Wochenende

Weekend! Sadly it's over now, though.
Friday evening I went to Berghain again, Sub:stance. Was looking forward to this a lot, although the music was kind of a desillusion. Have I grown out of dubstep? Has dubstep grown out of me? I guess I was just longing for the deep, relentless techno beat of berghain on the saturday night before. Maybe I just wasn't drunk enough. I stayed however, 10 euro entrance and one hour of waiting makes you think twice before you leave a place. The music wasn't all bad, however. And the panorama bar offered some variation.
The crowd was very different as well. Gone were the gay people and hello to short trousers and baseball caps.

Once the line-up in berghain itself stopped (8 am), I changed to Tresor. Located close to S-bahn station Jannowitzbrucke (yup, close to Kitkatclub) in an old electricity generation plant (hello Berghain) its friday evening was one of (industrial) hardcore. The Speed Freak had come that evening as well as other pretty famous industrial hardcore artists. I should have gone there instead of Berghain, perhaps. Anyway, cool place. Very gritty, dark, dirty. Feels like scraping your face over concrete, but in a good way. Some dude selling lollipops at the entrance - this was a pretty hardcore place. Only the main room was still open, with about 50 people. Main room has a big window in the side offering a view over the blue-lit insides of the factory.
Stayed there for about an hour, then switched to Golden Gate. I read about it, people describing it as a cool underground place. Which it is :) It is very, very small too, as the guy I met waiting in Ostkreuz told me (he was a Spanish person living in Berlin for about eight years. Oh, and he had studied physics - that was a first). Golden Gate is located in an old storage/maintenance room of an U-bahn station and the dance room is about as big as a decent living room in a house. 5 euro and a thorough pocket check got me in.
This is a place which draws mainly locals coming there to chill down from a night of clubbing. Felt like a pub where you go to to meet people you know, a place where you go often and know everyone. Very nice and cosy with lots of couches and low music volume. With nice and cosy I don't mean the place itself, which is pretty plain and worn, but the atmosphere. I liked it. Everyone was on some kind of upper - but knew how to handle it. Different from the kids in Berghain stumbling out of the toilet sweeping their nose at their sleeve.
But all nice things must end sometime so went home to crash in the couch at about 1 pm and to wake up again at 10 pm.

For saturday night I had planned a night of Arena Club, which was very close to my apartment- just a ten minute walk.
Very nice place, an old factory with lots of stairs, walkpaths and some old piping and machinery left. Even a small waiting line (ten people) and weird door policy (group of four perfectly normal girls turned down, as well as a couple of thirty-somethings - the porter saying people coming here are usually dressed up and they didn't fit) - but I got in without problem, dressed just plain. I don't know, maybe guys alone are considered good spenders. Coat and pocket check, asked if I had a photo camera (although I saw a couple of camera flashes during the night).

Besides the industrial look, there is some funny and trippy decoration as well, which gave the place a friendlier, tounge-in-cheek feel. Music was not bad but again pretty light-weight for my taste. Service was unfriendly, which is a shame. Is it so hard to smile when you hand me over my three-euro drink? This is one of the things where Berghain shines: even in the wee hours of the morning, staff are smiling and friendly.

After that I wanted to check out Maria am Ostbahnhof, but that weekend was a reservation-only weekend. Maybe I'll check that place out next friday, which will be my last night out (except if I would travel to Prague wasted). French electro with Yuksek live, hmm.

So today at monday I cleaned up the place a bit after idling all sunday afternoon in the couch watching movies (Lawrence of Arabia - Ponyo on the cliff. Excellent movies) and staying awake to reconfigure my biorhythm. After that I wanted to visit the dome on the Reichstag, which is free to visit and looks like a cool place with an impressive view. Turns out the dome is closed until wednesday for a cleaning operation, so ended up going to the Volkswagen Automobilforum at Unter den Linden, where there was a free exhibition of pictures of North-American nature, made by Pavel Sticha.
Some nice pictures, but most of them seemed to be just rocks in funny shapes. A duck-shaped rock. A foot-shaped rock. A hamburger-shaped rock. Nice, but not that special. But hey, it's free so kudos to Volkswagen and Skoda.

After that I went to Deutsche Guggenheim, which is close to the Automobilforum. Guggenheim huh, sounds impressive. And it had some very famous pieces indeed, although it contained only paintings (I like to see some three-dimensional stuff as well) and half of the collection were pictures of squares extensively commented by artsy people.
The most interesting one was one of Paul Klee (image on the left), who made awesome stuff like this and this and this. The Daimler exhibition I visited last week however, was more interesting and much more relaxed (at least three guards in the guggenheim exhibition and lots of people).

After that I went to see Pixars Up in the Cinestar cinema in the Sony Centre at Potsdamer Platz. That cinema shows mainly "OV" or OriginalVersion movies, which means they are in the original version, often without german subtitles, which is great. Brilliant movie as well, true pixar magic.
The cinema itself is nice, a pretty classy place with even free newspapers to read on the comfy couches while waiting and drinking your (3.6 euro for half a litre) beer. No digital projection, but bright image and excellent sound. Most of the cinema is actually underground, the main hall showing the underside of the fountain central in Sony Centre. Pretty cool, as that part of the fountain has a glass floor.

On my way out I found a stand with free Exberliner magazines, which is english-language and all about music, art and places to go to.