After half a dozen stops, I got off and found myself on a dirty
one-platform station that had grass growing through the surface. Apart from me, only 1 other person got off and I really had the idea that we were the first people to arrive here in years. Everything in the station was broken and dirty and looked like it had just been left there to slowly disintegrate. Broken signs advertised either products that had been taken off the market long ago, or things like automobile repair services. I looked around in confusion. I had the idea I had been transported back to Albania in 1983. I exited the station through an open door with a broken window and outside it wasn’t much better. Everything looked like it had last been cleaned somewhere around the time the Wall came down.
I crossed the street and walked in the direction of the brewery and things soon got better. I entered a neighborhood that a real estate agent would describe as leafy. In fact, it was incredibly leafy. There were trees and tall hedges and bushes everywhere. Every now and then I would see the edge of a house or apartment building but most of it was obscured by trees, trees and more trees. I recently read somewhere that 20% of all the trees in the world are in Russia, but I’m sure that an additional 10% or so are here in this remote corner of Berlin.
After a while, I passed a skatepark, where half a dozen teenage boys were trying to impress each other with daring tricks. It surprised me that this facility was here on the outskirts of the city, rather than somewhere central, but what interested me most was that the skatepark was surrounded by high walls that were covered, top to bottom, in some of the best graffiti I had seen anywhere in Berlin. I spent 10 minutes taking photos of it, and every piece was better than the one before. It was astonishing. I walked on, and nearly got hit on the head by a chestnut that fell out of a tree, but I made it through undamaged.
Some 20 minutes after I had set off from the train station, I came up to an industrial estate, which was where the brewery was supposed to be. The estate was full of large unmarked buildings, and each of them had an endless line of loading docks where unmarked trucks were awaiting new cargo. It must be a depressing place to work in. I worked in logistics myself for a while and if there is one word to describe working in a distribution centre, it is dusty. It is ofcourse logical that a large building that is solely used for storing things gets dusty but at times it was ridiculous.
I praised myself lucky that I didn’t work in a place like that anymore and that I could spend my free time visiting breweries. After I passed a large DHL depot, my phone told me that I was getting close now and I was really excited about getting to the brewery. Stone is one of my favorite brands and I have tried some 30 odd beers from them, so getting to the source was something I was looking forward to. I got there 5 minutes later and I was immediately impressed.
The building is HUGE. I knew it was a sizable operation, but I hadn’t expected it to be this big. When I approached the entrance, a tiny but noisy dog started barking at me (why do dogs hate me?) but I told him to go fuck himself and he wandered off. I entered the building by way of the souvenir shop and it was amazing. The souvenir shop in this brewery was easily twice the size of my local pub in Dublin. It had long shelves full of
t-shirts, baseball hats, coffee mugs, bottle openers and everything else you expect to find in a souvenir shop. At the centre of it were 3 large fridges full of Stone beers. Wow. I was already impressed but this was nothing compared to the bar and restaurant area. I entered the bar and stood there, stunned. It was enormous. I guessed it would seat at least 400 people across the ground floor and the mezzanine but the girl behind the bar later told me that, at full capacity, the place can host 900 people. Again, wow. The bar was in the centre of the room and had 108 taps. (Yes I counted them, as a beer nerd those details are important to me) They may not all be in use at any given time, but it is possible to put them all into action. The draft beer menu, at the time of my visit, had 60 beers on offer, which was impressive. This, too, is important to people like me.
Tap it up
I tried a variety of beers throughout the afternoon, both from Stone themselves and from guest brewers. I won’t bore you with my tasting notes because that is not all that interesting for people who aren’t into beer, but they have found a nice balance there between the Stone portfolio and local beer styles like Bock and wheat beer. I had gotten a message from the person who I was supposed to meet there, and she wasn’t feeling all that well so she wouldn’t be coming over, which was a shame but not the end of the world as I had never met her before so I wasn’t missing out on an opportunity of reconnecting with an old friend. The girls behind the bar were great company and after a while an American guy walked in and sat down a few stools away from me. He ordered several taster glasses too, and some time later he noticed me using the Untappd beer app and he came over to have a chat. We discussed the usual beer nerd things like breweries visited, favorite beers and so on. After a few more beers, I decided it was time to head back to the city centre, so I said goodbye and left. On my way out through the shop, I decided to get some beers for the long way back and made my way to the station without any falling chestnuts on my path.
One for the road
When I got out of the trainstation back near BRLO, I thought I might as well go for another beer there so I walked down the street for the second time that day. The place was now packed, both the biergarten and indoors, so I decided to check out what was on offer at the main bar. I ordered a beer and looked for a place to stand where I could put my beer down and decided on a shelf near the door to the biergarten. I sipped my beer while studying the menu above the bar and someone tapped my shoulder. It was my American friend from Stone again.
We again talked beer and some 10 minutes later, I felt
another tap on my shoulder. I was wearing a t-shirt from an Irish brewery and the
guy standing next to me said in an Irish accent ‘You’re Lenny, right?’.
I looked at him for a second, but before I could come up with a response, he explained that he used to work in a Dublin bar I sometimes drink at that is owned by the brewery I also got the t-shirt from. It turned out he now worked at BRLO and after exchanging the usual pleasantries, he asked me if I wanted a behind the scenes tour of the brewery which ofcourse I did. The brewery part of the complex isn’t terribly big but it was cool to see it and get a personal tour and a few beers thrown in, fresh from the tank. After our impromptu tour, my American friend had to go meet someone elsewhere, so I retired to the biergarten, stayed for another hour or so and then decided to leave.
I walked back in the direction of the city centre, picked up a bottle of beer for the road and decided to have another peak at Checkpoint Charlie. When I got there, the place was mostly deserted so I had the exhibitions all to myself. I was just looking at one very famous photo of a large crowd of people who, on 9 November 1989, had gathered at this very spot and demanded passage into West Berlin. I remember seeing this scene on tv and again was struck by the historical significance of the piece of sidewalk I was standing on. Just as I was thinking this over, and took another sip of beer, a guy came walking down from across the street and, as if it was the most normal thing in the world, said ‘Hey, what brings you here, Lenny?’ I stood perplexed. For the second time that night, I was greeted by someone with an Irish accent who knew me, even though I was a thousand miles from home. This guy I recognized somewhat and he told me that he was in town for the Berlin marathon but he had come a couple of days early to see the sights. After a short chat, he went on his way and I went on mine. I made my way back to Alexanderplatz in another hour or so, stopping at 20 minute intervals for a beer at a Späti (that’s a German convenience store, often open till very late) and before I leave it there, there is one more thing that I encountered on my way home that is worth mentioning. Somewhere beyond midnight, while I was staring at a big Coca Cola sign on the top of a building, I noticed a phone booth on a grassy knoll. I thought this was odd, as phone booths have been obsolete for a decade or so, so I went over to check it out. I found that the phone booth had been painted pink and had been turned into a "Take a book, leave a book" facility, just here by the side of the street. I had a look inside and found 2 shelves full of books, mostly in German and English, and a box of VHS tapes. I even found a book called ‘Ein mann aus Dublin’ (A man from Dublin) but I didn’t take it. Still, someone had taken the time and effort to turn this useless piece of infrastructure into something nice. Isn’t that wonderful?
I looked at him for a second, but before I could come up with a response, he explained that he used to work in a Dublin bar I sometimes drink at that is owned by the brewery I also got the t-shirt from. It turned out he now worked at BRLO and after exchanging the usual pleasantries, he asked me if I wanted a behind the scenes tour of the brewery which ofcourse I did. The brewery part of the complex isn’t terribly big but it was cool to see it and get a personal tour and a few beers thrown in, fresh from the tank. After our impromptu tour, my American friend had to go meet someone elsewhere, so I retired to the biergarten, stayed for another hour or so and then decided to leave.
I walked back in the direction of the city centre, picked up a bottle of beer for the road and decided to have another peak at Checkpoint Charlie. When I got there, the place was mostly deserted so I had the exhibitions all to myself. I was just looking at one very famous photo of a large crowd of people who, on 9 November 1989, had gathered at this very spot and demanded passage into West Berlin. I remember seeing this scene on tv and again was struck by the historical significance of the piece of sidewalk I was standing on. Just as I was thinking this over, and took another sip of beer, a guy came walking down from across the street and, as if it was the most normal thing in the world, said ‘Hey, what brings you here, Lenny?’ I stood perplexed. For the second time that night, I was greeted by someone with an Irish accent who knew me, even though I was a thousand miles from home. This guy I recognized somewhat and he told me that he was in town for the Berlin marathon but he had come a couple of days early to see the sights. After a short chat, he went on his way and I went on mine. I made my way back to Alexanderplatz in another hour or so, stopping at 20 minute intervals for a beer at a Späti (that’s a German convenience store, often open till very late) and before I leave it there, there is one more thing that I encountered on my way home that is worth mentioning. Somewhere beyond midnight, while I was staring at a big Coca Cola sign on the top of a building, I noticed a phone booth on a grassy knoll. I thought this was odd, as phone booths have been obsolete for a decade or so, so I went over to check it out. I found that the phone booth had been painted pink and had been turned into a "Take a book, leave a book" facility, just here by the side of the street. I had a look inside and found 2 shelves full of books, mostly in German and English, and a box of VHS tapes. I even found a book called ‘Ein mann aus Dublin’ (A man from Dublin) but I didn’t take it. Still, someone had taken the time and effort to turn this useless piece of infrastructure into something nice. Isn’t that wonderful?
*
My last full day in Berlin was here. Tomorrow afternoon I would be leaving Berlin and Germany and head to Prague. I was on my way to some of the last things I definitely wanted to see and this thought filled me with sadness. I know I’m a sap when it comes to these things but I was having such a great time here that I didn’t want to leave. I walked around a corner and suddenly a thought entered my mind. What if I didn’t have to leave? If I cancelled Prague and Wroclaw, I had another 6 days in Berlin. All I needed to do was cancel 2 hostel bookings and book a flight home from here and forfeit the 70 Euros or so that I spent on the flight home from Wroclaw. I sat down on a bench and took out my phone to check flights for the next week. My plan was dead in the water after about 15 seconds because the flights home were all well over the 300 Euro mark which would deplete my travel budget to such an extent that it completely defeated the point. And in any case, I really wanted to go back to Prague and I was supposed to meet a friend in Wroclaw so I chastised myself for even thinking of this stupid plan and continued on my way. There would be plenty of opportunities to get back to Berlin in years to come so there was no need to prolong my stay now. On top of that, Prague and especially Wroclaw are considerably cheaper than Berlin so that was a bonus too.
The site I was heading for at this moment was the Berlin Holocaust Memorial. The official name of the memorial is “Denkmal fur die ermordeten Juden Europas” or “Memorial for the murdered Jews of Europe” which I think sounds a bit creepy and in your face but it is an accurate description, no matter how you look at it. I arrived at the memorial and needed to go to the toilet so I walked into a restaurant and asked if I could use the toilet. “1 Euro!” shouted a nasty Asian woman so I nodded, used the toilet and walked out again. A Euro for using the toilet, who was she kidding?
The holocaust memorial consists of 2711 concrete slabs that are arranged in a grid. The catch is that all the paths that run through it, both from East to West and from North to South, are curving, and none of the curves have a pattern or any regularity to it. You can walk through the memorial from any angle or direction so I decided to try it out. Because of the sloping paths through it, and the fact that 10 yards in the slabs are taller than you, I lost any sense of where I was within 20 seconds. You see distorted views of the outside world, both seemingly close by and far away and you constantly hear the sounds of other people talking or shouting but you don’t have a clue where it is coming from. Often I would look around a corner, expecting to see the source of a voice I just heard, only to find no one there in any direction. At other times, I would walk forward and all of a sudden bump into 3 people and jump back as if bitten by a cobra. It was all very confusing and disconcerting and after 6 or 7 minutes I was getting paranoid about the uncertainty of what I would see around the next corner.
This, ofcourse, is exactly how Jewish people felt during the war, not knowing if arrest, deportation and death lay around the next corner so from that perspective it is a fantastic memorial in bringing home the point of how horrible it must be to live every minute of your life in fear of what may happen next. After some 10 minutes I emerged at the far side of the memorial and I was glad to be out of the maze. I thanked the world for living in a place and time where I can do what I want and criticize anyone whenever I feel like it without having to fear for arrest or prison time.
To my amazement, I found a large plaque in different languages in the pavement, with instructions on how not to use the memorial. Among other things, people were instructed not to sunbathe on the concrete slabs or jump from one to the other. I was surprised that people would need instructions on how to behave at a memorial for one of the worst genocides in human history but apparently this happened regularly when the memorial had just been built. (I found out later that the memorial had also been a popular place for people using the Grindr gay dating app to take semi-naked profile photos, showing off their muscles).
At the far end of the memorial is a large park, which I didn’t have any particular interest in, but it just so happened that there were 3 things at the far end of the park that I still needed to visit. It was a long walk, about 4 kilometers, but the weather was still amazing so I decided to walk the length of the park to get there. My plan was foiled shortly after I set off, because the first section of the park was fenced off for unclear reasons. I walked down the street for a few minutes and found the second part fenced off too. When the third section was also fenced off, I'd had enough, walked to the nearest subway station and took the train without paying. That’ll show them.
I walked on to the street and immediately found what I was looking for.
The reason I wanted to visit this part of Berlin was a book
that I read when I was a child. When I was 12 or 13, I read Christiane F. - Wir
Kinder vom Bahnhoff Zoo (We, children of Zoo Station) It tells the harrowing and heartbreaking story of
Christiane Felscherinow, a girl from a broken home who, at age 14, was addicted
to heroin and living on the street. She financed her addiction through prostitution
at what at the time was the biggest railway station in West Berlin. I had a look at
it from a distance and recognized it immediately from photos. I walked under the
railway arches where, at the time, most of the drug addicts lived. I still found a
handfull of homeless people but the problem doesn’t seem so severe as it was
then. After poking around for a few minutes and taking a few photos I realized
that I had nothing left to do there so I took off and again was happy to have
visited this place that was so central to one of the best and most haunting
books I ever read.
My next destination wasn’t very far. In fact it was across the street and, even better, my final destination was right behind that. I’m not much of a church man, but the Gedächtnisskirche in Berlin is a special building. It was heavily damaged during a bombing raid in 1943 and after the war it was decided to keep it as a war memorial after the decision to tear it down resulted in public outcry. There is now a new church building to the back of it and a memorial hall inside. In front of the church are steps and these were now printed with names. There were also several flower bouquets on the steps and some candles. I also noticed a bronze line running across the pavement and up the steps. I thought this was odd so I decided to inspect it up close and when I was halfway there, I realised that this was a memorial to the 2016 Christmas market attack that took place here. A crazy man drove a truck into the Christmas market crowd on one of its busiest nights, killing 11 people at the market and also the original driver of the truck, which had been stolen several hours earlier. While I walked away, wondering why people do things like that, I also took out my note book and crossed off another line from my Berlin Wall song. And the final line of my song was only steps away: the Kurfürsterdamm. In the song, the Kurfürsterdamm is the lead into the verse on West Berlin where, as the song goes, people walk by porn and peep shows, and Mercedes and Cola are still on their pedestals. I had a quick look around the place but as I am not one for shopping and there didn’t seem to be much of interest for me, I decided to leave it at that. I looked at the map and found that it was only about a mile and a half to my good friends at BRLO so I turned around and set off for the brewery with a smile on my face, happy in the knowledge that I now had my song complete.
The Kurfürsterdamm soon changed into the Kurfürsterstrasse and within blocks the scenery had changed from city centre shopping district into edgy looking rough neighbourhood. I walked past laundromats, shops that offered mobile phone unlocking and hairweaves and small supermarkets selling foods from India and Pakistan. A block further, I walked past a rough looking bar and as I walked by, I saw a woman going in who to me looked like a prostitute whose best before date had expired around the time that Spandau Ballet were the hottest ticket in town. Five or six doors down I crossed the street and saw a girl about 20 yards away that, I immediately realized, was in fact a prostitute. She wore tight white leggings, an even tighter skirt and a halter top that revealed everything except her nipples.
Now, I’m no expert on the subject of street prostitution, but from my knowledge built up from movies and several trips to Amsterdam in my formative years, I had always expected a moment like this to go down somewhat like this: She would stand at a street corner, leaning against a wall with her behind slightly turned out towards me and, as I walked by, she would wink and say “Hey baby, wanna have some fun?”
My next destination wasn’t very far. In fact it was across the street and, even better, my final destination was right behind that. I’m not much of a church man, but the Gedächtnisskirche in Berlin is a special building. It was heavily damaged during a bombing raid in 1943 and after the war it was decided to keep it as a war memorial after the decision to tear it down resulted in public outcry. There is now a new church building to the back of it and a memorial hall inside. In front of the church are steps and these were now printed with names. There were also several flower bouquets on the steps and some candles. I also noticed a bronze line running across the pavement and up the steps. I thought this was odd so I decided to inspect it up close and when I was halfway there, I realised that this was a memorial to the 2016 Christmas market attack that took place here. A crazy man drove a truck into the Christmas market crowd on one of its busiest nights, killing 11 people at the market and also the original driver of the truck, which had been stolen several hours earlier. While I walked away, wondering why people do things like that, I also took out my note book and crossed off another line from my Berlin Wall song. And the final line of my song was only steps away: the Kurfürsterdamm. In the song, the Kurfürsterdamm is the lead into the verse on West Berlin where, as the song goes, people walk by porn and peep shows, and Mercedes and Cola are still on their pedestals. I had a quick look around the place but as I am not one for shopping and there didn’t seem to be much of interest for me, I decided to leave it at that. I looked at the map and found that it was only about a mile and a half to my good friends at BRLO so I turned around and set off for the brewery with a smile on my face, happy in the knowledge that I now had my song complete.
The Kurfürsterdamm soon changed into the Kurfürsterstrasse and within blocks the scenery had changed from city centre shopping district into edgy looking rough neighbourhood. I walked past laundromats, shops that offered mobile phone unlocking and hairweaves and small supermarkets selling foods from India and Pakistan. A block further, I walked past a rough looking bar and as I walked by, I saw a woman going in who to me looked like a prostitute whose best before date had expired around the time that Spandau Ballet were the hottest ticket in town. Five or six doors down I crossed the street and saw a girl about 20 yards away that, I immediately realized, was in fact a prostitute. She wore tight white leggings, an even tighter skirt and a halter top that revealed everything except her nipples.
Now, I’m no expert on the subject of street prostitution, but from my knowledge built up from movies and several trips to Amsterdam in my formative years, I had always expected a moment like this to go down somewhat like this: She would stand at a street corner, leaning against a wall with her behind slightly turned out towards me and, as I walked by, she would wink and say “Hey baby, wanna have some fun?”
Should I engage, she would take me by the hand and lead me
into an alley behind a laundromat or whatever, where she would present me with
a choice of options available. I would select option 5B, as if ordering from a
mediocre Chinese restaurant and we would go about our business. Afterwards, we
would part with a kiss on the cheek and the promise to stay in touch.
Nothing of that.
She walked straight at me, grabbed me by the arm and said “Blowjob?”. I was taken aback somewhat by this blunt approach and muttered a weak “Nein danke” and tried to move past her. She increased the grip on my arm, pressed her breasts against my chest and said something like “Aah, you know you want to!”. I managed to wrangle my arm free and push past her, and continued on my way in a confused state of mind.
Let me pause here for a second, and point out a few things. I have nothing against prostitution per se, if it is organized properly and those involved are respected, but first of all, I have never engaged in prostitution and have no intention of starting anytime soon. Second, I didn’t have the kind of cash on me I assumed would be required to seal the deal and third of all, the girl really wasn’t pretty. But let’s just assume that I wanted to do business, that I did have the cash on me and that I had come across a gorgeous prostitute. Still then, even though I am terrible at guessing people’s age she was, at most, half my age and I could never convince myself to have sex with her. What struck me most though was this- we were on a busy city street in broad daylight. In the 10 seconds I stood there, 5 or 6 people had walked by. Less than 6 feet away, a woman was cleaning the windows of her shop. If I had taken up her offer, where the hell would we have gone? A nearby alley? Did she live close by? Right there on the sidewalk? I’ll never know.
Having shaken off this odd episode, I made my way to BRLO without any further interruptions. I approached from a different angle and made my way through a large park. It looked like a nice green park until I got close and realised that all the green was fake. All the grass was astro turf and all the low hills were artificial. This was crossed by paths that were made of ugly grey concrete slabs.
It looked weird, like something from a Dystopian Future movie. Still, it was busy. People were walking dogs, pushing strollers, or walking hand in hand with loved ones. I just couldn’t get my head around this. Berlin has some of the loveliest parks I have ever seen, half a dozen of them less than a 10 minute walk from here, yet dozens of people chose to spend their free time in this fake plastic park.
BRLO was busy again, much busier than around the same time the day before, which made sense as it was Friday. I made for the outdoor bar again and this time was greeted by a Brazilian girl. She was even chattier than her colleagues from Thursday so I spent a few happy hours talking and drinking. As the afternoon drew to a close and it got busier, I decided to head elsewhere, a decision not in the least inspired by the fact that the Brazilian girl’s shift had ended and she was going home, so I walked out on the side I had come in on Thursday if only to avoid the ugly park on the other side of the brewery.
I walked towards the Landwehr Kanal and with no real plan in mind decided to just walk along the canal to see what would happen. After a few minutes I came past a large industrial looking building that had a full size airplane coming out of the front. The front court was filled with heavy looking industrial implements and I found that this was the German museum for technology. It looked really cool but I wasn’t really in the mood for museums, so I made a note of it for my next visit. A few more minutes down the canal, I came across another one of those magnificent old railway stations that Berlin has so many of. This turned out to be the Hallesches Tor station so I walked across the street to take some photos. I needed to go to the toilet so I was happy to see a public building besides the canal, which turned out to be the America Memorial Library. There was clearly something going on because the place was way too crowded for a library at happy hour time on Friday and so was the park next to it. My sanitary requirements taken care of, I had a look around the park. A stage was being set up, strings of light bulbs were being strung around the trees and about a dozen picknick tables were set up on the grass. This ignited the inner park drinker in me so I rushed back across the canal where I had noticed a kiosk underneath the station so I got a beer and made my way back to the park. I sat down at a picknick table 50 yards from the stage where sound equipment was being set up. The sun was slowly making its way to the horizon and the temperature was still well over 25 degrees. This was nothing short of idyllic. I wasn’t the only one with that idea as more people started to gather. I still had no idea what I was attending or who had organized it but I didn’t care. I had a comfy picknick bench, a cold beer and the sun on my back. When my beer was empty, I walked back to the station kiosk, got another beer, and returned to the park. I repeated this procedure another 3 times and then decided to get a move on. Music was played at intervals, people came and went and at one point someone had come on stage, held a speech and handed over an award. I left the park, walked back to the canal and couldn’t think what to do next. There was one more beer bar left to do that literally every single beer nerd had recommended but it was 2 miles away in the wrong direction, and I couldn’t be bothered. I placed it on the must do list for my next visit, together with the Technology Museum and Trabant World.
A nice day in the park
I decided to visit BRLO one last time. It had been my favorite beery place in Berlin, it wasn’t far and, importantly, it was in the right direction, more or less. When I eventually stumbled out of BRLO for the last time (For now!) I made my way in the direction of the Alexanderplatz again, stopping, as tradition dictated, for a beer here and there, and when I saw the magnificent TV tower again I knew there was one more thing I had to do: Get a kebab. I walked underneath the station overpass in search of a kebab shop and found one 3 or 4 minutes later. I ordered a big greasy kebab and a large bottle of beer. I sat down at a table outside and enjoyed both immensely. These days, I have more conventional eating patterns than I had, say, 15 or 20 years ago, but this meal reminded me of how amazing a late night kebab can be. I got one final street beer, drank it on my way back to Alexanderplatz, had an interesting conversation with a group of people who were camped out under the station arches and made my way back to the hostel for the final time. I ended my stay in Berlin the same way I had started it- with a beer in the hostel bar. And then another one, and then another one.
Prague was waiting.
Nothing of that.
She walked straight at me, grabbed me by the arm and said “Blowjob?”. I was taken aback somewhat by this blunt approach and muttered a weak “Nein danke” and tried to move past her. She increased the grip on my arm, pressed her breasts against my chest and said something like “Aah, you know you want to!”. I managed to wrangle my arm free and push past her, and continued on my way in a confused state of mind.
Let me pause here for a second, and point out a few things. I have nothing against prostitution per se, if it is organized properly and those involved are respected, but first of all, I have never engaged in prostitution and have no intention of starting anytime soon. Second, I didn’t have the kind of cash on me I assumed would be required to seal the deal and third of all, the girl really wasn’t pretty. But let’s just assume that I wanted to do business, that I did have the cash on me and that I had come across a gorgeous prostitute. Still then, even though I am terrible at guessing people’s age she was, at most, half my age and I could never convince myself to have sex with her. What struck me most though was this- we were on a busy city street in broad daylight. In the 10 seconds I stood there, 5 or 6 people had walked by. Less than 6 feet away, a woman was cleaning the windows of her shop. If I had taken up her offer, where the hell would we have gone? A nearby alley? Did she live close by? Right there on the sidewalk? I’ll never know.
Having shaken off this odd episode, I made my way to BRLO without any further interruptions. I approached from a different angle and made my way through a large park. It looked like a nice green park until I got close and realised that all the green was fake. All the grass was astro turf and all the low hills were artificial. This was crossed by paths that were made of ugly grey concrete slabs.
It looked weird, like something from a Dystopian Future movie. Still, it was busy. People were walking dogs, pushing strollers, or walking hand in hand with loved ones. I just couldn’t get my head around this. Berlin has some of the loveliest parks I have ever seen, half a dozen of them less than a 10 minute walk from here, yet dozens of people chose to spend their free time in this fake plastic park.
BRLO was busy again, much busier than around the same time the day before, which made sense as it was Friday. I made for the outdoor bar again and this time was greeted by a Brazilian girl. She was even chattier than her colleagues from Thursday so I spent a few happy hours talking and drinking. As the afternoon drew to a close and it got busier, I decided to head elsewhere, a decision not in the least inspired by the fact that the Brazilian girl’s shift had ended and she was going home, so I walked out on the side I had come in on Thursday if only to avoid the ugly park on the other side of the brewery.
I walked towards the Landwehr Kanal and with no real plan in mind decided to just walk along the canal to see what would happen. After a few minutes I came past a large industrial looking building that had a full size airplane coming out of the front. The front court was filled with heavy looking industrial implements and I found that this was the German museum for technology. It looked really cool but I wasn’t really in the mood for museums, so I made a note of it for my next visit. A few more minutes down the canal, I came across another one of those magnificent old railway stations that Berlin has so many of. This turned out to be the Hallesches Tor station so I walked across the street to take some photos. I needed to go to the toilet so I was happy to see a public building besides the canal, which turned out to be the America Memorial Library. There was clearly something going on because the place was way too crowded for a library at happy hour time on Friday and so was the park next to it. My sanitary requirements taken care of, I had a look around the park. A stage was being set up, strings of light bulbs were being strung around the trees and about a dozen picknick tables were set up on the grass. This ignited the inner park drinker in me so I rushed back across the canal where I had noticed a kiosk underneath the station so I got a beer and made my way back to the park. I sat down at a picknick table 50 yards from the stage where sound equipment was being set up. The sun was slowly making its way to the horizon and the temperature was still well over 25 degrees. This was nothing short of idyllic. I wasn’t the only one with that idea as more people started to gather. I still had no idea what I was attending or who had organized it but I didn’t care. I had a comfy picknick bench, a cold beer and the sun on my back. When my beer was empty, I walked back to the station kiosk, got another beer, and returned to the park. I repeated this procedure another 3 times and then decided to get a move on. Music was played at intervals, people came and went and at one point someone had come on stage, held a speech and handed over an award. I left the park, walked back to the canal and couldn’t think what to do next. There was one more beer bar left to do that literally every single beer nerd had recommended but it was 2 miles away in the wrong direction, and I couldn’t be bothered. I placed it on the must do list for my next visit, together with the Technology Museum and Trabant World.
A nice day in the park
I decided to visit BRLO one last time. It had been my favorite beery place in Berlin, it wasn’t far and, importantly, it was in the right direction, more or less. When I eventually stumbled out of BRLO for the last time (For now!) I made my way in the direction of the Alexanderplatz again, stopping, as tradition dictated, for a beer here and there, and when I saw the magnificent TV tower again I knew there was one more thing I had to do: Get a kebab. I walked underneath the station overpass in search of a kebab shop and found one 3 or 4 minutes later. I ordered a big greasy kebab and a large bottle of beer. I sat down at a table outside and enjoyed both immensely. These days, I have more conventional eating patterns than I had, say, 15 or 20 years ago, but this meal reminded me of how amazing a late night kebab can be. I got one final street beer, drank it on my way back to Alexanderplatz, had an interesting conversation with a group of people who were camped out under the station arches and made my way back to the hostel for the final time. I ended my stay in Berlin the same way I had started it- with a beer in the hostel bar. And then another one, and then another one.
Prague was waiting.
*
I gathered up my belongings, slung my back pack
over my shoulders, handed in my key card and said goodbye to Caroline for the
final time. I had some time to kill, as it was only 10 in the morning and my
bus would not be leaving until 2.30 in the afternoon. I decided to have one
final beer in the hostel and then walked out the door for the last time. I had
booked a bus to Prague with a company called Flixbus, which emerged onto the
backpacker scene a few years ago after the deregulation of the German bus
market and has since grown explosively and now has a route network that covers
most of Europe. It is cheap, the buses are new, and I had had a positive
experience a few weeks earlier when traveling from a beerfestival in Brussels
to a beerfestival in Eindhoven, so I decided to travel with them on this trip
too. Whenever I walked onto the Alexanderplatz during my stay in Berlin, I
always found a handful of Flixbuses standing there, loading or unloading
people, so I assumed that my bus would go from there as well. With some time on
my hands, I decided to go have a look in their office and I asked the girl
behind the counter where exactly the bus to Prague would depart from. It is a
good thing that I asked because I found out that only a small section of all
routes departed from here and that most left from Berlin’s main bus station,
all the way across the city. If I had just wasted my time away with a few cans
of beer on the Alexanderplatz fountain until just before departure, I would
have had a serious problem. Now that I knew where I had to be, I could make my
way there gradually and waste my time away with a few cans of beer en route. I walked off Westward, and after about 20 minutes I decided it was time for a break. I wanted to go out in style so I bought a large beer and sat down in a small park on the side of the street. I stared ahead. The weather was still amazing, 26 degrees according to my phone, but I was still somewhat bummed out by the fact that I had to leave. On the other hand, I knew that I had struck gold here. Berlin is one of those cities that you can visit half a dozen times before you realise that you haven’t even scratched the surface yet. There was so much to see and do here, I had realised after about a day that this is one of those places that I will visit at least once a year from now on. I was already looking at flights to Berlin for next spring and contemplating what to do and which places to visit then. After some 20 minutes of drawing up a To Do list for my next visit, I decided to get going again. I walked for another 40 minutes or so, checked the map and decided to have one last beer stop and then take the S Bahn to the bus station. (If you want to know the difference between the U Bahn and the S Bahn, feel free to look it up on Wikipedia. Transport nerds like me find these things highly interesting but normal people don’t).
I arrived at the bus station with about 20 minutes to spare, so I went to the shop to get something to drink for the way over. Prague was about 4 ½ hours away so I bought 2 large bottles of water and a pack of pretzels. This still left me with 17 minutes to kill so I got one last beer and made sure it was a cheap brand. If you’re going to drink beer outside a bus station, you have to do it in style. I got a bottle of Sternberg Export, which both was cheap and looked cheap. I had had a bottle of it the night before, at Checkpoint Charlie, and my friend from Berlin had criticized it as being terrible, but at the time I thought it tasted fine. Ofcourse, that was in the middle of the night after a long day of drinking beer from a dozen different brands, so my taste buds may have been a bit off. I tasted it now in a somewhat more sober state and had to concede that it wasn’t exactly the finest brew I had ever tasted, but I was drinking on a bench outside the bus station so if fit the occasion.
The bus pulled up, I finished my beer and got on board. As we pulled out of the station and drove out of the city, I contemplated my time here.
I looked over my shoulder one more time and saw the Berlin TV tower receding in the distance. I left Berlin with a heavy, but happy, heart. Even now, I’m still trying to find the words to express my exact feelings but, apart from maybe New York, no city has ever so deeply impressed me on my first visit.
I was deeply, irretrievably and forever in love with Berlin the minute, the second, I stepped on to its streets. Everything about Berlin is awesome. The history, the food, the parks, the beer, the people’s careless abandon to intoxication. I loved every single second of my time here.
I have always said that there are only three places in the world that I would consider leaving Dublin for. Now there are four.
