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
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