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! :)

Temporary residence and music enthusiasm

Greetings from Prenzlauer Berg! I moved last weekend, as my flat in Kreuzberg won't be available until 15 October. It's a really nice place, near S/U Schönhauser Allee. What sucks is that it has coal heating, meaning it's preeetty cold. Or well, I guess I could heat it as much as I want, but I don't have the heart for it as the amount of coal needed seems so immense :F. Thank goodness for warm socks and peppermint tea!

Another downside is that there isn't any Internet connection (actually I'm writing this at the university, so the greetings from P-Berg are remote), which theoretically isn't a problem, cause I bought an Internet prepaid-stick for a month. The problem was that I didn't choose the right prepaid-mode, and it charged me by minute, so I used my whole prepaid during Monday evening :D Well, now I know better, and luckily the pack came with five free days, so I guess I'll just have to get along with them. (However, some blame I do pass on to Saturn, where I got partial and confusing instructions, to say the least. And it wasn't the first but the third time.)

I briefly expressed my satisfaction with Moderat's gig last Tuesday. It was held at Volksbühne, where I had never been before. At first it didn't seem it would have any chance of success, as we found out to our great devastation that there were only seats, no dancefloor whatsoever! During the warm-up act (Shed from Ostgut Ton) everyone was still sitting and the atmosphere was quite lame (although Shed's live was good, no complaints there).

But by golly, when Moderat started playing, it was five seconds and everyone was standing up, and eventually it was one hell of a gig! Everyone was dancing despite those stupid chair rows and we even ended up dancing on the stage :D <3 True Volksbühne (= stage of the people)!

Next Friday it's skweee day! Prkl! macht Skweeertisch #2 @ Raum20! With Mesak, Joxaren, Karl Marx Stadt, Roko and Naks. S(kw)ee you there :)

Also other sssssuper stuff coming up. Like FLYING LOTUS!!!!! at Maria am Ostbahnhof on 22 October. Like, you know, oh em geeeee, I'm maybe gonna faint. Flying Lotus was absolutely mindblowingly good at Flow Festival 2008. I'm SO gonna be there.

On 31 Oct Yeasayer is playing at Maria! The same day Mulatu Astatke & the Heliocentrics would be playing at Volksbühne though... Hard decisions ahead, in other words. Luckily I've still got nearly a month to decide. :)

Now I've had enough of sitting in the computer lab for today, so until next time. Ta-ta!

About fleas and bikes

I actually had a mission regarding the flea market: a bike. The bike I dragged along from Finland is good and nice and my precious, little, nearly-15-kilo, masculine-to-say-the-least darling baby, but it’s an impossible mission to find mudguards for its 29” tyres, and it isn’t the most practical thing to ride in a skirt. And I must admit I feel a bit nervous with leaving it outside bars and clubs during the most hectic hours in the weekend. So I wanted a bike that was a bit more... let’s say casual.

And a bike I found! It was somewhat a pig in a poke, for Mauerpark is absolutely packed and cobbled, so there really isn’t much of a chance for test driving. But I managed to negotiate the price from 50€ to 35€ (yes yes very special price only for you my friend), noted that the bike had a no-good hand brake but functioning pedal brakes, was big enough for me (I’m quite tall and the majority of the bikes were pygmy-sized!) and had mudguards, so I concluded that I wouldn’t lose too much if the deal turned out a dud.

And I must say I am amazed with how smooth a ride it is! Ahem, I mean, I saw from far that the bike was just a pearl at the bottom of the ocean waiting for that sharp-sighted pearl fisher to collect it... It’s a bit tough to get going, but once in motion, it actually is quite a fast thing! And moving from point A to point B effectively is something I deeply appreciate :)

In Helsinki that bike would be somewhat of a nuisance though, as it feels as if the city is nothing but up- and downhills, uphill especially on the way back home from just about anywhere. My flat is located in Alppila (“alppi-” is “alpine” in Finnish, and “-la” is a “shire”-like suffix in place names (like Hampshire, Yorkshire, Leicestershire), although not meaning anything originally), and it sure lives up to its name. But Berlin is flat like a pancake, which is nice. I’ve now ridden back home from school yesterday and today, about 13 kilometres, and it’s been but a pleasure.

Apart from being flat, Berlin is also quite biker-friendly with its cycle paths. There are quite a lot of them, and when not, just dive in along with the cars. The traffic isn’t especially heavy, despite the city being so big, and more often than not the right lane is half full with parked cars, so half of that lane is unused anyway and thus is safe for bikers. Cars (or their drivers, maybe) are quite considerate, I haven’t had the feeling of having to be scared for my life thanks to road raging drivers. It seems to me overly easy-going drivers that don’t care to fuss about being in a hurry or traffic rules are more of a danger :) Today I was almost bumped into when a car was parking and drove halfway on the pavement (which had a cycle path, along which I was riding), and clearly the driver was just so in his/her thoughts that he/she didn’t pay attention to what he/she was doing. Another car drove 15 km/h straight along for maybe 200 metres with the winker on, until he decided to stop, and one van stopped in the middle of a crossing without winking or giving some other sort of warning sign and started unloading :D It’s amazing how no one gets nervous, they just put on their winkers and drive round whoever is blocking the way.

Oh yeah, in addition to buying a bike and a lock to it, I went a bit crazy with earrings... I bought five pairs of them. But they were all so cute and locally made, so I just had to buy them! Just look at them, can you blame me?

!

The peg and banana earrings I bought at Unikat Kantine’s stand, who had a whole lot of other lovely jewellery. I think I’ll have to visit them again next Sunday, because I want scissor and fork+knife earrings too...

There’s also a new flea market opened in Friedrichshain, Revaler Straße 99. I came so late that it was practically closed/over already, but the location is absolutely magnificent! It’s an old train reparation plant, with lots of ruined former halls and such, and now, in addition to the RAW flea market (RAW = Reichsbahnausbesserungswerk, the Reichsbahn’s (DDR's railway company) reparation plant), there’s an indoor climbing hall, a skate hall and the bar/club Cassiopeia, which seems really nice. I’ll have to visit both the flea market and Cassiopeia at a better time! I tried to take pictures of the place, but I just didn’t manage to capture the atmosphere at all, so I’ll have to leave that to better photographers and their equipment.