Blurring into 24
SO this weekend was my 24th birthday and we celebrated in style…for the whole weekend.
On Friday we went to the Berliner Zeitung, which are one of the main newspapers covering Berlin. It is an umbrella group also comprising the Net Zeitung and the Berliner Courier. 120 people work for Berliner Zeitung, while Net Zeitung has 10 editors. We spoke to Dominika, the editor-in-chief of Net Zeitung. She says their readership is 30-40 year old males who are quite intellectual and discuss the articles with the editors via the reader comments beneath articles.
In the evening we went out to Studio 54, a club housed in this big old deserted gothic brick building. Some of the rooms are artist’s workshops and galleries leading from the street, while you can walk up six flights of stairs to a bar overlooking my favourite part of the club – the outside beach bar, a big area covered with sand, a stage, and a few bars – one of them a mini van that you can also sit in. We had a live band playing so we danced the night away. At midnight Alanna and Elizabeth came over to me with two tequila shots and a tea light candle singing ‘Happy Birthday’ along with the other sneaks involved at the time, but it was really sweet and I had an absolute ball.
On Saturday, Jay, Rosanne myself and a few others went on the alternative tour. It focused mainly on the culture and street art of Berlin in the Kreuzberg, Friedrichshain and Prenzlauerberg districts, including particular bits of history. It was really fascinating, whether or not you see graffiti as art or vandalism, Berlin has a lot of it. Unlike other cities, there are no laws here stating that the homeowners must clean graffiti off their shops, and as everybody’s skint anyway, no one can afford to get rid of it. Thus it’s become a part of Berlin life and culture.
The interesting thing is, apart from large works that were commissioned or are respected by others, a lot of street art is painted and painted over. Sometimes it can change as much as several times a week. Rue showed us a variety of pictures, including someone who paints the Berlin polar bear Knut, and someone who has turned a cartoon called Little Lucy into a cat hating evil cartoon – there are pictures of Lucy with her cat in the toaster or over an oven. Think Blinky Bill doing evil things and you might come close.
We got a bit rained out in the morning, but stopped in a bakery where I had a borek. Kreuzberg is a big Turkish area because when there were plans to build a big road around Berlin they brought in all these Turkish people, and then the project never went ahead, so there are many flats full of satellite TVs because they had nothing to do – they were just left here in the country to make the best of what they had.
We began the tour at 11am and didn’t finish until about 5, but Rue was heading to an art auction including some interesting pieces by a Spanish guy called El Bancho. The auction was held in the old city swimming pool that had closed down. There were art installations in the shower areas and various other odd but interesting arty things. The pieces for sale were hung around the main swimming pool and the auctioneer walked around with his hammer selling the paintings…I think the lowest went for 36 euros but some of the highest had minimum prices of 500 euros. We didn’t stay till the end because we had a party to celebrate – mine!
When I got home there was no one around. All the girls were in my flat though, and they walked my through to the lounge room where they had strung heaps of streamers and had put out snacks and had a bottle of bubbly for us to toast and taste. We sat talking but the bubbles had begun to work their magic, so we got some music on and went door knocking for all the others…within a half hour we had a roomful of people chatting, laughing and having fun. Now, the funny thing is, the only other Australian on this project, Michael, his birthday was also July 25th! So we had a flat full of people here in building 27, and a flat full of people partying in building 23, and the girls were on the phone negotiating to get them over here while they were trying to make us go there! In the end they came here but it was hard enough getting 20 people in a room let alone 40, so we all headed out towards Prenzlauerberg to find a club. I vaguely remember eating cake at some stage, and I was sung Happy Birthday twice, and I got two birthday cards with lots of nice thoughts showing how after a week some of them know me so well!
Somehow we got to a place called Magnet, and danced and danced and danced the night away. I got home at 6am when the sun was rising, and went to sleep. At about 1pm David came to find me, and we rode to the market again as I needed a bike pump and a few bits, and I helped Jay buy a bike (at a better price) and then we all went and sat at a café where they had happy hour cuba libres (I only had one!) Piers had also bought a bike, so the four of us rode home (with a stop at a gelateria) when I realized I hadn’t done my homework so us girls sat around doing German homework while watching Columbo in German.
Today we now have class at a later time, which I don’t actually like because it feels like a waste of a day, but Saeeda is convinced that I have some secret passion for fashion, because I was wearing my nice green summer dress today. I have to do a presentation in German tomorrow about our group excursion, which is to a design house in Charlottenburg. After class we took the train up to Victoria Park, which is a pretty and big park in Kreuzberg with a waterfall. Natasha, Adam, Elizabeth, Alana, Michael and I sat in the park eating lunch and just chilling out. It was quite a hot day today so we roasted a bit. Elizabeth and I had ridden to Hallesches Tor and left the bikes there, so we all took the train up to meet the group at the Topography of Terror exhibition. Because it was so hot it was such a bore – literally a line of boards that you can walk and read at your own pace, but I have trouble with these things now because my eyes go blurry after a while.
I had to head back and get my bike and then we had a group leaders meeting. Oh yeah, we have been divided into four groups to work on this project, and when our group got together they all pointed to me and said I was the leader. Funny or expected?! So I’ve managed to talk the other three group leaders into my idea that it is easier to do this via district rather than topic, according to the random groups that were chosen. We then had a layout meeting to talk about how we are going to put the travel guide together, and again it was very easy to talk about in a smaller group and flesh out some of the details.
Since then I shoveled down some dinner, wrote my German presentation and organised the meeting minutes from both meetings to be printed and sent to class for distribution. I think it’s way past my bedtime…
Tags: Travel
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