Ich bin Fremd hier #5

The next day at 5.20 I arrive at Frankfurter Tor. I had been here the week before, walking up from Warschauer Straße in search of ‘East of Eden’. Somehow, immersed in my map and, presumably, looking east, I completely missed the Tor itself. The Tor (essentially a crossroads between the Karl-Marx-Allee, Frankfurter Allee, Warschauer Straße and Petersburger Straße) is wide, and as a premature Siberian wind bellows under the empty blue sky and down the road between the steps and pillars, the two twin buildings of the Tor cold, broad and resolutely stiff in their awkward bulk.  

Built with the specifications to herald the entrance to the first Soviet Boulevard, the twin buildings were completed in 1956 as part of the ‘Stalinallee’, and – so I read on an information board in the U-bahn station below - are good examples of the Stalinist architectural style. With their regularly-dotted, narrow windows and straight edges they resemble great industrial hospitals, rigid and durable in the wind; impressive and scary, with what looks like stretched bandstands on top, emphasising the quadrangular blocks below. I love walking under these buildings, and yet they offer nothing to grasp onto, no connection or way in. No way out. They sit strong while I shuffle backwards, huddling my shoulders inwards. This seems like a completely inappropriate place to hold Pub Crawl meeting. Maybe it was different in the summer.#

Spotting the second-hand clothes shop that Garth had mentioned, I cross the road and look back towards the city and saw the spectacular site of the Television Tower, the Fernstehturm. I think this is the greatest view of the tower that I have yet come across in Berlin, and in weeks to come, hugging myself in the wind as I shuffled to another meeting on the steps, I would have the pleasure of viewing it at dusk.

I find its alien shape magnetic. It is sinister too; a spiked orange on a stick, the inverse of a Christingle. A sparkling bauble speared and sent high up into the sky as a deterrent to joviality and smooth sides. It is technological in its function, not political like squat Big Ben; nor romantic like the Eiffel Tower, or imbued with the hope of the Statue of Liberty. But it is iconic like all of these. Built when Mitte was firmly part of East Germany, it is both magnificent and terrifying and striking me as I cross Frankfurter Tor, I am spellbound, and stop to stare amidst the traffic.

            In his ‘Berlinblog’, Simon Cole writes of the omnipresence of the Fernsehturm – ‘There it is again, as you cross the street. And over your shoulder as you drink a coffee outside. It’s like being shadowed by an impassive silvery spy.’[1]  I thought of this description the following week, wandering down Hermanstrasse, one place where the Fernsehturm is undoubtedly out of sight, when in the corner of my eye I noticed a television pole or something like an electricity pylon sticking up into the sky and I found myself looking up at it subconsciously expecting to see the tower. This has happened a few times as if part of becoming accustomed to living in the city was having the Fernsehturm stuck in the back of your head. Often in sight as well as in mind, to me it has acted as more of a comfort than an anxiety, leading me back to familiarity when lost in the city, and cheering me when I am cold and tired am waiting form my tram on a Friday or Saturday night, when it sparkles and, as Cole writes, ‘this trophy of the former anti-fun state resembles a glitter ball in a decadent disco.’[2]

            

           Small and too awkwardly gadgety to be scary, the World Clock, also found at Alexanderplatz, provokes more confusion than wonder. It is odd to think that at this clock, cut off from the rest of the world, from much of their country and their own capital, East Berliners could see what time it was in the rest of the world, and perhaps try to envisage what was going on in Honolulu and Kathmandu.

In Herr Lehmann, two of the characters, from West Berlin, plan to meet up in at the World Clock when they venture into the East. Why there? Herr Lehmann asks. It’s just what people do. That’s where everyone meets in East Berlin. At the World Clock. Because of this I get very excited when my German friend and I plan to meet ‘at Alex, by the World Clock.’ We may as well have been in a film; it was exactly the same, except that there were no cameras and no script. I was early to the World Clock but for a moment I pretended that I was on time and my friend is late and like the girl in the film I will wait and wait and then someone one else will arrive, a dark figure, the back of their black coat in the foreground of the frame. There is literature elsewhere in Berlin, but here it is cinema. I can see little of Dunble’s Alexanderplatz here.

Though not unlovable, Alexanderplatz is ungainly, and at times, utterly soulless. Especially cold in the winter for its wide open spaces and too concrete and busy for one to enjoy the warmth in the summer. It is confusing in its lack of a clear centre and mass of blocked grey buildings amongst a collection of platzes, a little more disagreeable than the one before, each without a centre to grasp onto, seemingly functioning but disorientating. Big, ugly shopping departments offer warmth and colour inside but display only big neon green capitals to the world: ‘GALLERIA’.  Below, also attempting to brighten the scene, men sell Bratwurst under red umbrellas for under a euro and yellow trams roll past at walking pace as pigeons toddle in front.

Venturing just a little further away out of Alexanderplatz I come across St Martin’s Church which I think is beautiful. Once I heard singing from within and tentatively approach the wide wooden doors. However there was a gruff looking keeper there clutching what looked like tickets, so I walked on. Behind the church I wandered and came across the Neptunbrunnen, the Neptune Fountain. Here the God of the Sea sits triumphant upon a craggy throne, surrounded by little boys with physiques like a wingless Eros but tired and fierce face as if they have just been ripped out of warm sea-weed blankets beneath the surface. Angry little eyes and wailing black mouths – shout furiously, pulling at their brothers’ hair and pushing each other off the rocks to the water below. Young men cling to the little island amongst them, cheekily grimacing fawns from the sea; a tortoise, serpent, dolphin and crocodile shoot water from their mouths upon the salty chaos, splashing over twisted faces and green bulging stomachs, not quite reaching the great Cracken who sits proud and regal over the scene. Four woman with robes carefully designed to slip down their torsos just enough to reveal their breasts, sit at the edge of the fountain,  lazily pouring water from jaugs and vases into the pool, looking away with resigned expressions that say, ‘Boys will be boys …’ Or perhaps, ‘Fucking men!’

When I arrive at the designated meeting steps, Leo is already there, as are Mike and Mo. Garth soon turns up on his bike, trailed by two others, also both called Mike; one from Abergervenny, the other from Leicester. Mike from Abergevenny (Welsh Mike) only began as a promoter that week. He is wearing a trucker cap from under which spring great blond curls. He has a battered cherub’s face, red and round and ruddy, as if he has spent his time not floating on clouds but tumbling down earthy banks and digging in fields.  With twinkling eyes he is habitually smiling and laughing but doesn’t say much. He looks about fourteen. Mike from Leicester (English Mike) has been in Berlin for almost two years which, to the community of lingering back-ex-packers that is building about me, is growing towards an age. It is almost unheard of and imbues English Mike with a mysterious quality. What exactly he has been dong no-one is quite sure. He has promoted for the Crawl over the last two years but only very sporadically. This is his first time back on the steps since May. When asked what else he does he mutters something about cleaning out a Currywurst truck. He is wearing a fluffy hoody under an anorak, but on his feet, in spite of the bitter wind he sports sandals. Garth gives him some discount cards and flyers and points him in the direction of a hostel, and off he walks, mumbling to himself. 

I am to shadow Irish Mike that night, to watch how the promoting works. On the bus up to Ebenswalder Straße he tells me of his work as a promoter that summer, paying a rent of around 270€ a month. This is impressive considering that a promoter is only paid 4€ for every person he brings along to the tour. They work from roughly 7pm to 9pm, not including the trip over to the first bar. So if you bring in 15 people, which was common in the summer, Mike tells me, you are making almost 30€ an hour. I quiz him on how he got his flat, what kind of contract he is on and whether he has a social security number. With little interest and a little irritation, he gives out name of websites I should check out, tripwires I should be wary of and – after some coercion - his own mobile number.

I scribble these down, while he says to me, lazily rubbing off the date-stamp on an S-bahn ticket, ‘But really man, all this stuff – flats, jobs, security numbers - comes together through talking to people, and making friends, not through sending out emails and fannying about on the web.’

Heading into the hostel Mike essentially repeats what Ela said to me the night before.  ‘There is no one way to do this job. Everyone has their own technique, you know. Some go straight in for the kill, others are more relaxed about it. I try and be relaxed. Just grab a beer and get chatting. Go out for a smoke and ask for a light. Sometimes I bring in ten or so people and they have no idea that I’m actually working on the crawl.’

I ask Mike if he had been at the hostel I had stayed in the week before.

‘Yeah, I’m there quite a bit,’ he says, and I recall him sitting with us out on the balcony one evening with Bob and Bobby and Jim, telling us story about his neighbour from home being and MI6 operative. ‘Of course, sometimes I go there when I’m not working.’

In the hostel we manage to pick up four guys from Ukraine. They are friendly, and as we travel back to Friedrichshain they tell me that the people in Kiev are very nice. ‘They will invite you into their houses and you can sit down and eat with them. As long as you are not black.’

In the first bar these boys leave us as we sit with Welsh Mike and Mo. Mo is in good spirits and is Garth’s favourite that night for bringing in fifteen from a hostel in Charlottenberg. He says that one of them is a guy from Canada who runs a start-up based in Budapest that is branching out in Berlin. ‘He has jobs going here. I’m going to meet up with him tomorrow.’ He says to me, ‘If you want I can try and get you an interview.’

Irish Mike talks about his girlfriend who he actually met on the Pub Crawl. She is from the Ukraine and sends him constant texts about dreams she’s had of him kissing her sisters. He tells us these texts only serve to inspire dreams of exactly this nature in his sleep. Mo tells me that he also met his girlfriend on the Crawl. She is from Slovakia and doesn’t appear to be as much trouble as Irish Mike’s who repeatedly cuts into the conversation reading out more messages from her. Mo has no texts to read out and soon leaves us and spends the next half an hour in the corner of the bar chatting to Chuck from Canada about the interview the next day.

At the second bar, the sterile sushi joint, I obediently order my ‘Adios Mother Fucker’ and approach Garth. I try to strike up conversation but I don’t think he is really listening and when Irish Mike walks past, he grabs him by the shoulder and says, ‘Jesus mate – have you seen the little white panties those girls from Melbourne have on!’ I later find myself sitting with these four girls from Melbourne and see that Garth’s chances of getting closer to those little white panties are slim.

‘In Prague, we paid $14 for the Pub Crawl,’ they tell me and the rest of the table. ‘There were fifty of us on it, the first bar was a free bar for an hour, and we ended up in the biggest club in the whole of Central Europe … this sucks man. And in Barcelona …’ they continue to offer us reviews on the pub crawls in most of the biggest cities in Europe. They have been travelling for four months and are connoisseurs. Wondering if they had come across my Mexican friend from Liverpool, I nod along and furiously sip my cocktail.

The four girls leave after this bar just as Garth bounds out of a backroom of the bar with a bottle of vodka in his hand. ‘Who wants shots!’ And everyone leaps up and surrounds him flinging heads back and pushing out tongues for him to pour into their wide open mouths.

Bertie Digby Alexander

Berlin 2013

---

[1] Simon Cole, Berlin Blog at Bookpacking.com

[2] Simon Cole, Berlin Blog at Bookpacking.com

Ich bin Fremd hier #4

My first week in Berlin comes to a close. Mid-Monday morning I find myself once again traipsing through the streets of the city with my khaki bag slung over my shoulder, packed full of clothes and books and a resentful, unopened Kindle. It is not raining this time.

I have had to leave some possessions at the first hostel. As the check-out time ticked closer – the staff there were uncharacteristically strict about the check-out time –and I struggle to fit in my fairly modest collection of belongings alongside a tub of yoghurt and flyers from Berlin, in a moment of packing fury I flung my 2013 weekly planner and Fraktur copy of ‘Emil und die Detective’ onto Jann’s bed and leave the room. In a couple of days I missed both these items, and others that I didn’t leave intentionally.

 It is only a short distance to the new hostel and with the fresh air of new beginnings blowing upon me I was almost trotting. This hostel is as cheap as the first, but shares few other characteristics. Whereas the first was for drinking, partying and crashing, an extension of – or warm-up for, university halls - the second is a place of feasting and reading and sharing romantic and misty stories in the evening. It was established by two Americans who came to Berlin thirty years ago, loved it so much they moved here, inviting first friends and then friends of friends, and then anyone to come and stay, and share this city with them. I do not spot this mythical couple during my time at the hostel but their mark is everywhere.

           Up grey and grimy stairs akin to that of the first hostel, drafty and empty in an accidental fashion, opening up at the top is a long room that – contrasted with the playpen square that was the entrance to the first hostel – acts as reception, sitting room, kitchen and banquet hall. Rickety wooden cupboards make up the kitchen and large, communal, wooden tables support great smorgasbords throughout the day. This is a place for yoga; hippies and campfires and resounding choruses of Kumbaya. There are many sofas, not bright and squishy but faded and torn and hard in parts where springs have been bent out of place. Free coffee is provided all day, cheerily brewed by the hostel staff who one comes to recognise by the choice of music they play from the tinny stereo player. (One woman grows to become a particular favourite of mine with her selection of popular musicals in German.) The room is incredibly light as one wall is made up completely of big windows, one of which you climb up to and scramble out of to get on to the terrace with plants and benches and bird baths looking over the hub of the U-bahnhof below; traffic lights, and building works, kebab and phone shops offering cheap calls to Turkey.

            
            When I arrive I drop my stuff down in the dorm (sixteen mattresses again, though here they lie empty in the day) and after a second weekly trip to Kaisers I settle down on a table with my laptop, stroke a cup of coffee with one hand, a few readers and scribblers dotted about me, and begin searching for internships.

             My sense of time lapses as patchy internet connection and the complexity of Craig’s List in German tires me. As I am settling into another brown study my ears pick up to the familiar bass tones of Hot Chocolates’ ‘You Sexy Thing.’ Into this drowsy torpor, eyes numbed by the screen, head still echoing with Jean Valjean’s Saxon lamentations, comes something of a world far away, whether it is Top of the Pops in the 70s or The Full Monty or dad’s cassette player. It is only a quiet backdrop but a lone foot begins to silently tap across from me and shortly afterwards a couple of heads start to nod in subliminal approval; a few shoulders begin to bop and one head-nod turns into a soft bounce, like that of a lazy Churchill dog on a dashboard. Eyes look up from books into the middle distance and maps and pens begin to jiggle as with a slight serious pout one of the readers looks around and passed other faces of unabashed enjoyment as the tune takes hold. The beat expresses itself in legs and torsos and mouths indulgently miming the words as eyes catch each other and spur on this communal expression of shared appreciation; an air guitar begins to strum and a silent chorus emerges, as an infectious swagger and strut takes hold in this odd little hostel, taking us home, taking us back.

            Alas, the song fades too quickly and each soon returns to his own little matters. I close the tab on Craig’s List and commence sending emails to loved-ones. As it begins to darken outside I look forward to a comfortable evening and climb out of the window for a cigarette on the terrace. I look over the rooftops of Kreuzberg as the sun sets. As I smoke I recognise the blonde girl sitting down on a bench five feet from me, talking to a chirpy girl called Gerty from Holland. I met Gerty as we struggled up the stairs together that morning. She sports a jungle of curly golden hair on her hard which bounces about her face, like the ears of an excited spaniel, as she nods and grins and squawks in appreciation at the funny world that appears around her. It was a mass of these curls that I first saw, quivering above a great rucksack that appeared to be propping itself up in a corner of the stairwell that morning. Tentatively approaching I came to see the bright red face of Gerty, struggling for air, the other side of the bag that was almost the same size as her. She raised a trembling hand in salute when she saw me and managed to say: ‘Where’s a good dumbwaiter when you need one, eh?’ I wasn’t sure if she was being witty or was muddled over the correct terminology. I asked if she was OK and she said she was and raising herself up from the wall with a grin went to tackle the stairs again, but in the process of passing me, wedged us stuck for a few awkward moments in the narrow staircase, wriggling and apologising. We eventually freed ourselves and were soon tumbling together into reception.

           Back on the terrace, I imagined the girl sitting with Gerty must have been from the first hostel, however as I turn around to head back inside I hear the words ‘pub crawl’ and realise that she was the moody promoter who accompanied Leo and the basset hound the week before.  I turn back around and approach them.

           Introducing myself Gerty cheerily shakes my hand and says, ‘Yes, from this morning – my fellow mountaineer!’ while the blonde girl nodded slowly as she drew on her cigarette. She says, ‘You came on the Pub Crawl last week.’ I told her that yes I did and I had a great time and I was wondering how I would go about becoming a promoter for them. (I had already sent the company a couple of unanswered emails enquiring about work, and then got lost trying to locate their office behind Warschauer Straße.) The blonde girl introduced herself as Ela from Poland and told me that the best way was to come along that night and talk to her boss.

            
           ‘Garth?’

            She nodded. I hoped that my remembrance of the name would be a point in my favour. Ela told me that she was leaving at 9. I said I would see her then and returned inside, wrenching my mood from the lethargy it had been languishing in since my arrival that morning. I bought a beer and aware that Ela was lingering nearby quickly shoehorned my way into a conversation, talking loudly and trying to look like I was irrepressibly sociable and fun-loving and at ease persuading people that they were the same.  I spent the next couple of hours plonking myself down next to people and flittered about the hostel, always smiling, laughing and trying to make them laugh whenever Ela walked by. She sat sulkily in the far end of the room most of the time. I watched as individuals tentatively approached her, even the people from this place drawn to her long blonde hair, ashy-auburn eyes and midnight, Russian, winter hat.

            At 9.15 we set of from the hostel and I skipped my way to the front of the throng and chatted to Ela about the Pub Crawl. She told me that they are no longer allowed to promote at the first hostel because of an ‘incident.’ She doesn’t tell me much but enough for me ascertain that the hostel proprietors had taken offence to the intimidation techniques of the Bulgarian.

          ‘Each have their own methods,’ Ela said, shrugging. She doesn’t smile once when I am with her, and avoids looking at me with her big painted eyes. But I think that I like her, and that given time, like some of the frosty Polish girls I used to work with in Bath, she would come to like me, and we would sit and smoke together and she would smile patronisingly at my frivolity and I would shiver contentedly in her crispy company.

          ‘They told me they were going to fire me after my first week,’ she continues. ‘But then I got lucky and brought in twenty Scottish soldiers.’ 

          As we approach Garth he calls out, ‘Alright guys! Where are you all from!’ And I shout back ‘London!’ and bop excitedly in the crowd as he takes us through the nights itinerary: three bars, one awesome club, free entry, free shots with every drink, litre cocktails, a shisha with the fifth drink you buy, Beer-Pong! Flipcup! 12€ and unlimited return!

         Once all the others have received their wrist bands and been herded inside the bar I approach Garth with Ela and she introduces me and says that I want to become a promoter. Garth casually says ‘cool’ and tells me to come al ong to their meeting the next day at Frankfurter Tor.

        ‘5.30. On the steps by the second-hand clothes shop.’

         ‘I’ll be there!’

          Inside I meet two of the other promoters: Mike from Shannon, who I recognise but can’t place, and Mo from Birmingham. Mike has long ratty hair and a stubbly spotted face. He smells of stale smoke and is wearing odd shoes and a worn-out grey hoody. He is extremely friendly and chatty and with his smiling dry lips and yellowing, misshaped teeth he welcomes me on board the Crawl. Mo, in comparison has a great bushel of jet black hair and smooth skin that glows in the light. He is wearing full winter gear, a big puffer jacket, zipped down just enough to see the multiple layers beneath and the sparkling laminated card that also hangs from the necks of Mike and Ela. He shakes my hand and welcomes me to Berlin, saying that if ever I want to crash at his when I get tired of hostels I am welcome. ‘You can just whack up a camp-bed in my room. Or, hey, if you don’t want to buy one of those, jump in my bed!’ And he laughs. He offers me his number and, despite thinking this is all a bit forward I take it readily.

        ‘The work isn’t bad,’ Mike tells me as we sit down with our discounted beers. ‘It’s a good laugh, y’know. You are essentially just going out to hostels, drinking and chatting with their guests. The girls can be great as well. I’m telling you man, some of the action I’ve had …’ he falls into gruff chuckles shaking his head and smiling. ‘You spend the evening with them and then that’s it! You aren’t going to see them ever again! Unless they come back as Returners which is no good to anyone as no-one gets commission for Returners. One night I told this group of girls from Bruges that I was actually an undercover journalist for a magazine here, writing about the Pub Crawl. That backfired though. They didn’t trust from that moment on. I thought it would be attracted to the whole stealth-thing. But they weren’t having any of it. I tell you though, the girls from Shannon would have gone crazy for that shit!’

         Onwards to the next bar we go, and as the evening progresses with Beer-Pong and more turquoise shots, by the time we reach the club I have fallen into the pleasure of being abroad and the numbing comfort of it not mattering.

Bertie Digby Alexander

Berlin 2013

'Echter Berliner !!!! Ihr Nicht Fuck You' at the English Theatre Berlin

Before it was filled with dawdling tourists bending their heads back to look up at the Fernsehturm, and before the U-bahn station and Döblin’s nightlife, and before the enterprising Jews from the eastern marshes arrived and occupied the ‘Scheunenviertel’, what is now Alexanderplatz, home of the World Clock, was a cattle market where outsiders would come to trade their stock and try to make a living. Since the Friesians, still cheap and with space to fill, Berlin has continued to thrive as a ‘Welstadt’, welcoming the rest of the world to its streets, from desperate refugees to the pleasure-seeking wealthy. Kreuzberg over the last twenty-five years has received the king’s portion of this influx, and it is in this kebab and hostel saturated district that a wall can be found sporting the words: ‘Echter Berliner!!!! Ihr Nicht Fuck You’.

It is from this piece of graffiti that Daniel Brunet found the title and inspiration for his piece of documentary theatre staged this month at the English Theatre Berlin, part of the ‘Aliens of Extraordinary Abilities?’ project. Considering what makes a real Berliner, Brunet and the other five in his cast – all from an ‘expat’ or ‘immigrant’ community – interviewed ten people from that respective community, exploring the shared and differing experiencing of moving to and living in Berlin. Together they collected over 115, 000 words, and it is from these testaments, performed on stage verbatim, that Brunet and his cast devised their piece of theatre, asking, what makes and who is an ‘Echter Berliner’?

Brunet commences his production at the Ausländerbehörde, the bureaucracy centre for all foreigners in the city, provoking sensations ranging from tedium to fear. Upon arrival each member of the audience is given a coloured ticket dependent on their country of origin and are curtly informed that ‘There is likely to be a delay in the commencement of the performance this evening’. Indeed, it is not until fifteen minutes after the stated starting time that the first group of coloured ticket holders are lead into the theatre. The mass of Germans, clutching red tickets in their palms, are led into the auditorium last.

Inside we see a sad looking character in Jewish garb, sitting morosely on a stall and rummaging through a plastic rucksack, looking like the lost boy on a school trip. When the play begins, he is joined on stage by the other five actors, including Brunet looking suitably American in baseball hat and aviators, one actress in traditional East Asian wear and another in a Muslim shawl. Each clearly represents not simply a culture, but the stereotype that is cast upon individuals from that culture; that which Brunet is attempting to wrench open. Yet such stereotypes are continually presented on stage to comic effect throughout the evening, whether it is the Turk laying out his tea-set with painstaking care or the proud Yorkshireman with the plumy voice. Because of this, Brunet runs the risk of reinforcing these stereotypes as opposed to breaking them down.

The play continues with irritable accounts of the staff in Starbucks refusing to respond in German, or being constantly asked, ‘No but seriously, where are you really from?’, refracted and repeated by from varying perspectives. It soon becomes apparent that the only thing to be comprehensively broken down and explored is the set. This is principally six wooden frames with paper screens, that are re-arranged, dismantled, toppled, walked through and twisted throughout the evening, representing booths, and doorways, and ironing boards, eventually all brought to the floor and ripped into their component parts. In deconstructing these barriers and boundaries Brunet shows the liberation - or wasteland - that will emerge when stereotypes and assumed differences are offered the same treatment. However by constantly tampering with the set he stalls any pace that the piece may hope to accumulate, and instead of intrigue and insight the audience is offered tedium and weariness. More effort should have been spent on stretching and exploring the question of what makes a real Berliner, achieved through a more nuanced engagement with the interviews and the theatrical versatility of the actors, who in comparison to the six wooden frames come across static. At times it appears that we are simply watching a group of friends gossiping about their travails as they embark on a communal evening of DIY. We are offered brief moments of excitement when a door frame occasionally falls down.

At one point in the production the six sit around a table and push a camera into each other’s faces while they are speaking. This is projected on to the stage, showing a dark and patchy picture of disorientated faces, like an amateur and intimidating interrogation video. This effect is unnerving, particularly when one of the actress recounts being confronted by neo-Nazis screaming ‘Auslander Aus!’ However this section at the table is also stretched out until it loses all drama. When a few muted clips of some of the real life interviews are shown, I wondered whether anything had been gained by presenting these stories in the theatre, and if simply an edited version of the research would have been more powerful.

At the end of the play the cast leave the stage chattering away to each other and one wishes that the audience had as much to chew upon when walking out of the theatre. It appears that the hard work of Brunet and his actors was spent in the conception and embryotic development of the play and not in its deployment. Sixty fingers wriggled into the colour and diversity of Berlin, and when put together on stage, glopped into a bland grey of generic urbanity and common complaints. An interesting result to consider in itself, but not, I believe, the intention of ‘Echter Berliner.’  

Bertie Digby Alexander

Berlin 2013

Ich bin Fremd hier #3

‘Everything is established in London. Here, there is still experimentation! And liberation!’ An artist from Chile is showing me the pictures of plants he has created on his MacBook; skeletal and neon they look more alien than anything of botany. He tells me about patterns and fractals, looking at me with earnest, amber eyes. Curls of silver twist about his tangled hair, down his goaty beard and along his eyebrows. He could be any age and I imagine he always has been and always will be.

He grabs my hand and holds it up. ‘It has flesh! Like this here! The plant is still living! I have not killed this plant. It is still alive today, back at home. ’

I fill the silence that quickly descends and ask more questions about fractals which excite him to the extent that ‘we drink!’ and he trots off to his dorm to bring out some absinth in a glass, blue bottle. ‘Absinth,’ he tells me, while he pours, ‘I have drunk, from this same bottle, at all the very special places in the world that I have been. At the Eiffel Tower, on London Bridge, at the Cordillera de la Costa… and now here with you. Prost!’ And we drink.

More absinthe is poured and I see beyond the Chilean artist, Jann, the big South African, walk morosely out onto the terrace. He sees me and comes over. The night before, Sam and Sammy whipped up fifteen or so of us from the hostel into a frenzy with tales of their exploits anecdotes about High Wickham that silenced stories from Prague and Budapest. Jim from Sheffield, hanging at Sam’s elbow, suggests that we play a drinking game but Sam begins rolling a spliff and tells us he knows something better. He gives a nod to Sammy who goes into the kitchen and brings back a glass and various other accoutrements for the game. After the game, at about midnight, Sam talks of the guy he knows in Golitzer Park and says that he is going to head there later to pick up. I walk with Sam and Sammy into the park and with us comes a skinny guy from somewhere nondescript with darting eyes and a high voice who began twitching as we enter and begins to hiss into my ear, ‘-this is sketchy man, this is fucking sketchy…’

As we enter we lose Sam and Sammy up ahead and are accosted by two latino looking men. One starts bopping his leg up and down between my legs as if to try and trip me up. I’m not quite aware of what is going and the two us hop together onto the grass in a kind of jig, and I catch sight of the skinny guy’s aghast white face as we dance past him. Eventually the bopping stops and I stumble back onto the path.

We head on. ‘Oh man, what was that about? You dealt with that well man! I wouldn’t have known what to do … Jesus this is fucking-’ At this point we are called back and one of the guy is pointing to my phone that is lying in the grass; the phone I’m using in Germany, of which a touchscreen is the most high-tech feature is possesses. I pop back and pick it up thanking him and it is only much later that I realise this phone must have been taken from my pocket and subsequently rejected.

Jann, with his iPhone5, following us into Golitzer Park, was less fortunate. Hours later I found him at my shoulder, keeping pace with my swaying and stumbling on the way to a club in Kreuzberg. He put a heavy arm around my shoulder.

‘Bertie, man, I gotta tell you something …’

‘whatsthat?’

‘I lost my phone. I was mugged! They took my phone …’

‘When?’

‘Tonight. In that park. These three guys surrounded me. And they took my phone man. But shush …. shhhhh - don’t tell anyone. Shusshh man, ye? Just between you and me …’ I was too drunk to feel sorry for Jann but I did in the morning. He sat down with us now and he launched into his day trying to sort out the mess. (He is one of many. A week later a Texan wearing shorts laughs about the same happening to him. ‘Fuck it! I suppose you can’t really say you’ve been to Europe unless you’ve been robbed, can you?’) When Jann gets up to leave I hear the Chilean jabbering the other side of me and I realise that he has been showing me and Jann pictures of plants for the last five minutes. He pours us more absinth and resumes.

I am very happy, sitting here drinking with the Chilean, half-listening to him talking about his art but that morning hadn’t been happy at all. Groggy and more than a little miserable I forced myself to leave the hostel and caught the U1 to Warschaur Strasse with the intention of walking towards Friedrichshain in search of the an English bookshop called ‘East of Eden’. As I got further from the hostel I felt better, and gently began to fall into the city, content in the knowledge that I had a lot of walking in front of me. I love walking through the city, through any city; on foot no one has any reason or interest to stop you. On the pavement you just walk and the houses and the tarmac and the railings were made for walkers like you, and say ‘stay with me, you can keep walking here …’

I have scribbled on to my map that ‘East of Eden’ is off Frankfurter Allee, passed Frankfuter Tor walking away from the city. The television tower must be behind me, this means. I follow my map diligently and find the street on which the shop is supposed to be situated and find no shop but beautiful houses with falling ivy and explosions of graffiti across the building, turning concrete space into that crux that lies between surface and window into another world. Indeed, here the sound of the road is muffled and it appears that I have entered another city. I forego all plans to locate ‘East of Eden’, don’t think about how long it has taken me to get here, how long it will take to get to the next book shop on the list, and walk down the street towards an avenue with a two rows of trees and a pebbled path running down the centre to steps leading up to a small church at the end.

It is Sunday morning and I sit down on one of the benches under the trees.  

A man in loose sky blue shirt and brown trouser pushing a pram slowly down the avenue towards me. He walks slowly and looks about him, his eyes briefly passing over me and then retreated unconcerned and relaxed to hover over nothing in particular. The baby was silent and invisible under white blankets. The man walked slowly with a slight board but content expression. After him comes a woman and her dog, coming down at a quicker pace, the dog skipping ahead while she looked at the screen in her hand. Neither noticed me save for half a sniff in my general direction. A van drives up the avenues and parks opposite me, breaking the quiet for the street, and then silence again for a moment before, the rumble of the men’s voices, a quiet echo of the rumble of the engine, and the clap and swing as they opened up the back of the van and began to unload furniture.

It is true, that there are no foreign countries, just foreign people.  

Here I see a Berlin. That ‘real’ Berlin that I have had glimpses when, for instance, my friend rushes to meet me, late because she got tied up in a meeting at work; or the school children who play football in the playground that hostel balcony look onto. (‘Jesus,’ Jann said to me one morning. ‘There are children in Kreuzberg?’) A Berlin that is functioning like any other city, home to people with lives like those in Paris and London, with work and school. There are no tours to see that city, and it is one with almost complete exclusivity, until you too live in this city. Until you work in the city.

Rising from my bench and thumbing my wind-battered Lebenslauf I yearn to be part of it all. It was a beautiful autumn day, and as I wandered about the pretty streets off Gneisenau Strasse and Sonnenalle and Kottbusser Dam I watch people sitting outside cafes, restaurants and bars, eating and drinking and laughing. It looked beautiful and I saw myself sitting with them relaxing after a week of work and retiring to our favourite spot in the city and complaining about things like construction on the U-bahn and negligent landlords. But as I passed each table German words mocked my incomprehension and attacked my spirit. The chirping voices on my BBC Learn German Disk (Kann ich hier deise Reisencheck erinlosen?) were not from here. The people weren’t welcoming me with breezy, languid directions. The voices are no more Berlin than I am   

The light was beginning to fade when I came across a great gothic church. I wasn’t sure where I was and as yet haven’t been able to locate this church again: I was somewhere in between a pub in Charlottenburg and a theatre in Kreuzberg. I decided to stop and sit, and went up to the great gothic building that reminded me of the castle in Disney’s ‘Beauty and the Beast’. It was scissored by two roads where cars and bikes sped past, and looked resentful and sulky at what had grown up around him.

Old churches, like old pubs, I love, and hold a presence that I find hard to feel in building such as the Reichstag or Big Ben, impressive architecturally they may be. Imagining Stresseman drafting laws or Churhcill or Disraeli’s speeches, or even the lighting of the Reichstag fire of the Gun Powder Plot aren’t as accessible as simply thinking at the doors or a pub or church: who has walked through these doors to sit inside? What murder and conception and skulduggery happened here? How many students, travellers, artists and pilgrims have arrived at these doors seeking sanctuary and comfort from the road?

The Reichstag, Big Ben and the like are to look at - you can’t see the Eiffel Tower from the top of the Eiffel Tower. But confronted by this church here with only an imagined history what is best to do is to go inside, and if closed – as this was - but to sit on its steps, and feel place your hand on its cold stone – picking up a pebble if there is one - and join the many that have come before.

Back on the terrace that evening I don’t recognise many people. Sam and Sammy are nowhere to be seen. Jim from Sheffield left that morning for Amsterdam; the Swiss sisters were going home that morning as well, and camp Barry had caught a flight to Munich the day before. Joseph and his girlfriend had returned to the UK.

I sit down on a table with includes four Israelis and an Australian who attempts, seriously, to speak Hebrew to them, and cites his Syrian heritage every few sentences. Soon it is too cold for the Israelis. They head inside followed by the Australian and I am left with the Chilean artist. 

 ‘Tomorrow I will drink it at the Berlin Wall,’ he smacks his lips. ‘Very good yes? Very special drink absinth. You an artist, I can see that! Like me, you are an artist! And together we drink to art, and the city. Of course, it is not completely right. If we could be like Baudelaire and drink with opium. Then we would be ready to create art!’

He falls into a gabbled Spanish and I begin to laugh. He begins to laugh also, for no apparent reason other than I am, and that we can, and that we are together and there is really no reason not to, and now we have started, no reason to stop.

Bertie Digby Alexander

Berlin 2013

Ich bin Fremd hier #2

I spend the day time wandering about the city handing out my CV (Lebenslauf, ‘life-run’, in German) with my big map from the hostel, walking into Irish pubs and English bookshops and other hostels with big maps, often swapping mine for one of theirs when it begins to tear from constant folding and unfolding and stuffing into pockets. I return in the early evenings to the colourful hostel where I make a sparse tomato and cheese salad in the kitchen, and scrounge about the ‘Free Food’ cupboard to see what I find to add some variety. Other backpackers crowd into the kitchen around me, making elaborate meals with herbs and cinnamon sticks and prosting drinks and trying to remember what it was that was said in Amsterdam. People walk around shoeless and wear pyjamas and hoodies sporting ‘Melbourne Rowing Club’.

Unsociably practising German in the mornings I attempt to make up for this in the evenings, joining the card circles and smoking out on the hostel terrace and clinking beers in the ‘chill-out-area’. One evening out on the terrace, during a mass game of Shithead, Sam and Sammy appear from the kitchen. They tell us they have just woken up after getting back from Berghain at 2 o’clock that afternoon. Sam - a cockney Jack-the-lad type who smiles cheekily at everyone and they smile back bashfully and a little dazzled and watch him as he flits about the room, ‘Alroight lad, hows it going, what’s the crack?’ - and his girlfriend Sammy - with long curling hair and big glasses that magnified her eyes, making her look like either a nerdy toddler or old spinster, or a loveable, pretty insect -  a couple fresh from A-level results, who arrived on my third day and took the bunk bed in the corner of the dorm I was in.

They are a kind of sensation in the hostel. The night before, as I look over at Sammy surrounded by a group of girls from Canada, the squat lesbian sitting next to me spits into my ear– ‘they only like her because she is sleeping in the same bed as him!’ And she jerks her head over to Sam who, with a rollie held lazily between his lips, is teaching a group of guys a card game called ‘Jack Spaniels’ Cookie Jar’.

The ripple of anticipation that spread across the terrace when the two appeared bubbles into a flurry of wonder as space is cleared for the drowsy couple and questions are placed before them. I hear little of their answers as the squat lesbian is at my shoulder again: ‘Berghain is nothing. Kit Kat Club is where the real action is. And I’ve heard of one next to that where you can lie in a bath and get pissed on. Shit as well. People save it up during the week and bring it in a lunch box …

I head inside to grab another beer from the fridge and fall onto one of the bright orange sofas. I haven’t been there long when three figures enter the hostel; all heads turn to them as they enter and there is the palpable yet subtle sense that the carefully managed equilibrium of the hostel has been broken. The first one of the three, a tall guy with coiffed hair and little black eyes, whispers something to the receptionist who merely twitches her eyebrows and gives him a bored nod before turning away from him. He leads the two girls behind him towards us, strutting confidently and flashing a great ivory smile. The girl on his right has bright blonde hair, and is dressed all in black, with a black Russian winter hat and furred collar. The second girl is short and square; she has brown hair that falls about her shoulders in great curls and has the eyes of basset hound. She is wearing a tight coat and small like black elf boots that appear to curl up at the edges as if they have been left in an oven, and ivy-coloured tights that complete the look.  Each of them has a shining, laminated card hanging down from their necks.

The leader introduces himself as Leo, working with a company that runs Pub Crawls every night in East Berlin. ‘And we are the only Pub Crawl to do that! We take you partying in the East; and the real Berlin is in the East.’

Common along the backpacker trail, I had a friend who had worked on a Pub Crawl in Rome, before it was shut down when one unfortunate punter fell into the Tiber. They are surprising popular. I remember coming across a Mexican lad in a hostel in Liverpool who had been travelling across Europe and hadn’t gone out except upon on one of these organised pub crawls. This was what he planned to do in Liverpool as well – indeed, it was the thing he was most excited about - and I didn’t want to tell him that I didn’t think there was such a thing there. That is, unless he didn’t mind waiting a couple months to traipse about town with seven people from the University of Liverpool’s English Society dressed as characters from Alice in Wonderland.  

Camp Barry from Cape Cod next to me asks Leo where it starts and he sits himself down next to Barry and taking out a brightly coloured flyer begins pointing towards bars and clubs and pictures of people smiling open mouth into cameras amongst gawdy lettering in bright colours. Stationed behind the flinching Barry was the basset hound who repeated what Leo said in short staccato phrases in a strong Slavic accent. ‘East. The Best. Good time.’ And she slaps Barry on the back. ‘To the East!’

The girl in black sits next to me. She lights a cigarette and stays silent for the next hour, smoking cigarette after cigarette looking bored and pissed off. Leo and the basset hound slink about the hostel.  Leo laughs loudly with the guys and grins at the girls, leaning towards them and bouncing his eyebrows up and down. He is largely received well. Only once I see him approach a fat American at the bar who looked like he’d rather live in a video game, and snaps at Leo shrilly, ‘I said ‘no’ man you’ve already asked me!’ The basset hound slaps both the girls and the guys on the back and drinks a few pints herself and releases war cries and beats down upon the bar, whooping and cheering and grabbing wrists attempting to drag possible crawlers to the exit.

Game as the next foolish punter, I joined Barry and the rest of the motley crew from the hostel – two giggling Swiss sisters, four lads from Manchester wearing shining button up shirts and jeans, three brash girls from Sydney and lolloping Jann from South Africa, who sleeps and snores in the bed next to mine – to follow Leo East. Arriving at the first bar we realised to our surprise that Leo and the two others were mere minnows in comparison to Garth, a great sperm whale of an Aussie who was to be leading the tour that night. As we approach he shouts out, ‘Alright guys! Where are you all from!’ A few of us tentatively call out our home cities and Garth takes us through the night: three bars, one awesome club, free entry, free shots with every drink, litre cocktails, a sheisha with the fifth drink you buy, beer-pong! Flipcup! €12 and unlimited return!

The first bar – the ‘techno lounge’ - was so small that our group almost filled it out, and later it was bursting as catches from other hostels were reeled in.  I get a beer and drink my free shot – neon and weak – and sit down to talk to the Swiss sisters. I ask how long they are in Berlin and when they arrived and what they think and what they do back home; I turn to my other side and I ask a Portugeuse girl the same and she asks me in return. After about three quarters of an hour here we head on.

‘So we are leaving Freidrickhain and heading into Kreuzberg!’ Garth is yelling from the front. ‘We are effectively crossing the border from East Berlin to the West! In this bar, I would highly recommend, the ‘Adios Mother Fucker!’ You will be well and truly - hammerfaced!

A flutter of excited voices rises and falls at this last announcement and we cram into the bar and like school children lining up for lunch we form a queue and obediently each order an ‘Adios Mother Fucker!’ And we sip away in the second bar which looks like a sterile sushi restaurant as the barwoman squeals out: ‘One ‘Adios Mother Fucker’? Four Euros please!’

Into almost empty bars we paraded, led by Garth. Those few already in the bar, sipping a cocktail at the bar or talking quietly in corners, looked up in surprised horror at our arrival. This turned into a disdain mixed with a slight shamefacedness at being caught in such a place themselves. At the third bar I notice that the three that picked us up from the hostel have disappeared and I wonder how long ago they left. There is no time to ponder on this though because Garth is yelling out the rules of flipcup. We shuffle ourselves into teams and give our names gleefully to Garth who yells them out with a hoot of laughter which we appreciate and then we play. It is all laughter and drinking and good fun, except for one quiet girl from Belgium who is unable to flip her cup and this sends her into a hysterical breakdown and she rushes into the bathroom to the sound of the roaring victorious Manc lads who celebrate by downing the unflipped cups of the vanquished Belgiums.

Then onwards to the club which is a blur of Pitball and discolights. At one point I remember seeing Garth bouncing by in the crowd a huge smile on his face as he disappears into the throng. Too many hours later I find myself back at the hostel and bump into Joseph and his girlfriend fresh from Paris.

‘How’s the job hunt going?’ I ask him, leaning up against the door to my dorm.

‘Ah!’ he let out a panted ejuaculation.

‘Job hunt!’ his girlfriend said, turning to him. ‘What? I want to go home!’

‘Yeah … that’s not really happening,’ Joseph says. ‘The whole not speaking German thing …errr … but another time ... How’s it going for you?’

I told them about my fears of Social Security numbers and flats and the refusals and rejections I’ve received so far. ‘I fear that I may be going home too.’

‘Not true!’ the girlfriend shouted out. ‘Where there’s a will there’s a way!’ And she whisked Joseph off and out of sight. I go into my dorm to get a jumper. As I enter angry voices fall silent. It is dark and late so I don’t turn on the light but I can see two figures sitting on their bed in the corner by the window, silent, and waiting until I leave the room.

The terrace is as busy as always. I manage to find a chair squeezed up against two Aussies.

‘The reason I haven’t told you before …’ the smaller one is saying, with his head hanging.

‘Bro, you can tell me anything,’ the big one cuts in.

‘I know, man, I just haven’t because –‘

‘Anything man. You know I won’t judge I’m just here to listen man. Just to support.’

‘Ye, I know, and that’s why-‘

‘But bro don’t say anything you don’t want to say, I don’t need to know anything…’

‘Yeah, I know-‘

‘Only what you’re comfortable with man …’

And this went on for a while until to my surprise – and I believe that of the smaller one – the bigger suddenly burst into tears and fell into the other’s lap. His knees were quivering up against mine and I could hear him mumbling, ‘I’m sorry man, it’s alright, I’m OK …’

And then as quick as he had collapsed his head snapped up and he leapt onto his feet and cried. ‘C’mon! let’s go get fucked!’ And they were off.

Bertie Digby Alexander

Berlin 2013

Ich bin Fremd hier #1

           The city is wet and cold like England but the hostel is warm with sleep and the compound of baggage and bodies everywhere. Heat like this is found in Prague and Amsterdam and Budapest and Romania, but I have arrived in Berlin.

           ‘To go to Berlin was the aspiration of the composer, the journalist, the actor’- this from Peter Gay’s ‘Weimar Culture’, a section of which I read upon my flight from Gatwick - ‘[W]ith its superb orchestras, its hundred and twenty newspapers, its forty theatres, Berlin was the place for the ambitious, the energetic, the talented. Wherever they started, it was in Berlin that they became, and Berlin that made them famous …’[1]

Confident that the energy and opportunities of such a place exists, almost a century on, and through two World Wars and one great wall, I cry out to family and friends: ‘See you all in five years’ time!’ and with my big bag slung over my shoulder - neither the backpackers backpack nor the holiday maker's suitcase – I set off. (I love this bag and smile as I catch a glimpse of myself as I leave my room with it slung around my shoulder in the mirror; a grand thing in faded khaki with strong handles and a weak zip; once my father’s from his army days, I imagine, and later used to ferry spades and cricket bats down to the beach before it was commissioned to hold my laundry at university.) I feel like David Copperfield, Pip, or Oliver Twist, heading towards the Great Metropolis! I am ready to work hard, I say to myself, to have sore feet and hands and fall in to frequenters of houses of skulduggery and ill-repute and scuffle claw and dagger, and in time to triumph, to weep and find love between grubby houses and plush living rooms.

There had been moments of doubt.

I was in Berlin in August, visiting a friend and making a quick reconnoitre. Keen to show off my German I said to her: ‘Was bis du von Beruf? Ich bin arbeitslos!’

‘Oh! Don’t say that. No-one in Berlin wants to hear that!’

The vim with which she referred to this animosity towards the unemployed unnerved me a little. But back in London while I drank and danced with Isherwood and dodged and ducked with le Carré, watched German films and listened to Rammstein, I was certain that Berlin was right for me and I was right for Berlin and I booked my flight and began a little research on employment in the city. Despite all this preparation, when I arrive in Berlin and I see the threatening rain slap against the windows of the plane and I slip on the slabs at Schönefeld Airport and struggle with the ticket machine as a muttering and finger-drumming line grows, and tingling bells are rung furiously at me by aggrieved cyclists, this city truly does appear Dickensian in its size and hostility, and I recognise that I really am falling at its feet and asking, humbly, for a chance.

After the grubby S-Bahn to Ostkreuz and the rickety U1 from Warschauerstaße I eventually find the hostel, and the cold, grimy stairway upwards is as grey as the sky and concrete outside. However on reaching the third floor I am met with a trifle of colour and warmth as I enter reception. With the brightly coloured walls and furniture the place looks like the set of the Tweenies. I am called forward by a soft, lethargic receptionist wearing a trilby and waistcoat, cropped blond hair and crystal blue vacant eyes. Check-in takes a couple of seconds and a signature and I am pointed towards my dormitory. It is quiet inside with the sound of heavy breathing and people rummaging in bags. I try to locate the showers and as I get lost I pass collapsed bodies lolling on sofas, curled up in chairs or propped up against the wall hugging their backpacks. Occasionally one more alive engages one of the fallen in a semi-conscious conversation: ‘Hey, remember … this is where Tim and Andy slept …’ And they dreamily reminisce on the nights before and one tells the other that they are leaving for Prague that day.

I venture out into Kreuzberg. I am told that Kreuzberg was heavy and rough in the 80s and 90s, famous for its cheapness and liberty and May Day riots, and has more of a reputation across German than towns three times its size. Perhaps more than anywhere else in Berlin, Kreuzberg was much cooler fifteen years ago. Most of Berlin I quickly find out was cooler fifteen years ago. I fear that the world of Herr Lehman cannot be found here at all; and that me, like many others, are like the fools who wander around Notting Hill attempting to find the blue door. Kneipes, that I am told can be found on every street corner - an Eckkneipe, I believe - are no more common than hostels and backpacker lounges. The like of me have moved in and destroyed what we seek, though we may convince ourselves - as we walk past graffiti and derelict buildings and smoke indoors – that we are living in the real Kreuzberg.

I don’t think too much about this however as I wander down Oranienstraße, wet and hungry, and into the quiet stalls of Kaisers. I collect a few groceries: cheese, tomatoes, bread, Nescafé Gold Blend. Queuing up at the cashier I notice that there are no plastic bags on offer the other end, but only material ones to buy this end. Though I was not prepared for this it pleased me. Tescos offer an assortment of long-term sturdy material bags at their check-outs as well (though they also still provide the plastic). I fully support the attempt to reduce plastic-bag-wastage and as I am also forgetful, I am now the owner of about twelve of different varieties of Tescos’ material ones, not one of which was with me in Berlin. However I was wearing my big Berlin coat and reckon that I will be able to squeeze most of my basket into the pockets and carry the surplus in my arms.

There was a sweet old lady in front who smiled at me and I smiled back and I smiled more when she carefully counted out her change in her wrinkled palm and transferred pieces one-by-one to the hard and shining hand of the cashier. My smile faltered however as I caught the eyes of the latter who had already been pissed off by the punk customer before who had paid for a couple of sticks of chewing gum with a €20 note, and now was making it clear that she had limited patience for any games I might want to play. I was a little nervous as she aggressively scanned my groceries and sent them tumbling down the other side. When she barked out the price I was certain she had said ‘zwolf Euro sechzig’ and repeated it to make sure but then she screeched something else out that sounded completely different. She began jabbing her finger repeatedly at the flashing numerals on the screen and I took the misguided decision to ignore this, determined to pay as any normal German would.  I kept faith with ‘zwolf Euro sechzig’ and began trailing through notes and coins while she spoke more German at me and everyone’s eyes were on me. It was very embarrassing. Eventually she snatched a €20 note from my hand and dropped the rest back clattering in front of me followed swiftly by my change. I was shuffled on by the next customer in the irritable line as pennies rolled down upon my sad, patient little pile of groceries. I squashed what I could into my pockets and hugging the rest to my chest rushed out into the city, thankful that, as long as they didn’t speak to me, these Germans would assume that I was just as at home here as they.

I tell myself that there is not a moment of time to loose in conquering this language and set down to study as soon as I have labelled and pushed my food into the crowded fridge back at the hostel. This enthusiasm for learning presently stalls, and I think of Mark Twain’s invectives against the language which renders 'turnip' feminine but 'girl' neuter. On top of this I don’t feel books and pens are welcome in this flamingo-fermented environment and push my paper and coloured flashcards further into my lap, attempting to look inconspicuous, and as relaxed as those around me, nonchalantly learning the difference between the demonstrative and dative. After an hour or so I throw it down and tell myself that success lies in practise, not theory, and so approach reception to ask about laundry. She looks a little fearful, almost repulsed listening to my German, but she understands and answers steely in perfect English. 

'Searching for a flat are you?' she asks.

'In time!' I say. Finding work was the first thing on the list. 

She stares at me blankly. I smile at her an leave.

Exhausted I fall upon one of the big bright sofas to read. Around the two coffee tables there were about seven guys, all silent as they tapped away on laptops and tablets. As the evening rolls in another of different stock sits down next to me and begins fidgeting, picking up, turning a few pages and then putting down a magazine in front of him, looking around and drumming on the table and trying to find someone else as unoccupied as him. He has trusting green eyes behind glasses and is pale and lanky, like a stretched frog. He is wearing a woollen jumper with white hairs hopping across dark blue, and wears deep read trousers that hug his slim thighs and collect about his ankles. Putting down my book for a moment to reach for my beer he leapt upon the chance and introduced himself as Joseph from Canterbury. He tells me that he is waiting for his girlfriend to join him in Berlin and together they hope to find work and a flat in Berlin. After I have told him that I am doing the same thing and he asks a few questions he leans towards me and says:

‘Berghain.’ The full-stop is audible. ‘Have you been? I’ve heard it’s incredible.’ I tell him I haven’t been.

One of the tappers speaks up.

‘Berghain.’ He has a Canadian accent. I could hear his full stop as well. He is wearing a baseball cap and doesn’t look up from his screen. ‘Insane.’

Joseph leaned towards him, his eagerness matched in its extremity by the indifference of the other.

‘Tell me.’

‘It can’t be described.’ And he raises his head and looks into Joseph’s eyes.

Joseph waits, certain that it can be. ‘The first time I went, the first thing I saw when I got in was this man, completely naked, lying on a table about the size of these here, just jacking off. A coffee table just like this.’ His eyes narrow slightly at Joseph. ‘If you think you’re going to be weirded out by such things you’re not going to get in.’

Joseph let out a jocular laugh and bounced on the sofa. ‘So you didn’t get turned away!’

‘I did at first,’ the Candian says quietly, and looks down at his screen. ‘But the feeling you get when you have got in, when the door has been opened and you walk in and go through the drug check, and you pay, and the cloak room, and you can already hear the music and know that behind those doors are thousands of sweating dancing bodies …. Of course Berghain isn't the only place in this city worth going to.’

He goes on to tell us about ‘The Labyrinth’ which isn’t a club but a place inside a club. Here you find a particular man and say a couple of selected words as you hand him a €10 and he takes you to ‘The Labyrinth’, where you are blindfolded then left amongst tunnels and ropes and cracks in walls to make your way out. Like Saw, but you pay for this with money as oppose to blood. And of course you are drinking.

‘It took me forty-five minutes to get out.’

I wasn’t sure if this was slow or fast or particularly impressive either way so just nodded silently with a thoughtful, understanding expression.

‘Best thing I’ve ever done.’

Joseph turns to me. ‘I’m hoping to head out tonight, but I wasn’t sure where-’

‘Too late for The Labyrinth mate,’ the Canadian says ‘You want to get there early. Six or seven.’

I am meeting my friend that evening to celebrate my arrival in the city, and so have leave Joseph twitching in the lounge as the Canadian gives up more sage advice on going out in Berlin.

My friend is late, so instead of pacing in front of the church I enter a bar that I spotted the other side of the road as I left the hostel. I am greeted not by a large and balding landlord behind the counter with a square cigar poking out of his mouth, but instead a small bar girl with piercings in both eyebrows below a woolly black hat and thick dark jumper. She has a pale, pointed face, like a shrewd snow fox and when I enter is drinking a herbal tea from a glass mug and smoking a cigarette.

‘Kann ich eine Bier haben, bitte?’

I like her straight away and believe she likes me too. She starts jabbering away about the largers she has. I stutter out, ‘Was emphelen Sie?’ and to my joy she starts tapping on one nodding her head and speaking German words I don’t know. ‘Super! Diese hier bitte!’

            Buoyed on my successful German I rolled and lit a cigarette and, when my friend text me to say she would be later still, I ordered another beer - ‘noch eines, bitte’, which she understood – and when I began rolling another cigarette and realised I had no filters she passed the packet of hers and her lighter and I lit it and thanked her and thought, fuck fifteen years ago, this is like Herr Lehmann right now. I do belong here, and say to myself, Ich bin Berliner! and smile in the knowledge that I will never make JFK’s mistake, and think this sprawling town can be mine, this stone and paint and flesh, these streets and circles, these walls and smoky Kneipes. In time.

         ‘Noch eines, bitte.’

Bertie Digby Alexander

Berlin 2013

---

[1] Peter Gay, ‘Weimar Culture: The Outside as Insider’, (1969), Great Britain, Secker and Warbung.