My last post was all about the amazing night we spent at
Neue Heimat watching ‘Pulp: A Film About Life, Death and Supermarkets’ with a Q
and A and DJ set from Jarvis Cocker (and an unexpected slice of birthday
cake). We also saw a couple of other
films during July. The first was the Mobile Kino open air screening of ‘A Girl
Walks Home Alone at Night’ on the lovely Insel Berlin, the second was ‘B Movie:
Lust and Sound in West Berlin’ a documentary about the music scene in West
Berlin between 1979 and 1989, at the equally delightful Lichtblick Kino in
Kastanienallee.
Insel Berlin
We started the month in holiday mode; after flying back from
England we decided to give ourselves a few days to visit some of the places we
hadn’t been to before. On the Thursday we headed to Friedrichshagen, a
charmingly old-fashioned quarter which seems a world away from the rest of the
city despite being just a few stops from Ostkreuz. We walked down the long main street, stopping
for kaffee and kuchen in a traditional café along the way. We then walked through the Spreetunnel, a
pedestrian walkway that runs under the river to emerge in woodland. From here we walked the three or four
kilometres to Köpenick where we caught a bus to the Altstadt and rested over an
IPA at the tiny Schlossplatz brewery – the smallest in Germany as it likes to
remind its customers.
It could be a derelict barn in the middle of the countryside but it's on Friedrichsagen's main road
The Spree looking lovely in the afternoon heat
On the Friday we went to the night market at Griessmühle in Neukölln, another of Berlin’s lovely ramshackle spaces. After mooching around the market which, from what I could make out, consisted of locals selling their no-longer-wanted clothes, we sat for a while with a drink, absorbing the laid-back atmosphere, then went for a wander by the canal.
Griessmuehle
Browsing the stalls at the night market
The Saturday was murderously hot and we’d chosen to visit a
couple of sites of historical interest.
The Gleinicker Brücke, the bridge where captured Cold War spies were
handed over, was our first destination.
On the way back we stopped off at Grunewald S Bahnhof to see Gleis 17 –
the infamous platform from which thousands of Berlin Jews were transported to
concentration camps. The dates, numbers (where known), and destination are
recorded on iron plates along the edge of the platform. It was a sobering conclusion to our mini
holiday-at-home. The weather played havoc
with the Ringbahn that weekend and we seemed to spend much of the day waiting
on sweltering platforms among people bound for the lakeside beaches.
Glienicker Bruecke
Gleis 17 - it's difficult to imagine the misery and suffering of the people who
were herded onto the trains hundreds at a time here to be sent to the death camps
There were a couple of football-related events
during the month, the first being a podium discussion at Clash in
Kreuzberg. The theme was English
football fans and their relationship with the game in Germany. Two of our friends were involved in the
discussion which was conducted in English and German so we went along to give
our support and to hear what was said.
A couple of weekends later there was a friendly at the Alte
Försterei between 1. FC Union and Crystal Palace. We set off early so that we
could pay our second visit in as many weeks to the Schlossplatz brewery which
was taking part in a beer festival (one of about five we’ve been to this
summer), and for five euros we were each given a glass which entitled us to
five 0.1l measures of beer. There were
six beers to choose from so we tried all but the Hefe. The beers that stood out for me were the
smoked beer, a fiery cherry-chilli and a beer called Babylon that was made
according to a 1000-year-old recipe. It
looked like dishwater but was sweet and delicious. The friendly barman applied a very loose
definition of a 0.1l measure; each glass must have contained at least double
that. Lovely as it was sitting in the
little cobbled square trying beer after beer, we had to drag ourselves away and
make our way to the ground where Union won 2-0.
Assessing the merits of Babylon
Socially July was a busy month with all of this going on plus a couple of parties and a
get-together with some of our old friends from the language exchange. It's probably for the best that I didn't go to any literary events during the month. The Fort
Gorgast festival which should have taken place over the weekend of 23rd-26th
was cancelled, officially because of an injury to one of the organisers but I suspect
it was more to do with poor ticket sales. I wasn’t too sorry; my ticket money was refunded and it meant that I avoided
the logistical problems of having to drag a tent and a weekend’s provisions half
way across Brandenburg. I did complete a piece of flash fiction which I submitted to
SAND Journal and I’m beginning to get back on track with my novel which has
been stagnating at 93000 words for the past few months.
I’m also back to job hunting which, as ever in Berlin, is no
easy feat!
