I was in Berlin for a congress. Yesterday I had an interesting evening.
I need to tell two backstories for this story to make sense.
On my way from Leipzig to Berlin I bumped into a good friend whom I
hadn’t seen in months.
They were also on their way to Berlin to celebrate their birthday the
coming day together with another friend.
They invited me to join them.
I like not to book hotels or similar when I’m on the move. Instead I
like to stay at friends or friends of friends places.
This has the advantage of being free and of opening possibilities to
meet new people or reengage with old friends.
This time it was surprisingly difficult to find a sleeping place.
When I arrived in Berlin on Friday evening I still didn’t have
one.
So I wrote a few more friends and one of them quite instantly managed to
find a sleeping place for me at a friend of theirs.
The evening started with the end. The congress was over and I went on
my way to the birthday persons sleeping place.
We were a bit unsure where to go; there were three options:
We decided for option 2, though in the end we did a combination of all three options.
So we walked in the direction of that bar.
On the way there, we came across an antira
camp on the Oranienplatz.
Not only that, at the very moment we came by there, there was a live
concert from Mal Élevé happening(!)
Sadly the concert was almost over, so we only stayed for the final
song, but it was really fun. The birthday person also decided to ask if
anyone there had suggestions on where to go for the evening, in case
someone local was there.
There was noone local there, but quickly a few helpful people gathered
around them and suggested a place they would soon go to anyways.
We decided to stick to our original plan for now and continued on our
way to the bar.
On the way there, two people randomly approached us and asked us for
random lines they could include in a punk concert they were giving this
evening. We suggested some Swedish words, since the friend of the
birthday person lives in Sweden, which the two people were happy
about.
Finally we arrived at the bar, just to realize it was a smokers bar,
which I didn’t feel comfortable with.
So we decided to go to the suggested place from the antira camp people
after all. We travelled there by subway.
At first we couldn’t find it, since there was no sign or anything
similar. But then we found out that it was on top of a shopping
malls parking garage.
So we took the elevator in the shopping mall to the highest floor and
then walked on the spiral that is typically meant for cars to the
topmost floor, where we found a small ticket hut for the party.
Once we passed through that, we were at a quite beautiful place with
an amazing view and two stages and a few more bars.
We still were in the chill bar mood, so we got drinks and sat outside to
enjoy the view. The birthday person randomly asked the bartender if they
had a card game they could borrow; they did and also gave us a few
blankets to not freeze to death outside.
So we played Skat at a rave on top of a parking garage of a shopping mall in Berlin.
After some time we decided to also dance after all, which was fun.
We left that party at 1am, which also was the first time I checked my
phone again, only to realize that the person I slept at had desperately
tried to reach me four hours ago, saying that they were in dire need for
a good nights sleep. This also led to some uncertainties whether I would
still get in, since I didn’t have the key but had to hope that the
person would have put it in the keysafe again.
We decided that I would give it a try and go to the birthday persons
sleeping place in case it didn’t work out. Thus our ways parted.
On the way to the sleeping place I was mildly surprised that there
would be no subways between 2 and 3am – this was Berlin after all! Also
the digital signs said there would be no subway for an hour in that
time.
However, I didn’t consider the changing
of the clocks. It was an interesting sight to see the subway clocks
adjusting themselves to the new time and the digital signs jumping an
hour, changing from the next subway in 73’ to 14’1.
Finally back at my sleeping place I did indeed find the key in the keysafe and everything was fine.
The end.2