Beer, music and temperamental weather

The rash of festivals continued in June with Berlin Beer Week, a celebration of the city’s craft brewers, which kicked off on 13^th June.  We got in the mood by visiting the BRŁO pop-up beer garden at Platoon Kunsthalle, probably the prettiest beer garden I’ve ever seen.  There were so many fresh flowers and pastel-coloured lanterns that it looked more like a wedding reception or garden party than a dedicated beer-drinking site.  It was a baking hot day and an almighty thunderstorm later kept me confined to the flat for a while but I eventually made it down to Brauhaus Lemke where the Beer Week’s official opening took place.  For the €7.50 entrance fee I received a souvenir glass and coupons for two free Lemke beers.  I chose the Imperial IPA and the Weizenbock.  For the rest of the week Berlin’s craft brewers were given the opportunity of promoting their products at a variety of locations from breweries and bars to humble hofs. On the final Friday (when the weather had reverted to the customary cold and rain) we went down to a back yard in Petersburger Strasse where we found stacks of beer crates and pallets– some of which had been pressed into service as makeshift furniture. The beer was being served from what looked like a ground-floor kitchen.  We had a couple there before heading across the road to Bierlieb where, in another back yard, a barbecue was sizzling.  After a couple of IPAs I judged it prudent to bid farewell to Berlin Beer Week.

 

Berlin Beer Week began under the watchful gaze of the Fernsehturm at Brauhaus Lemke...

 

...and continued in a Petersburger Strasse back yard

 

The annual Fête de la Musique also took place in June. The weather was miserable on the Saturday but we managed to see a few punk bands in Friedrichshain on the Sunday evening when the sun finally made an appearance. 

Fête de la Musique

 

For me the musical highlight of the month was going to Bassy Club to see French Boutik, a band whose style can be described as 60s French pop.  We met our music-loving friend Franzi who, at sixty four, cycled to the venue in red high heels.  It’s such an intimate little club that we were able to chat to the band both before and after the performance, their English being way superior to our French.

French Boutik

 

Also memorable last month was the Exberliner screening of Jean-Gabriel Periot’s Une Jeunesse Allemande (A German Youth) at the lovely Lichtblick Kino.  The film, a documentary about the Red Army Fraction, focussed mainly on Ulrike Meinhof.  Attending the performance was Gerd Conradt, film-maker and one-time fellow student and friend of the RAF’s Holger Meinz.  Conradt worked as an adviser on the documentary and provided some of the footage.  Afterwards there was a fascinating Q and A session followed by the usual wine and snacks.  I’d wanted to go to the following Wednesday’s screening of Conradt’s Video Vertov, but it coincided with the Fiction Canteen, now back at its original location in Wedding’s Alte Kantine.  I finally gathered the courage to read a piece of my own work, after first fortifying myself with a glass of sparkling wine.

Alte Kantine

We ended the month with a visit back to England where we caught up with family and had our first decent curry for a while.