ZMF Zur Möbelfabrik in english: The Furniture Factory. There is a special party going on from our friends at the FUNK store on saturday november first. It should be quite a lot of fun! So go check it out if you feel like it! Be prepared to hear good old Dr. Alban as well as other smash trash fun stuff : )
I would call this the most spectacular elevator ride in Berlin. Its slow, its not wet, it costs money and the fishes will love you. Check it out if you walk by the Radisson. The aquarium is 25m high and it better doesn`t burst when you walk in there!
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The Hackesche Höre are one of the main tourist attractins in Berlin and a pretty good area to go shopping and eat some good Döner at All in on Döner. However right now there is some construction going on and there are clearly more people then the garbage cans can handle!
Once a year in october, there’s a so-called “Porn fair” in town. It’s called “Venus” and is in part a real business fair for people producing and trading in smut; in part it’s a show that draws the most desperate and derelict crowd imaginable. Quite independently from that, this year saw the third issue of another annual Berlin event from that corner of contemporary entertainment, the Porn film festival: www.pornfilmfestivalberlin.de.
The schedule of this festival can only be appreciated after familiarizing oneself with a list of abbreviations that categorize the films on show. Homo or Hetero? Explicit sex or none? Fetish or Documentary? The festival has a decidedly artsy approach to the subject – from studying this year’s schedule it’s safe to say that if you’re after some plain glossy porn-o-rama, you’re better off hitting the video store at the corner. In any case, as festivals go, this one also had accompanying events like readings and performances. And this, finally, brings us to yesterday night’s proceedings.
We had pondered for quite a while if we really wanted to attend a performance that should, from what I had heard, evolve around the subjects of “fisting” and, er, “goldfish”. After downing considerable amounts of vodka, gin and a truly revolting Danish Schnapps named “Gammeldansk”, we called a cab that would take us to one of the shabbier parts of town around Kottbuser Tor, in local speak affectionally called “Kotti”. There, in a derelict former Turkish supermarket still carrying its original name “Tek-Mek”, the festival organizers had set up the porn party venue.
As was to be expected, it was a proper dump. Toilets were provided in the form of Dixie port-a-potties in the yard. The tiled supermarket walls were comprehensively smeared, and all furniture except a bar and two stages had been removed. In these surroundings we had barely enough time to fortify our senses with a couple more beers before, around 1 at night, the conferencier jumped on stage and, instead of a welcome speech, started to strip in tune to hectic electronic drum beats. He looked like a particularly nasty construction worker, hairy and tattooed, not much enhanced by his leather gay attire. He did not strip completely though. He only undressed below the waistline, thus bringing to everyone’s attention that his sex had been surgically altered. Definitely an interesting thing to behold. He continued to host the rest of the night without pants.
Subsequently, it was time for the first performer – keyword: “goldfish”. A bizarrely made up girl entered the stage, dragging with her a towering aide sporting a monstrous fake beard. She too quickly stripped naked to the relentless beats of electronic music. What followed was… well… the putting of various objects into places they normally don’t belong. If you catch my drift. Among these objects, yes, were two pair of goldfish. They were not harmed – they seemed to be still in high spirits when, after the performance, the surgically altered presenter auctioned them off to the crowd. They fetched 20 Euros. Certainly a good story to tell to visitors admiring them in your living room bowl – “you wouldn’t BELIEVE what these fish have seen!”
Next up was the main act of the night: the “Fisting Club”. Rubber gloves and vaseline were dispersed liberally, and off went the show. Now I know I’m treading on thin ice here, but… it was actually quite enjoyable. Before you call me a down-and-out pervert, consider that: a) it was a lesbian act with the artists being in full control; b) the director of the performance was a quite well-known and established media artist from Taiwan. Lighting, music, costumes and backgound imagery were there, too.
And there was just no way not to revel in the absurdity of it all. There were those two French lesbians on stage, directed by a Taiwanese; the room was full of lesbian, gay, tattooed, pierced, bewildered and amused people – mostly actually women, I’d say. Next to us, a couple, while fascinatedly watching the stage, performed their own little show that involved the heaviest petting possible. Over here, a wildly pierced lesbian couple kissed; over there, the surgically altered construction worker, still without pants, grinned across the room from the bar. All this in a fucked-up Turkish supermarket in the shabbiest part of town at 3 in the morning.
Yep, Berlin certainly loves you.
This is the last weekend of this years Festival of Lights in Berlin. So enjoy the views of the differenet illuminated buildings – especially the Fernsehturm on Alexanderplatz.
Yesterday Martin Varsavsky hosted a Brunch in the well known Cookies night club. They have a restaurant called Cream @ Cookies. These days the Web 2.0 conference is happening in Berlin so the who is who of the Internet is mingeling in Berlin to talk & meet.
It was an interesting morning and a good chance to have a brunch in a quite private way with a nice crowd of people.
Ever wondered why there are so many Vietnamese people in Berlin and especially East-Berlin?
Yes, back in the days the communist goverments of Vietnam and East-Germany had a pretty heavy exchange of “human resources” and some or actually a lot stayed. This is why we have a quite authentic vietnamese culture going on here in East-Berlin. Lots of vietnamese restaurants and lots of convinience stores run by vietnamese families where you will find a lot of authentic parts of vetnamese culture.
Recently Chi Sing opened in Rosenthaler Str. 63 in Mitte. Very nice atmosphere, great service and a little pricy for the small budget but worth every penny for a journey into excellent taste. More vietnamese places will be covered here shortly! 
… finally!
To see more about Finding Dino see the video below:
Yesterday’s boxing fixture, Ukrainian V. Klitschko vs Nigerian Samuel Peter, brought us to O2 World again. Yes, O2 World is well on its way to becoming an outpost of American entertainment culture in Berlin, but so what? There’s plenty of run-down shitholes out there, such as last weekend’s lowlight, the “Picknick Club” on Dorotheenstrasse. Every now and then, it’s OK to tread the easy path, to become part of a bubblegum spectacle, instead of sipping your overpriced (for Berlin measures, mind you) beer next to the garbage containers on a bleak yard calling itself a “club”.
So how was the fight? Well… dull. That’s not Berlin’s fault, Berlin still loves you, but those two guys just circled each other, occasionally punched, and after 8 rounds the Nigerian threw in the towel after clearly trailing in the referees’ points. We’re not bloodthirsty here, but how about some passion, some excitement, some risk-taking on the part of the boxers? The whole thing, as so often in boxing, felt pre-ordained. Peter was lethargic from the start, and Klitschko, not even bothering to raise his fists in defensive posture because he was so much taller than his opponent, just kept him at a distance. No infights, no serious punch combinations – just 8 rounds of meddling and then the towel.
How different, then, was the real sporting highlight of the evening – Germany playing Russia in the World Cup qualifications! And that one, too, we saw at a legandary Berlin location: Paules’s Metal Eck on Simon-Dach-Strasse!
Paule’s Metal Eck is one of the places we love indeed. It’s genuine in a way that may not be to everybody’s taste – but they don’t care; it looks fierce but the people are most friendly; and the food & drink on sale are the down-to earth stuff you want when you’re up to getting properly drunk with your friends.
For Germany vs Russia, they had put up a big screen and switched off the stereo that normally thunders out Death, Black, Heavy, Speed, Crossover and any other sort of Metal known to man 24hrs a day. A friendly crowd of black-leathered Metal heads and neighborhood punters had gathered to see how Germany would do against the Russians who had been THE surprise team of this years’s Euro Cup.
What ensued was a most entertaining game that filled our eyes with tears of joy time and again. In the first half, Germany played their best match since – when? As the Metal heads cheered on, we saw Ballack, Podolski and Schweinsteiger play the most elegant football this side of Brazil. A couple of guys who had been shooting some Pool in the adjoining room put down their queues and sat down open-jawed as Podolski scored 1-0, Ballack 2-0, and attack after attack rolled towards the Russian goal, brilliant pass playing, excellent dribblings. Had it been not for the Russian goalie, Akinfeyev, the result could have been at 4-0 by halftime already. The second half was less brilliant, but still fast-paced, passionate, exciting football – maybe that was why the boxing left such a stale aftertaste eventually. The boxing was all show, no sports, while on the football pitch, 22 players had been tearing their hearts out to overpower their opponents, had employed every trick, every means available to them to come home victorious.
In the end, you just gotta admit that even in our Magical City, it’s not the venue that gives you a good time. No entertainment palace will turn a lame spectacle into a winner; while a great game, a show of excitement, will work beautifully even in the mosh pit.
Great night out in the big town it was nevertheless.
