Things to do and see in Berlin..

Herewith my needlessly lengthy report on Berlin from a year ago (like you care, but remember, you did ask!)

Like one massive Anton Corbijn photograph, Berlin exudes a deliciously austere atmosphere of subtle, understated dread. Our brand, spakin' new hotel, the D.O.M.I.C.I.L (if it's an acronymn, I certainly couldn't crack it) was situated in the veritable crotch of Charlottenberg, a somewhat dreary shopping zone in the far West Side of Berlin....not unlike, say, some parts of 14th Street here in NYC. Despite proximity to less savoury spots like a grim falaffel restaurant geared towards frowning Middle Eastern men (which we churlishly took to referring to as the "Bin Laden Bar & Grill") and several worrying gun shops, the D.O.M. was mercifully a stone's throw from Savignyplatz, a cooler/nicer area and the S-Bahn, the above-ground transit station. We strolled down the rainy, grey boulevard, the Kantstrasse, past lots of dingey storefronts and alleys suitable for getting knifed in, until we reached the comparitively giddy Savignyplatz. We stopped into a restaurant called the Jules Verne (inexplicably named for the noted French sci-fi writer), had a mellow dinner and then went home and called it a nacht.

Thursday morning shone through the windows, cracking the blue-grey cityscape of Charlottenberg. After another coffee/Nutella-fest, Peg (the wife) and I went out to discover Berlin. Taking the S-bahn east towards one of the main drags, the Freidrichstrasse, we strolled a block or two west in the city center towards a boulevard called Unter den Linden (under the Linden trees?) which runs right into the Brandenberg Gate, adjacent to the Reichstag. After some futzing about in a tourist shop (I bought a little toy Trabbant car, the former main mode of transportation in East Berlin), we stopped into the Guggenheim museum to check out an installation a friend of Peg's had recently been in town to set up -- a rather bizarre collection of blank, grey sheets of plastic by Gerard Richter that was frankly underwhelming. The gift shop was, at least, cool (I bought a pen with a wobbly eyeball on a spring -- `cos ya need that!). We ambled up the avenue to the Brandenberg Gate, which is quite imposing and impressive. Apparently, the statuery on top (a woman on a chariot) was turned around after the Wall came down in `89. Hitler had turned it towards the West in symbolism of his quest for domination. A stroll to the left revealed the unsettling edifices of the Reichstag, which was buzzing with police ("Polizei"...a word which looked strikingly Italian to our eyes) on motorcycles and crowds of what looked like press. Something was in the process of going down that made the demonstration in Munich look pretty tame by comparison. We moved on.

After some lunch and a quick glimpse into the Hotel Adlon....one of the oldest hotels in the city (where Michael Jackson would dangle a baby from later that year), we strolled down the Friedrichstrasse towards Checkpoint Charlie, the legendary former middle-ground between the American and Soviet sectors of Berlin. Though it once featured fences, barbed wire and a machine-gun-patrolled watchtower, very little remains of the actual Checkpoint beyond a small building in the middle of the street, surrounded by tourist-aimed tchotscke stands and makeshift "museums", selling "bits of the wall" in tiny plastic sleeves (much like the "sweat of Elvis" sold at Graceland). Bizarrely enough, when you walk from East to West now in 2002, it seems the tables have turned significantly. I may be wrong, but it seems that so much money was pumped into East Berlin after the fall of communism thirteen years ago that it now overshines the West. A few nervy blocks into this part of the West sector and the tone and warmth of Friedrichstrasse dissipated dramatically....sort've like walking down 5th Avenue and having it turn into Avenue C. Even the weather turned from bright and sunny into cloudy grey, further spooking us back towards the East, where we stopped into the Museum of Communication for some shelter from the gloom.

After a bit more strolling about, Peg and I trained our way back to Savignyplatz to meet up with a publishing friend of hers. Incidentally, the entire time I was in Berlin, so much music seemed to be going through my head -- notably "Zoo Station" by U2, named for an S-Bahn station we crossed through numerous times. I never found Hansa Studios (where U2, Bowie, Iggy and Killing Joke have recorded, to name but a few), but it probably wouldn't have looked like much from the outside anyway.

Peg's friend Christian regaled us with tales of the Berlin he grew up in, when the Wall was up, and gave us a beatiful book about the city's striking architecture (the Jewish museum, of all things, in the West sector, incidentally, is an architectural marvel). But, as before, after a few Erlinger (sp?) weisebeers, our heads were swimming. After another Savignyplatz dinner, we kollapzed.

Friday was to be our last full day in Germany, let alone Berlin. By this point, we decided to drop the tourist schtick and just concentrate on materialism and go shoppin'. Back in Munich, Sky had given me the name of a record store in Berlin that he considered top drawer called, bizarrely, "Mr.Dead and Mrs.Free". We found its address on the map and decided to walk it, taking in yet another portion of this vast city along the way. Halfway there, we stumbled across the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedachtniskirche (and if you think I didn't have to look up the spelling for that, you're mistaken), which is an old church in Berlin's city center that was heavily damaged in the bombings of 1943. It now resembles a broken, rotting tooth that sharply pierces an already wounded sky.

Several more rambling blocks later, we found record store "Mr.Dead & Mrs.Free" off a circle called the Nollendorfplatz. Like Optimal in Munich, this was another perfectly respectable little record joint, though it concentrated heavily on vinyl (and being that I no longer have turntable, it held little in it for my perusal). I did spot DEMOCRACT, though, in the "K" section. Incidentally, that's pretty much the last mention Killing Joke will get in this piece. Well, that's not true, being that somewhere on the Unter Den Linden boulevard, one of three KJ buttons came off my messenger bag. There, that's it.

Finding nothing in "Mr.Dead...", Peg and I boarded the U-Bahn (Berlin's underground train) back to Zoo Station, and then switched to the S-Bahn back to Savignyplatz, where we had a bit of lunch and more beers (naturally). Stopped in an innocuous record store along the way and found a couple of things, notably DIVINE RITES by the New Christs (a band Sky had played for me a few nights before, featuring ex-members of Radio Birdman) and APOCALYPSE DUDES by Oslo garage noiseniks, Turbonegro. I've never actually heard Turbonegro before, but two friends of mine *CATEGORICALLY* swear that this is not only the band's finest album, but one of the FINEST ALBUMS OF THE PAST TEN YEARS. I, too, find that a bit hard to believe, but being that both of them maintain it vehemently and also claim that the album in question is incredibly rare (I've only ever seen it on imported vinyl), I figured I'd blow the fourteen Euros to see if they're right. At the very least, the song titles are amusing ("Don't Say Motherfucker, Motherfucker" and what promises to be my anthem for Autumn, "Rendezvous with Anus"). A few quick words about music in Europe. I know we Yanks all whine and bitch about the teenybopper crap like N'Sync and Britney that dominates the American mainstream, but they simply *EAT THAT SHIT UP* like you have no idea in Europe. Nine tenths of the crap played on German MTV makes Carson Dailey's TRL gang look practically cutting edge. I was continually sickened by pathetic dance music and implausibly cheesey pop, but did find myself quite enjoying a German neo-pop-punk band (ala Blink/Green Day) called the Donots. I believe they mean "Do-Nots" -- as in a command -- but they ditch the hyphen and spell it Donots, which my eyes always read as "Donuts," and any band called the "Donuts" has got to be amusing. The video channels kept playing their remarkably faithful cover of Twisted Sister's "We're Not Gonna Take It," performed energetically with painstakingly pronounced, phonetic singing in English. Where Twisted's original is a tounge-in-cheek tirade against parents and teachers, the Donots have re-tooled the classic metal chestnut as an anthem against governmental oppression. Don't look for them in your Stateside record stores any time soon, but they were amusing enough for me to spring for the cd-single of the cover.

Being that we had to be up very early on Saturday morning for our trip home, we simply ate in our hotel on Friday night, drank many beers, packed and hit the sack early.

Okay, I won't bore you further with the rather mundane details of getting to the airport, waiting, boarding planes, etc.

I've lived in Berlin for a little over a year now and it's great. It can be an ugly city, but it can also be beautiful. Berlin hides its beautiful spots, but they're worth looking for.

re: Alex in NYC's post, OTM, which is why you want to avoid Charlottenburg, in the main. Savigny Platz is the exception. Knesebeckstrasse has a couple of wonderful bookstores if you like, oh, I don't know, film, art, theater, dance. The 12 Apostel is the best place for pizza in Berlin (there's one on Savigny Platz, but I like the one close to the Museum Island better, under the S-Bahn tracks. During the cold war, Charlottenburg was the center of West Berlin. Now that that's vorbei, as we say, the emphasis and energy of the city has moved back east. Again, as Alex notes, much money has been pumped into the east. It's where the growth is.

The area north of the Hackescher Markt S-Bahn station in Mitte, called the Schneunenviertel (or hay barn quarter)is a great place to wander around to see galleries, indigenous clothing designers, some nice restaurants, and generally nice streetscape. Esp. Sophienstrasse, Auguststrasse, Gipsstrasse, Grosse Hamburgerstrasse, etc.

The entire district of Prenzlauerberg is a great place to wander to see beautiful late 19th century apartment buildings, hundreds of cafes and pubs, clubs with music (including, occasionally, Momus), and neat shops. Start at Kollwitzplatz and work in any direction, but probably north.

The Friedrichshain district is cool for small cafes, esp. Simon Dachsstrasse. If you can speak German, go to see the new film from Leander Haussman, "Herr Lehmann" at the 50s-commie-style Kino International on Karl Mark Allee. Really great film.

My favorite cafe for breakfast is in Kreuzberg, and fuck, I always get the name wrong, the drowning boat or something--Ertrinkendes Schiff on Oranienstrasse at Oranienplatz. Next to the hand made lamp store.

You just missed a fantastic painting exhibit at the Neue National Gallery, art in the GDR, so, well, never mind...

I don't do a lot of clubbing, but people still seem to go to Tresor and the Sage Club. Don't hear much about Delicious Doughnuts anymore, but White Trash Fast Food on Torstrasse is a fun club/restaurant. Just demand to be let in and they always will admit you.

What have you seen before? What do you want to see?

read this:

http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/0226467627.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

one interesting thing about Berlin (I think) is that it's so new. In 1648, after the 30 years war, the population of Berlin had fallen to just 6,000. By the late 19th century, the pop. had risen to 800,000 or so, then doubled a few times to rise to 3.5 million or so in about 50 years. Berlin was basically built in a day. The bombing of WWII was of course extremely destructive, but the backstory is that there wasn't much of particular historical significance to bomb, esp. when compared to other european capitals like Rome, Paris, London. More analagous to Madrid, but not even that old, for the most part. "But the city was charted in the 14th century!!!!" Whatever. The growing from the ashes phenom. has always been the essence of Berlin. It's easy to recreate itself, because that's what it does best.

(oh and the Internation theater is probably more likely 60s architecture, I don't know. purists can be quite exacting...)

I like Miss Kittin, but I don't know Miss Kittin's work. But this animation is fantastic...

http://www.misskittin.com/

Thanks! Eerie, Adam, I'm nearly done reading that book. SO far it's really excellent stuff.

While in Berlin, I read...

http://lookinside2-images.amazon.com/Qffs+v35leqpjyxpceDnS/MVb8ns1j/kvugEmEY1wn4FMGB7fjObtWYvSoDrsQ/V

OOOOhhhh, and go float at Liquidrome