There were some other bars in the general area that I wanted
to visit so I decided to get moving again.
After I finished my beer, I made my way to an indoor market place called Markthalle Neun, where there was supposed to be a good craft beer bar. I made my way through countless stalls selling fruit, cheese and a thousand other things and finally located the bar. It was small and in a corner of the building and there was only 1 customer apart from me. I ordered a beer and all of a sudden was very hungry. I walked back to a stall selling cheese, got a nice block of cheese by way of a snack and sat back down with my beer. The beer was excellent, but the bar man had more interest in his iPad than in talking to the people that fund his pay check and as the only other customer had also wandered off into iPadland, I left after just the one beer.
After I finished my beer, I made my way to an indoor market place called Markthalle Neun, where there was supposed to be a good craft beer bar. I made my way through countless stalls selling fruit, cheese and a thousand other things and finally located the bar. It was small and in a corner of the building and there was only 1 customer apart from me. I ordered a beer and all of a sudden was very hungry. I walked back to a stall selling cheese, got a nice block of cheese by way of a snack and sat back down with my beer. The beer was excellent, but the bar man had more interest in his iPad than in talking to the people that fund his pay check and as the only other customer had also wandered off into iPadland, I left after just the one beer.
I walked past another park some 10 minutes later, and again
found a dozen people drinking there. As I had really enjoyed my previous park
stop, I thought I might as well join in the fun here too, so I bought another
bottle of beer and sat down on a bench. The sun warmed my skin, while the beer
cooled me down and the birds chirped in the trees. I never realised that
drinking on the street could be this idyllic. I could really get used to this.
I visited a couple of other bars throughout the day and spent hours walking around Berlin. It is a great city for walking. After a long day of walking, drinking and sightseeing, I returned to my hostel around midnight a happy man. My first full day in Berlin had been a resounding success. What an amazing city.
I visited a couple of other bars throughout the day and spent hours walking around Berlin. It is a great city for walking. After a long day of walking, drinking and sightseeing, I returned to my hostel around midnight a happy man. My first full day in Berlin had been a resounding success. What an amazing city.
I woke up the next morning from the sounds of people
leaving. You can always tell in hostels when people are leaving because you
hear a constant opening and closing of zippers, folding of plastic bags, people
walking in and out of the door, muffled conversations and all those other
sounds that indicate that they are packing up and are getting ready to leave.
After this had ended, I got up, climbed down from my bed and found that 2
people had vacated their bottom beds. One of those cartoon lightbulbs appeared
above my head, and I raced down to reception where I found Caroline again. I
explained that there were now 2 free bottom bunks in room 103, and that she
would receive my eternal gratitude if she could relocate me to one of them.
“Sure.” she said, and 10 seconds later I was the official occupant of bed 2,
which pleased me to no end. I thanked her profusely, and she smiled, but then
focused on the next customer. I went back upstairs, dragged my bed linen off
my bed and relocated to the sanctity of a bed at ground level. I climbed up one
final time to grab my phone charger and other possessions and all was well with
the world. I had no time to relax though, because I had more things to do.
After my shower in the prison block and my reading session on the bench out
front, I walked through reception once again and waved goodbye to Caroline for
the day.
Throughout my stay, I realized later, whenever I walked through reception, she was there. No matter what time of day it was, or what day of the week, I could always count on Caroline to be there. I don’t know if she just worked really long hours or if it was like that old Droopy cartoon where he chases the wolf. For those of you that haven’t seen it- a convicted criminal (the wolf) escapes from prison (he does this by drawing a door on the wall and then opening it) and flees. The authorities entrust officer Droopy with the task of capturing the fugitive wolf. The wolf tries to lay low and get away unnoticed, but no matter where he goes, he finds Droopy there waiting for him. This starts of with regular, as expected ways to get out of the public eye, by hiding in a cinema, or the crowd at a baseball game, but the escape attempts get more insane as the wolf desperately tries to get away from Droopy. He first escapes to Canada, where Droopy is waiting for him, then to Alaska, where Droopy is reading a book in the first igloo the wolf enters, then to Korea, the Australian outback and a bunch of other places around the world, and every time he sets foot on what he assumes to be safe soil, Droopy is there to greet him. In a final attempt to get away from him, the wolf sets out to sea and has himself eaten by a whale. Ofcourse, as soon as he strikes a match inside the whale’s stomach, he realises that Droopy is also inside the whale, and he gives up. He hands himself in to the authorities and returns to prison. In the final scene, he looks out of the window and sees 200 identical Droopies standing under his window.
Throughout my stay, I realized later, whenever I walked through reception, she was there. No matter what time of day it was, or what day of the week, I could always count on Caroline to be there. I don’t know if she just worked really long hours or if it was like that old Droopy cartoon where he chases the wolf. For those of you that haven’t seen it- a convicted criminal (the wolf) escapes from prison (he does this by drawing a door on the wall and then opening it) and flees. The authorities entrust officer Droopy with the task of capturing the fugitive wolf. The wolf tries to lay low and get away unnoticed, but no matter where he goes, he finds Droopy there waiting for him. This starts of with regular, as expected ways to get out of the public eye, by hiding in a cinema, or the crowd at a baseball game, but the escape attempts get more insane as the wolf desperately tries to get away from Droopy. He first escapes to Canada, where Droopy is waiting for him, then to Alaska, where Droopy is reading a book in the first igloo the wolf enters, then to Korea, the Australian outback and a bunch of other places around the world, and every time he sets foot on what he assumes to be safe soil, Droopy is there to greet him. In a final attempt to get away from him, the wolf sets out to sea and has himself eaten by a whale. Ofcourse, as soon as he strikes a match inside the whale’s stomach, he realises that Droopy is also inside the whale, and he gives up. He hands himself in to the authorities and returns to prison. In the final scene, he looks out of the window and sees 200 identical Droopies standing under his window.
I thought that maybe Caroline had identical twin or triplet
sisters and that they took shifts behind reception. Or maybe not. Probably not.
The program for the day mainly revolved around the Berlin
Mitte neighborhood. The main reason I wanted to go there was that it is the
neighborhood where Brewdog have a bar. And I promise you now that that is the
last you will hear about Brewdog until I get back home to Dublin in about a
week and a half.
I had used the paper map provided by the hostel for navigating the previous day, and wanted to do this again now, but I was forced to concede that using Google Maps on your phone is just easier. I love my paper maps, I have a wall full of them at home, and I always take one when I get somewhere, but an electronic map shows you exactly where to go, what direction you’re facing and how far there is left to go and how long that will take you. You could say that another part of travel folklore bites the dust because of this, but you can’t stop progress and even the staunchest old school backpacker has to admit that it is more convenient. But I do love paper maps.
I was partly walking along the same route I had taken on Monday night, so I figured I might stop off for a beer at Mikkeller, but I found they didn’t open until 3. I wasn’t too upset by this, because this gave me the opportunity to get some more practice time in for my new hobby of park bench drinking. Armed with a cold bottle, I sat down in a small park, waiting for something to happen. A few people walking dogs came past and greeted me, a few cyclists flew by and the odd delivery guy pushed his cart along, but there were no other drinkers to have a chat with. Maybe this was a posh park, where people only drink on Sunday or something. After I finished my beer, I moved on to BrewDog.
The BrewDog bar in Berlin is quite big. I had a look around and found it wasn’t particularly busy. 2 or 3 booths were taken but the large tables in the centre of the room were empty. 3 or 4 people were in the biergarten out back and a blonde girl was behind the bar. I said Gutentag and, even though she addressed me in German, I knew after 2 words that she was Australian. I ordered a beer and we got talking about traveling, Berlin and Australia. She told me that her name was Becky, that she had come to Berlin 4 years earlier and.. you want to finish that sentence yourself? .. yes, she had arrived with the intention of staying for 6 months and had never left.
After all these years of traveling, I’m starting to think that us expats have some sort of sixth sense that draws us to each other. No matter where I go, I somehow always seem to run in to people who have experiences similar to mine. While we were talking, she would regularly walk off to the kitchen in the back of the bar and come back with steaming pizzas. I looked up at the blackboard and found that there was a 2-4-1 pizza deal on weekday afternoons. I decided that I would love some pizza but, as I’m not a big eater, I would never finish 2 whole pizzas. I pointed this out to Becky and she took my hint and said that I could have 1 and get it half prize. See, now that is great service, and when I got home I got in touch with the head of Brewdog’s bar division, and made sure I gave a rave review about the bar in general and Becky in particular. The pizza was delicious, and I ate every last crumb of it.
My original intention had been to go to BrewDog, have 2 or 3 drinks, and maybe lunch, and then explore more of the area. As it happened, inevitably, Becky was such great company that I spent the entire afternoon there and didn’t leave until the first dinner guests started to trickle in. About halfway through the afternoon, a guy sat down at the end of the bar and it turned out that he knew my new bartender friend from an earlier trip. He was Israeli and lived in Tel Aviv. I always like talking to people when I travel, especially if they’re from a part of the world that I haven’t been to. He didn’t know an awful lot about beer, so I tried to help him in making a selection, but for every beer he tasted he had some dismissive remark- too hoppy, too fruity, to sweet and so on and so on. In the end, he settled on a red ale, and it surprised me that he didn’t dismiss it as too malty. What surprised me even more was that he was very negative about the World War II memorials in Berlin and elsewhere. He told me that the Berlin holocaust memorial was boring and that the Anne Frank house in Amsterdam was lame. I found this a rather strange point of view from someone whose people had been driven to near-extinction less than three quarters of a century earlier but, then again, what do I know? I’m not Jewish and I’ve never been to Israel so I can’t really say anything about their state of mind. Just as I ordered one last beer from Becky, a girl walked in from the biergarten and ordered a couple of drinks. She, too, was Australian. When I remarked on this, she asked me if I was by any chance Dutch, which I am, and she started talking to me in Dutch. This confused me somewhat, but she explained that her husband, who was sat outside, was Dutch so she had built up some proficiency in the language over the years. We talked for a while and then she had to go bring her drinks outside and I had to start thinking about where I would go next. I finished my pint, said goodbye to Becky and my new friend from Tel Aviv, and went on my way, having had a very pleasant afternoon.
*
The Stone Brewery was founded in San Diego in 1996 and was one of the catalysts of the craft beer boom in the USA. It has since grown considerably and is now the 8th biggest craft brewery in the USA. Because of the high demand, they have since opened a second brewery in Richmond, Virginia, to supply beer to the US East Coast. In 2015, the brewery announced that they would build a brewery in Berlin to supply the European market directly and this brewery opened in the summer of 2016. The brewery is on the outskirts of Berlin, in the Mariendorf area and I just had to see it. That, however, would be for tomorrow. It is quite a long way out, and to give it a fair share of attention, I would take an afternoon to visit it. Fortunately, Stone also has a bar in central Berlin, not far from where I was now. After a few minutes, I came past a great park and I just knew I had to have a beer there. I bought a bottle in a shop across the street that was presided over by a grumpy Asian woman and sat down on a stone wall besides a small oblong pond. Children were playing all around the park and on the other side of the pond, a group of teenagers were drinking beer and playing music from a Bluetooth speaker. After 10 minutes or so, I noticed that they were only playing music from the 1980s: Toto, Eurythmics, Pat Benatar, Duran Duran. I didn’t mind at all though, I love 80s music, and I can listen to it all day long.
I wondered why these teenagers would play music that was made long before they were born, rather than something contemporary, and all of a sudden I had a very profound thought. Even though I am young at heart and still consider myself to be in the prime of life, I am now, statistically at least, a man of middle age. Each of these children could have easily been my own, if only I could have gotten their mums to sleep with me somewhere around the turn of the century. I couldn’t decide whether I was annoyed because some of them clearly had very good looking mums that I never met, or that I was relieved because I didn’t have the responsibility of raising children. I opened another beer and moved to a different bench to see if I could come up with a solution from a different point of view. After I finished my beer I got up and, as I walked away, I heard a splash in the pond. I turned around and saw that one of the teenagers had thrown an empty vodka bottle in the pond and, upon closer inspection, found that the pond was full of empty bottles and cans. I walked towards the exit and praised myself lucky that I wasn’t responsible for any of these little bastards.
I had used the paper map provided by the hostel for navigating the previous day, and wanted to do this again now, but I was forced to concede that using Google Maps on your phone is just easier. I love my paper maps, I have a wall full of them at home, and I always take one when I get somewhere, but an electronic map shows you exactly where to go, what direction you’re facing and how far there is left to go and how long that will take you. You could say that another part of travel folklore bites the dust because of this, but you can’t stop progress and even the staunchest old school backpacker has to admit that it is more convenient. But I do love paper maps.
I was partly walking along the same route I had taken on Monday night, so I figured I might stop off for a beer at Mikkeller, but I found they didn’t open until 3. I wasn’t too upset by this, because this gave me the opportunity to get some more practice time in for my new hobby of park bench drinking. Armed with a cold bottle, I sat down in a small park, waiting for something to happen. A few people walking dogs came past and greeted me, a few cyclists flew by and the odd delivery guy pushed his cart along, but there were no other drinkers to have a chat with. Maybe this was a posh park, where people only drink on Sunday or something. After I finished my beer, I moved on to BrewDog.
The BrewDog bar in Berlin is quite big. I had a look around and found it wasn’t particularly busy. 2 or 3 booths were taken but the large tables in the centre of the room were empty. 3 or 4 people were in the biergarten out back and a blonde girl was behind the bar. I said Gutentag and, even though she addressed me in German, I knew after 2 words that she was Australian. I ordered a beer and we got talking about traveling, Berlin and Australia. She told me that her name was Becky, that she had come to Berlin 4 years earlier and.. you want to finish that sentence yourself? .. yes, she had arrived with the intention of staying for 6 months and had never left.
After all these years of traveling, I’m starting to think that us expats have some sort of sixth sense that draws us to each other. No matter where I go, I somehow always seem to run in to people who have experiences similar to mine. While we were talking, she would regularly walk off to the kitchen in the back of the bar and come back with steaming pizzas. I looked up at the blackboard and found that there was a 2-4-1 pizza deal on weekday afternoons. I decided that I would love some pizza but, as I’m not a big eater, I would never finish 2 whole pizzas. I pointed this out to Becky and she took my hint and said that I could have 1 and get it half prize. See, now that is great service, and when I got home I got in touch with the head of Brewdog’s bar division, and made sure I gave a rave review about the bar in general and Becky in particular. The pizza was delicious, and I ate every last crumb of it.
My original intention had been to go to BrewDog, have 2 or 3 drinks, and maybe lunch, and then explore more of the area. As it happened, inevitably, Becky was such great company that I spent the entire afternoon there and didn’t leave until the first dinner guests started to trickle in. About halfway through the afternoon, a guy sat down at the end of the bar and it turned out that he knew my new bartender friend from an earlier trip. He was Israeli and lived in Tel Aviv. I always like talking to people when I travel, especially if they’re from a part of the world that I haven’t been to. He didn’t know an awful lot about beer, so I tried to help him in making a selection, but for every beer he tasted he had some dismissive remark- too hoppy, too fruity, to sweet and so on and so on. In the end, he settled on a red ale, and it surprised me that he didn’t dismiss it as too malty. What surprised me even more was that he was very negative about the World War II memorials in Berlin and elsewhere. He told me that the Berlin holocaust memorial was boring and that the Anne Frank house in Amsterdam was lame. I found this a rather strange point of view from someone whose people had been driven to near-extinction less than three quarters of a century earlier but, then again, what do I know? I’m not Jewish and I’ve never been to Israel so I can’t really say anything about their state of mind. Just as I ordered one last beer from Becky, a girl walked in from the biergarten and ordered a couple of drinks. She, too, was Australian. When I remarked on this, she asked me if I was by any chance Dutch, which I am, and she started talking to me in Dutch. This confused me somewhat, but she explained that her husband, who was sat outside, was Dutch so she had built up some proficiency in the language over the years. We talked for a while and then she had to go bring her drinks outside and I had to start thinking about where I would go next. I finished my pint, said goodbye to Becky and my new friend from Tel Aviv, and went on my way, having had a very pleasant afternoon.
*
The Stone Brewery was founded in San Diego in 1996 and was one of the catalysts of the craft beer boom in the USA. It has since grown considerably and is now the 8th biggest craft brewery in the USA. Because of the high demand, they have since opened a second brewery in Richmond, Virginia, to supply beer to the US East Coast. In 2015, the brewery announced that they would build a brewery in Berlin to supply the European market directly and this brewery opened in the summer of 2016. The brewery is on the outskirts of Berlin, in the Mariendorf area and I just had to see it. That, however, would be for tomorrow. It is quite a long way out, and to give it a fair share of attention, I would take an afternoon to visit it. Fortunately, Stone also has a bar in central Berlin, not far from where I was now. After a few minutes, I came past a great park and I just knew I had to have a beer there. I bought a bottle in a shop across the street that was presided over by a grumpy Asian woman and sat down on a stone wall besides a small oblong pond. Children were playing all around the park and on the other side of the pond, a group of teenagers were drinking beer and playing music from a Bluetooth speaker. After 10 minutes or so, I noticed that they were only playing music from the 1980s: Toto, Eurythmics, Pat Benatar, Duran Duran. I didn’t mind at all though, I love 80s music, and I can listen to it all day long.
I wondered why these teenagers would play music that was made long before they were born, rather than something contemporary, and all of a sudden I had a very profound thought. Even though I am young at heart and still consider myself to be in the prime of life, I am now, statistically at least, a man of middle age. Each of these children could have easily been my own, if only I could have gotten their mums to sleep with me somewhere around the turn of the century. I couldn’t decide whether I was annoyed because some of them clearly had very good looking mums that I never met, or that I was relieved because I didn’t have the responsibility of raising children. I opened another beer and moved to a different bench to see if I could come up with a solution from a different point of view. After I finished my beer I got up and, as I walked away, I heard a splash in the pond. I turned around and saw that one of the teenagers had thrown an empty vodka bottle in the pond and, upon closer inspection, found that the pond was full of empty bottles and cans. I walked towards the exit and praised myself lucky that I wasn’t responsible for any of these little bastards.
As I exited the park on the North side, I noticed an
elevated area made of concrete. It was sheltered from the rest of the park by
some bushes and I noticed some homeless people sitting there. The reason I
assumed they were homeless is that they had set up old couches which were surrounded by half a dozen
supermarket carts that were filled with sleeping bags, beer cans and those ugly, brightly colored tarpaulin bags homeless people always seem to carry around.
They were sitting there, passing round joints and bottles of wine and seemed
perfectly happy with their situation. They were laughing and telling jokes and
seemed to be having a great time. That is another thing that stood out to me-
even the homeless people in Berlin looked happy and carefree and relaxed. This
city didn’t stop to amaze me for a minute.
The Stone Brewing bar in central Berlin was only some 10 minutes further up the road from the park (its name, should you ever want to have an outdoor beer, is Der Volkspark am Weinberg and it’s great. But I’m told that the Mauerpark is pretty good too, so I’ll check that out on my next visit to Berlin) When I arrived there, I found that 4 men were doing some serious maintenance to the front of the building. I went inside and first went to the toilet, where I was treated to a dose of loud death metal through the internal PA system. Excellent. I went to the bar and was told by the girl that was manning it that it was Cans Wednesday, which meant that all cans of beer were EUR 3,50, even the big ones. I selected a large can of coconut porter, which was delicious. I sat down outside and watched the maintenance work unfold. When I enquired about what was going on, I was told that there was normally a big shutter on that part of the building, but they were replacing it with an actual wall with windows and a door. Odd but true. The work was accompanied by a large amount of drilling, sawing and hammering. I didn’t mind too much because I had an interesting beer to keep me busy. I spent the night there tasting beers and getting some information about the brewery in the South of Berlin. This information varied wildly, depending on who I asked. Some people said I’d be there in no time, while others proclaimed that it was near the very edge of the world and I would be closer to Tirana than to Berlin when I got there. I decided to see what happened. When the maintenance was finally over, and the windows in place, a bar man came out to the terrace with a tray full of beers. This, he explained, was on the house as a sort of ‘Thank you for putting up with all the noise tonight’ gesture, which was much appreciated by everyone. As luck would have it, he hadn’t counted exactly how many people there were outside so he had poured too many beers, which he left on my table so I got not one but four free beers out of it. As it is bad etiquette to leave directly after you get a free beer (or four) I had another beer before calling it quits. It was pushing midnight now and I still had a 40 minute walk home. When I walked past my favorite park, I now found it deserted, so I decided to have one last beer at BrewDog. The place was completely different now. It was packed to the last seat. All tables were full, including the ones outside, and the bar was full too. I had a pint of grapefruit IPA, which was delicious as always, and then bought a bottle of beer for the way home. I had one final beer in the hostel bar and went to my comfy bottom bed. I had a lot to do the next day, and a lot of ground to cover so I wanted get started early. I took out my book to read for a bit before going to sleep, but I was asleep before I reached the end of the page.
The Stone Brewing bar in central Berlin was only some 10 minutes further up the road from the park (its name, should you ever want to have an outdoor beer, is Der Volkspark am Weinberg and it’s great. But I’m told that the Mauerpark is pretty good too, so I’ll check that out on my next visit to Berlin) When I arrived there, I found that 4 men were doing some serious maintenance to the front of the building. I went inside and first went to the toilet, where I was treated to a dose of loud death metal through the internal PA system. Excellent. I went to the bar and was told by the girl that was manning it that it was Cans Wednesday, which meant that all cans of beer were EUR 3,50, even the big ones. I selected a large can of coconut porter, which was delicious. I sat down outside and watched the maintenance work unfold. When I enquired about what was going on, I was told that there was normally a big shutter on that part of the building, but they were replacing it with an actual wall with windows and a door. Odd but true. The work was accompanied by a large amount of drilling, sawing and hammering. I didn’t mind too much because I had an interesting beer to keep me busy. I spent the night there tasting beers and getting some information about the brewery in the South of Berlin. This information varied wildly, depending on who I asked. Some people said I’d be there in no time, while others proclaimed that it was near the very edge of the world and I would be closer to Tirana than to Berlin when I got there. I decided to see what happened. When the maintenance was finally over, and the windows in place, a bar man came out to the terrace with a tray full of beers. This, he explained, was on the house as a sort of ‘Thank you for putting up with all the noise tonight’ gesture, which was much appreciated by everyone. As luck would have it, he hadn’t counted exactly how many people there were outside so he had poured too many beers, which he left on my table so I got not one but four free beers out of it. As it is bad etiquette to leave directly after you get a free beer (or four) I had another beer before calling it quits. It was pushing midnight now and I still had a 40 minute walk home. When I walked past my favorite park, I now found it deserted, so I decided to have one last beer at BrewDog. The place was completely different now. It was packed to the last seat. All tables were full, including the ones outside, and the bar was full too. I had a pint of grapefruit IPA, which was delicious as always, and then bought a bottle of beer for the way home. I had one final beer in the hostel bar and went to my comfy bottom bed. I had a lot to do the next day, and a lot of ground to cover so I wanted get started early. I took out my book to read for a bit before going to sleep, but I was asleep before I reached the end of the page.
*
I woke up bright and early the next morning, went through my morning ritual and, after my morning outdoor reading session, stood in front of the elevators again. The elevators in the building were an enigma to me. At no point in my time there did they ever make any sense whatsoever. Whenever I stood in front of the 2 doors on the ground floor, one of the elevators would be somewhere near the top floors, while the other was invariably in the basement. When I pushed the ‘UP’ button, nothing would happen for 10 seconds or so. Then the one on the higher floors would slowly come down to the 6th or 5th floor and stop. Then it would go back up again to floor 9 or 10. After some time, the elevator from the basement would come to life and come in my direction, only to shoot straight past the ground floor and upwards to somewhere near the International Space Station. When one of them eventually did come down, it would always go to the basement first and then back up to where I was. On numerous occasions, I would push the 3 button and then see the elevator shoot up to floor 5 or 6, only to find no one waiting there. On nearly every trip back down, we would fly past ground floor and end up in the basement where, as usual, no one was waiting. It was all highly frustrating.
I woke up bright and early the next morning, went through my morning ritual and, after my morning outdoor reading session, stood in front of the elevators again. The elevators in the building were an enigma to me. At no point in my time there did they ever make any sense whatsoever. Whenever I stood in front of the 2 doors on the ground floor, one of the elevators would be somewhere near the top floors, while the other was invariably in the basement. When I pushed the ‘UP’ button, nothing would happen for 10 seconds or so. Then the one on the higher floors would slowly come down to the 6th or 5th floor and stop. Then it would go back up again to floor 9 or 10. After some time, the elevator from the basement would come to life and come in my direction, only to shoot straight past the ground floor and upwards to somewhere near the International Space Station. When one of them eventually did come down, it would always go to the basement first and then back up to where I was. On numerous occasions, I would push the 3 button and then see the elevator shoot up to floor 5 or 6, only to find no one waiting there. On nearly every trip back down, we would fly past ground floor and end up in the basement where, as usual, no one was waiting. It was all highly frustrating.
Every now and then, a handful of workers from the hostel’s housekeeping crew
would step into or out of the elevator. They were all dressed in black and they
all spoke some central European language to each other, Bulgarian or Ukranian
or something like that. In all my time there, I didn’t hear even one of them
speak a single word of German. As it was a big hostel, there were always
housekeeping people rummaging about, putting new linnen on the beds, removing
used sheets, or cleaning sinks or floors.
My frustrating encounters with the elevators over for at least a dozen hours or so, I made my way through reception again, waved at Caroline, and made my way outside.
I had a lot to do today. I only had 2 full days in Berlin left and wanted to get the most out of it. I walked around Alexanderplatz yet again, and thought to myself that this was a great square. It was always busy, it had a world clock in the shape of a globe that would tell you the time anywhere in the world at any time of day, a great fountain that you could sit on and that great mix of people that consists of 50% people in a hurry to get somewhere and 50% people who have no intention of going anywhere at all. It had also been the location of the big protest that was one of the main catalysts for the collapse of the Wall. I stood and looked around. According to my research, on November 4, 1989, about half a million people had gathered here and demanded political reform in East Germany. 4 days later, most members of the government handed in their resignation and the day after that, a day that will forever live on in history, November 9, 1989, the East German government begrudgingly agreed to lift the travel ban between East and West Berlin. The Wall started to come down within hours and the reunited citizens of Berlin began the greatest party in history. All this was live on TV and I watched in amazement as a 15 year old boy. To this day, it is still the greatest thing I have ever seen on TV.
While the Alexanderplatz is an impressive square, there is no way in the world that you would fit half a million people on it. I thought this over and looked up some photos of the protest on my phone and found that a number of buildings that were there now, most obviously the Alexa shopping centre, weren’t there back in the 80s, so that would have created a lot more space. For the umpteenth time since I had come to Berlin, I realised that I was in a historically very significant spot. There was more history on the agenda today because, before I was going to visit breweries, I was going to the Brandenburger Tor. The Brandenburger Tor has always been an important site in German history, even before the Wall was built, and I looked forward to seeing it. When I was halfway there, I walked past a small park and saw something that I hadn’t expected: The Karl Marx statue. I had expected that the statue had been removed after German reunification, but the Germans, with their impeccable understanding of history (though maybe not the cleanest record) had left it there as a reminder of what once was. This was great for two reasons: first of all because of its historic significance, and second because it also featured in the Berlin Wall song I told you about earlier.
Well, technically, the song states “Where Lenin and Marx are still on their pedestals” and this statue was of Marx and Engels, but it was close enough and this very statue features in the video. I crossed the river Spree again and had to make a bit of a detour because the German railways were connecting 2 tracks, which closed off the entire intersection, but after I got around that, I was on the home stretch, so to say, and I could see the Brandenburger Tor in the distance.
It is an interesting approach, and you can still clearly see that this used to be East Berlin. All the buildings are big and official-looking in the style you still see today in places like Minsk or Kiev. I walked past the Russian Embassy and found a display in front of it explaining that this used to be where the Soviet embassy was, one of the most important buildings in politics during the Cold War. I read it with much interest and then walked down the square that leads up to the Brandenburger Tor. There were several bratwurst vendors on the square, and I thought about sitting down with a beer before going up close, but I noticed that everyone who was already sitting down was constantly swatting away wasps that were attracted to almost-empty soft drink cans and leftover food on the tables, so I decided against it. As I approached the Brandenburger Tor, I saw that there was quite a lot of construction work going on, and people dressed in spandex were running around between all this. I remembered that on Sunday the Berlin marathon would take place and a lot of people were doing their training laps right here, where the finishing line would be on race day. The Brandenburger Tor itself is a pretty impressive piece of work. Its roof is held up by 6 massive pillars and on top of it is a chariot, pulled by 4 horses, carrying the goddess of victory. I looked at it and was happy again to see another monumental part of European history right in front of me. President Kennedy held his famous “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech on the West side of the Brandenburger Tor in June 1963, while the East German army blocked the view from the East by putting up large red banners with hammers and sickles to prevent the citizens of East Berlin from seeing it, and this is generally considered one of the most important speeches of the Cold War. As everybody knows, it was also one of Kennedy’s last because less than 5 months later, on a visit to Dallas, he was assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald/the CIA/Space Aliens*
(*please mark what you think is true)
Unfortunately, I wasn’t the only one who’d come here today, ofcourse, as the whole place was swarming with tour groups and people carrying the tool of morons the world over: the selfie stick.
I shot a couple of photos without these in them, and walked underneath the
gate. On the other side, it was much quieter and here, too, people were busy
with marathon preparations. A big grandstand was being erected next to what I
assumed would be the finishing line, and reachers were putting up speakers and
other technical equipment. As I have no interest in running as a pastime, I
turned around and walked back in the direction where I had come from. There was
more history on the agenda, because I also wanted to see Checkpoint Charlie. My frustrating encounters with the elevators over for at least a dozen hours or so, I made my way through reception again, waved at Caroline, and made my way outside.
I had a lot to do today. I only had 2 full days in Berlin left and wanted to get the most out of it. I walked around Alexanderplatz yet again, and thought to myself that this was a great square. It was always busy, it had a world clock in the shape of a globe that would tell you the time anywhere in the world at any time of day, a great fountain that you could sit on and that great mix of people that consists of 50% people in a hurry to get somewhere and 50% people who have no intention of going anywhere at all. It had also been the location of the big protest that was one of the main catalysts for the collapse of the Wall. I stood and looked around. According to my research, on November 4, 1989, about half a million people had gathered here and demanded political reform in East Germany. 4 days later, most members of the government handed in their resignation and the day after that, a day that will forever live on in history, November 9, 1989, the East German government begrudgingly agreed to lift the travel ban between East and West Berlin. The Wall started to come down within hours and the reunited citizens of Berlin began the greatest party in history. All this was live on TV and I watched in amazement as a 15 year old boy. To this day, it is still the greatest thing I have ever seen on TV.
While the Alexanderplatz is an impressive square, there is no way in the world that you would fit half a million people on it. I thought this over and looked up some photos of the protest on my phone and found that a number of buildings that were there now, most obviously the Alexa shopping centre, weren’t there back in the 80s, so that would have created a lot more space. For the umpteenth time since I had come to Berlin, I realised that I was in a historically very significant spot. There was more history on the agenda today because, before I was going to visit breweries, I was going to the Brandenburger Tor. The Brandenburger Tor has always been an important site in German history, even before the Wall was built, and I looked forward to seeing it. When I was halfway there, I walked past a small park and saw something that I hadn’t expected: The Karl Marx statue. I had expected that the statue had been removed after German reunification, but the Germans, with their impeccable understanding of history (though maybe not the cleanest record) had left it there as a reminder of what once was. This was great for two reasons: first of all because of its historic significance, and second because it also featured in the Berlin Wall song I told you about earlier.
Well, technically, the song states “Where Lenin and Marx are still on their pedestals” and this statue was of Marx and Engels, but it was close enough and this very statue features in the video. I crossed the river Spree again and had to make a bit of a detour because the German railways were connecting 2 tracks, which closed off the entire intersection, but after I got around that, I was on the home stretch, so to say, and I could see the Brandenburger Tor in the distance.
It is an interesting approach, and you can still clearly see that this used to be East Berlin. All the buildings are big and official-looking in the style you still see today in places like Minsk or Kiev. I walked past the Russian Embassy and found a display in front of it explaining that this used to be where the Soviet embassy was, one of the most important buildings in politics during the Cold War. I read it with much interest and then walked down the square that leads up to the Brandenburger Tor. There were several bratwurst vendors on the square, and I thought about sitting down with a beer before going up close, but I noticed that everyone who was already sitting down was constantly swatting away wasps that were attracted to almost-empty soft drink cans and leftover food on the tables, so I decided against it. As I approached the Brandenburger Tor, I saw that there was quite a lot of construction work going on, and people dressed in spandex were running around between all this. I remembered that on Sunday the Berlin marathon would take place and a lot of people were doing their training laps right here, where the finishing line would be on race day. The Brandenburger Tor itself is a pretty impressive piece of work. Its roof is held up by 6 massive pillars and on top of it is a chariot, pulled by 4 horses, carrying the goddess of victory. I looked at it and was happy again to see another monumental part of European history right in front of me. President Kennedy held his famous “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech on the West side of the Brandenburger Tor in June 1963, while the East German army blocked the view from the East by putting up large red banners with hammers and sickles to prevent the citizens of East Berlin from seeing it, and this is generally considered one of the most important speeches of the Cold War. As everybody knows, it was also one of Kennedy’s last because less than 5 months later, on a visit to Dallas, he was assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald/the CIA/Space Aliens*
(*please mark what you think is true)
Unfortunately, I wasn’t the only one who’d come here today, ofcourse, as the whole place was swarming with tour groups and people carrying the tool of morons the world over: the selfie stick.
In my mind, I had always imagined that Checkpoint Charlie and the Brandenburger Tor were, if not right next to each other, at the very least in close proximity. I was wrong, as they are over a mile apart. I got a pack of peanuts by way of a mid morning snack and set off. I arrived some 20 minutes later and found that the street leading up to the Checkpoint had long fences with large photos and descriptions of the historic events that had taken place in this part of the city, from the end of the second world war and the partitioning of Germany and Berlin, to the day the Wall came down. It was fascinating and I spent half an hour looking at the photos and reading the captions. While I was reading one of the captions next to a photo of the Wall in the 1970s, I noticed some copper bars in the street. Upon closer inspection, I realised that these marked the border between East and West Berlin back in the day. I entertained myself for a few minutes by crossing from East to West with a single step, and then going back again, and finally took a photo of my boots, with one of them in West Berlin and one in East Berlin. I had a look behind one of the fences that held the exhibitions and found that, for some reason, they had built some sort of Checkpoint Charlie Beach. The area was covered in sand and had a fallafel van, bars, lounge chairs and a beach volleybal court. Now don’t get me wrong, I normally love tacky tourist crap like that, but here it just looked out of place. This was one of the most important historical sites of the 20th century and someone had set up a mini themepark. It felt like as if someone had built a roller coaster in Auschwitz. It was just wrong.
I'm in East and West Berlin
I ignored the fallafel park and moved on to the real focal point of the area: the actual Checkpoint Charlie booth. This was the exact point at the time of the Wall where you crossed from the Soviet occupied East into the US occupied West. The checkpoint itself, quite possibly the most famous passport booth in the world, is still there. It is guarded during the day by actors in 1980s military uniforms, and the booth itself sells badges and, upon closer inspection, the same passport stamps I had gotten at the Eastside Gallery souvenir shop a few days before. I hung around the area for a while, shot some photos of the exhibitions and the checkpoint, walked back and forth through the border a couple of times just for the hell of it and then decided to move on.
I had breweries to visit.
I found a booth selling Berlin’s famous curry wurst, and I decided to have one. I received a cardboard tray with a cut up sausage covered in curry sauce and a wooden fork to pick up the pieces. After two bites I realised that this was the exact same snack that is sold in my native Holland under the name Frikandel. Not that there is anything wrong with those, they are actually quite tasty, but I had expected something specifically Berliner, not a snack that I had had hundreds of times during my teenage years. I still enjoyed it though and made a mental note to have a few more the next time I visited Holland.
Because the Stone Brewery is quite some distance from the city centre, I had come up with a strategy to cut up the 8 miles or so in several bite size chunks and make my way there in stages.
I didn’t realize there was a flaw in this plan when I devised it, but we’ll get to that in a minute. It was about a 20 minute walk to the BRLO brewery so I got a can of beer to keep me company on the way over. I gradually left the city centre behind me and walked through neighbourhoods that first became more residential and then more industrial. I passed a dilapidated railway station and thought nothing of it, not realising that it would feature more prominently later, crossed the Landswehr Kanal and, at long last, made it to the BRLO brewery.
The BRLO brewery is an amazing place. The whole site is built out of used shipping containers. 40 of them were used to set up the brewery itself and the restaurant within it, and a few of them are scattered across the large biergarten out the back, housing a bar, a deli and a walk-up to the toilets inside the brewery. I came in through the front door and found the restaurant/bar deserted. I knew this would be the case because on week days this part doesn’t open until 5PM, so I continued on to the biergarten. I was a big fan of the place as soon as I set eyes on it. Picknick tables were scattered around, there was a food outlet, a bar and an ice cream shop. Towards the edge of the biergarten was a kids area with a sand pit and monkey bars. I loved it instantly. I presented myself at the bar in the biergarten and ordered BRLO’s German IPA. What exactly made it German, rather than, you know, just IPA is still not clear to me, but it was delicious. I got talking to the girl behind the bar, and later to a second girl, one of her colleagues, and was again struck by how friendly they were. I tried all of the beers that were available, 4 on draft and a porter in a bottle, and I liked them all. BRLO really make great beer. I sat down at one of the picknick tables and saw a couple of groups come in for lunch. This also surprised me. This was a brewery in an out of the way industrial neighbourhood, yet even on a weekday at 12, the place was already getting busy. I know I’m starting to repeat myself but I fell more in love with Berlin every day. Maybe it was the 6 beers before lunch time that were talking, but I immediately promoted BRLO to my list of favorite breweries. After a couple of happy hours at BRLO, it was time to get going again. I had agreed to meet someone at the Stone Brewery around 3, and this was when I realised that my plan to get there in several walkable stages was malfunctioning. I had already walked 4 miles or so, but I hadn’t gotten closer to Stone in any meaningful way. I had mostly been walking Westwards, while Stone is in the Deep South so to speak so it would still take me 2 hours of walking to get there. I decided on Plan B- the train.
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