LIKE LAMBS WE JOY: It's a celebration!

Jazz im Park, Pankow

Berlin has had its share of festivals and celebrations lately, beginning with the May Day festivities. We went down to Oranienstrasse where food stalls and live music stages lined the street and a joyous atmosphere prevailed. However, it was so crowded that at one point I genuinely feared that I would be crushed. I was also dismayed at the number of expensively dressed trust funders, especially the suntanned, perfectly-toothed one brandishing a selfie stick. Such individuals can surely have little or no sympathy for the principle of May Day and really only want to be there so they can be seen.

There was more breathing space at the Berliner Braufest at Neue Heimat. A very dark and chilly day punctuated by scatterings of rain could not dampen the enthusiasm of the city’s beer aficionados. Some very judicious selections had to be made from the 72 stalls. I started off with a Mikkeler which brought back happy memories of evenings spent in the Mikkeler bar in Copenhagen, then moved on to sample the double IPA at Leeds-based Northern Monk. After a Craftwerk Belgian-style Tripel we decided to go in search of food. I had a suitably stodgy burrito before heading back and starting on the Brewcifer Chilli spiced IPA then the Spent Brewers Collective Red Oat Ale. The evening began to grow chillier so we took our drinks indoors, sitting on Neue Heimat’s pallet seating and braving the elements only to fetch more beers.

Dark skies but great atmosphere

Heading indoors

On the last of the three bank holidays in May, the intimate Jazz im Park festival took place at the lovely Bürger Park in Pankow. We were invited to lunch with friends who live a half-hour’s gentle stroll from the park, and Fran – an intimidatingly good cook – served schnitzel and potatoes with what seemed like a ton of the fat, white Beelitzer Spargel and home-made hollandaise sauce (as it’s Spargelzeit the city’s residents are in the grip of asparagus mania). We ate in the garden where we lingered with a bottle of white wine before setting off late in the afternoon for the festival. With Norah the dog in tow. Sipping cocktails and chilling to the live jazz acts as the sun went down was the perfect ending to the weekend.

The Karneval der Kulturen also hit the streets of Neukölln in May but I was unable to get to that as I went to the final game of Bundesliga 2 at the Alte Försterei instead. Last games here are always stirring occasions with pre-match presentations being made to departing staff. After the game, the players were joined on their traditional lap of honour by midfielder Benjamin Köhler, who in January was diagnosed with stomach cancer. Köhler and his team mates wore ‘Beat Cancer’ T-Shirts as they threw shirts, shorts and boots into the crowd.

Football has been big news in the city recently with the German cup final (DFB Pokal) and the Champions League final taking place on successive weekends in the Olympiastadion, and the women’s Champions League final which was held at the Sportpark. The city was awash with Dortmund fans for the Pokal and Barcelona fans for the Champions League final (for some reason fans of Wolfsburg and Juventus, the teams’ respective opponents were largely invisible). Once more, we watched the Champions League final in a bar in Moabit with friends. The S-Bahn train back to Alexanderplatz was full of very dejected-looking Juventus fans for whom, without having any great affection for their team, I had to feel some sympathy.

As far as literary events go, I’ve been to another Fiction Canteen in the Platzhaus at Teutoburger Platz and am now considering plucking up the courage to read something at the next one which will be back at its usual location of the Alte Kantine in Wedding later this month. I also went to a whimsical event called the ‘Dead Ladies Show’ hosted by Katy Derbyshire and Florian Duijsens at ACUD. The evening was a celebration, in English and German, of the lives, loves and works of Irmgard Keun, Dorothy Parker and Pola Negri. Katy Derbyshire began proceedings with an account of her ‘dead lady’ Irmgard Keun before interviewing author Daniela Dröscher about her novel ‘Pola’ based on the life of Polish-born Hollywood femme fatale Pola Negri. Finally, Florian Duijsens gave a presentation on Dorothy Parker. I missed May’s Guinness Books and Records at Curious Fox because of a meeting and I won’t be able to go to the next one as we’ll be in England. I am however planning to look in on their ‘Bloomsday’ celebrations on 16^th June when the day is given over to the honouring of James Joyce’s Ulysses.

Sundays have largely involved checking out the dining options at Streetfood auf Achse in the Kulturbrauerei and mooching around the Mauerpark.