Space themed

Last night was my first Friday night in Germany and after a week of strenuous computer nerd related work it was time to put on a gaudy shirt and hit the tiles, cut some rugs and pop some locks, in that order. My first port of call was a bar/club place called C-Base which is one S-Bahn stop away from where my hotel is in Alexanderplatz. The club looked promising, old school arcade machines, cyber-punk style decor (including a Commodore 64 stuck to a wall) but unfortunately the place was completely empty. The often have open mic nights where people play any kind of music they want (ranging from country singer songwriters to five guys with Machinedrums), one of the guys I work with was there on a Wednesday night and said it was great. I’ll have to come back and check this place out.

The second place I went to was a very hip and cool (although I turn 30 this year so my definition of cool is probably well out of sync with whatever is actually supposed to be cool nowadays, is not being cool considered cool? If so them I’m the king of cool, but obviously declaring that makes me uncool, which makes me cool again, recursive coolness!) bar called Astro Bar and resides on Simon Dach Strasse in Friedrichshain. Another space themed place, I was on a roll! This bar just oozes bohemian style, there was a girl mixing reggae and northern soul when I first got there and after two Mojitos some guy started mixing Talking Heads, Devo and other assorted “alt” gems. This was my second time at the Astro Bar and I’m sure I’ll become a regular here ’cause it’s great. Beer was 2 Euro a pint! (well, it was 0.5L, which is a bit smaller than a pint)

After trying unsuccessfully to chat up two Bulgarian girls with perfect English it was time to bust a move, so I hopped into a taxi and asked the driver to take me to Club Maria, he wasn’t exactly sure where it was so I told him “It’s that big nightclub near Ostbahnhof” and we were off! A few minutes later he pulled up outside the club and I joined the queue. I’d been to this place four years ago and the entrance seemed to have changed a bit. The people in the queue also looked a bit too well dressed, and the music I heard coming from inside seemed pretty dire (I was there for a dubstep night, yeah that’s not the best either but better than the pop music I was currently hearing). I walked up to the front of the queue and asked the bouncer if this indeed was Club Maria and he said no, it was Club Fritz! He was really cool and gave me directions to Club Maria (about 2 minutes walk away) which I finally found after a bit of walking the wrong way. Here DJ Maxximus was playing, and just like every over time I’ve been to a dubstep night, the music kept amused for the first 15 minutes and then bored me. There was also an MC and the DJ kept doing rewinds, it’s sad to see some of the worst elements of drum and bass infecting this genre too. Just flippin’ DJ, stop doing rewinds, do a mix for the love of all that is holy and good in this world! Take that mic off your mate! Club Maria’s a great venue, cheap beer once again, the right amount of shabby and industrial-ness, can’t wait to check out some proper techno nights there (Blake Baxter’s playing there tonight!).

I met up with Marie from France at Club Maria (people who live in Dublin may remember her from when she was working as an intern for D1 records a while ago) and after some dullstep we set off to the now legendary Berghain/Panorama Bar. I’d heard a lot of legends about this place including a few horror stories: the hour-long queue, not getting in just because they don’t like the look of you, the hour-long queue. I was ready for the worst as the taxi pulled up, it was lashing rain too so I didn’t fancy waiting around for an hour but it turned out it was one of the quieter nights, there was no queue and the bouncer let us all in. One of Marie’s friends, an Italian called Pablo, told me that it was his first time to get in, he’d been refused about three times before for no reason! The Berghain part of the club was closed but the Panorama Bar section was open, and about three quarters full. I was a bit too drunk to appreciate it at this stage (I’m going to have to teach myself new pacing techniques if I’m going to survive this city) but the venue’s great, the crowd are mental, the music wasn’t so special this particular night (Nerk and Dirk Leyers live, some other dude DJing, run of the mill electro house/minimal house), I was a bit under whelmed by it actually, I suppose I’d read too much gushing stories about how people had the best night ever there, and I was tired and drunk. I ended up leaving at around 6am, I was a hung-over camper when I woke up today I can tell you!

The one downside to Berlin clubbing is that any money you think you’re saving on cheap beer, you end up spending purely because you stay out for hours on end, and wind up visiting three or four different clubs on the one night. It’s great fun though, if I have the energy tonight I may be dropping into Tresor to see Neil Landstrumm live, or perhaps back to Club Maria for Blake Baxter, or Watergate to see Sleeparchive and DJ Pete……….AND THIS IS ALL ON THE SAME NIGHT! Bye bye liver!