Berlin - Germany
December 18 - 23, 2015
There where a few words collected here and there, quickly jolted on a random piece of paper. Here are the words that were:
Berlin’s touristic places ain't grungy. Stark. Kids everywhere. Constructions. Industrial. No wonder the music is too. Other places tagged. Pursued by drug dealers. Dead metal bar. Too polished electro. Shitty beat. Cut weed. White people dance. His bride a plastic bag. Postdam’s boxed statues, desolate park, busy Christmas market. Lack of sleep, splitting headache. Battle of the loudspeakers*
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This seems no doubt to be a negative resume of my days there, but I assure you this is not.
This is what I wanted to see: Punks and lousy bars; because those are the real places belonging to the people not pretending. This is what I set myself out to see. I am not traveling the world to see touristic places, clean and polished. I am traveling to see the hardship, real life, contrast. I am not interested in celebrities I am supposed glorify for what they possess. I will glorify the people I meet for living happily with whatever they have, without all they are supposed to need according to the modernized world.
So, Berlin… First step of my tour around the globe, active part of the modernized world. Well… Not as grungy as I am, and that’s a lot to say.
As for France’s image of romance and acceptance, this idea of a heavy underground culture easily reached in Berlin was probably true, but isn’t anymore. In many neighborhoods, people wouldn’t turn to look at my electric blue hair, kinda 80’s hairdo, and my one-ear piercings: I seemed to belong to the city, belonging to it as in part of its past.
From Gorlitzer Park to White Trash Bar and No Pain No Brain Tattoo, this is where I felt more at home. Dodgy as hell though! It made me feel alive - even if threatened - with its drug dealers distributed every 10 meters, in groups of 3 or more to make sure no need would go trough their tight net unfixed, with its tagged hallways and weird installations. And full of this liveliness, when the sun moved to the other side of the planet and night fell, time came for me to experience Berlin’s entertainment. Monday… bad choice. Enough said.
So... not what I expected. But what about happiness? Yes Berliners seem to be happy, but not because they tag and listen to creative musical beasts of hell, but because they have families and conventions and a new architecture taking over everything… Even if a few pockets of magical resistance are trying to hold the castle of dreams and overwhelming happiness.
Brave new world, you’ve got most of them.