lot of good about the exhibition, so apparently it appeals to many, so go figure. Non-German-speakers should be warned, though, that as at most museums, the texts are mainly in German.

We also paid a visit to the Museum für Fotografie some day before new year. There’s an exhibition about microphotography and its history. It was very interesting, but many older pictures lacked explanation on what they represented, which sort of took the whole point out of it for me. I still recommend the exhibition, and Helmut Newton’s and Alice Spring’s photos (the permanent exhibitions) are definitely worth a look.

On Sunday evening we headed to FraRosa, a wonderful and romantic small restaurant in Prenzlauer Berg (Zionskirchstraße 40). The concept is this: a four-course menu is served for 20€, and for the wine you pay a 2€ start money, for which you receive a glass, and then you go ahead and drink as much as you want of numerous white, red and sparkling wines, and pay according to your conscience. The food is “wine-oriented Nouvelle Cuisine, experimental and avant-garde-orientated” according to their site, which in our case manifested as a quite Italian menu with some interesting combinations. Absolutely delicious and all in all a wonderful experience, I warmly recommend the place :)

Sunday continued with squeezing the last party juices out at Suicide Circus (Revaler Straße 99, next to S Warschauer Straße), where there was a Sandwell District night. I had a good time despite being already quite worn out on the party front and just mainly hung around. Some of our friends tried to come in later and were turned back at the door, again for some reason remaining a mystery. If there’s one thing better in Helsinki’s club culture than Berlin’s, it’s definitely the lack of arbitrary door policy... Ok, if you’re completely wasted or otherwise can’t behave, it would be fair not to be let in and be just your own fault and shame, but that sort of despotic behaviour at the door with no apparent grounds whatsoever just feels really unfair and unwelcoming (well, duh). Oh well, this time I was inside and, as said, had a good time, and it was a very fine ending for an exhausting but terrific weekend and new year. Thanks guys, thanks 2010, and welcome 2011! :)