bERLIN - pART 1

BERLIN
Wow, where do I start? When first touching down on German soil, we were greeted off the plane with a smell of fresh sewage. There was murmuring amongst us hoping that all of Berlin didn’t reflect this smell. But those thoughts were temporally lived due to our excitement of arriving. When walking through arrivals, me and Zac noticed a guy holding a sign saying ‘Red 7’. “Wow, we did a project for them,” we both commented. Totally missing the fact that that guy was for us! Duh!
Once arriving at the street of the hostel, we went through a rather bizarre experience of actually getting in it. We got buzzed through a door only for it to lead us straight back outside! So, we went through another door which led to a lift. “Hotel transit floor 4,” the sign read. As we ascended in the lift, a strong smell of cigarettes and laughter of girls became louder and poignant. The doors opened... Girls in pyjama are chasing each other, bar, booze, smoke. We had arrived!
The hostel was not bad at all, good social area and nice sized rooms. The main selling point for us English was probably the 24 hour bar. As it was late, we weren’t going anywhere just yet and joyfully gulped down our massive glasses of beer and filled our lungs with smoke. I’ve never felt soo manly carrying four of those beers over to the table. A novelty that would last only a day or so, but still..
We awoke for the agreed time to meet for breakfast, everyone looking a little worse for wear, including myself, still actually feeling very pissed. Breakfast bemused the majority of us,(except Kristos) consisting of make yourself sandwiches. I didn’t know what to make of it and struggled to make myself something I could agree on. I was already missing full English breakfasts.
We slowly made our way to the Transmediale festival to pick up our tickets. A few of us broke off from the group and went to explore and make the most of out of our travel cards. I instantly felt that the city was overly spacious, calm and rather stunning at times. The architecture and design has a very interesting yet minimal feel, consisting of strange and unusual angles and shapes. Even the clothe shops kept to this minimal feel. The colour to the city was very dull and grey, all the same very interesting though. A shoe shop we came across really caught my eye. Its decor was rather urban and decayed. Almost looking like the decor and building is incomplete. They opted to show just show 3 single shoes on a concrete slap on the floor. That was about it, but it made me want to go in, and I thought it was really cool. I believe I found it refreshing not to see corporative logo’s splashed everywhere. This minimal feel, was becoming a recurring theme that the Bauhaus gallery would explain later to me.
That day we randomly got off at train stations and explored the areas without using a guide which was refreshing as it allowed me to get my own feel to the city. Getting lost along the way was a highlight, and when we found our way back we were rather disappointed that we knew where we were.
Throughout the week the spaciousness of the city put me into a Zen-like frame of mind. I could stop in the middle of the street of town without people barging into me. Unlike London, the packed like sardines aspect that puts me off wanting to live there. A striking point of Berlin was also how under populated the city seemed. At times you would believe that it was a ghost town.
More to come
- Transmediale Festival
- The Bauhaus Museum
- Interesting experiences. Panorama Bar, The Reichstag, Squat Gallery.