Weekend in Berlin

You said you like techno? Name three of their songs.

Despite being a poor attempt at humour, this was my view of what I considered a rather intimidating music genre in its home city. I had heard all of the stories about Berghain; you can’t smile, they don’t like English people, you have to have a ‘look’. Any information I could find on the topic was just as vague as it was useful. I landed in Berlin then, with a mixture of excitement and apprehension. Our first day was spent hitting all the tourist spots in Berlin, but it all felt like a distraction, or a way to pass the time, until the main event. As night fell, excitement rose. A monday night, surely it’ll be quiet. After a round of naps, our alarms rang and so began our night. Several outfit changes later, we got on the U-Bahn and headed to Tresor, a club with an amazing reputation as one of the cities best, but supposedly with a reasonably forgiving door policy. Negotiating the labyrinth of dodgy dealers on the way in, the absence of a queue gave us hope. For about a total of 3 seconds. 

‘No. Ciao.’ 

That’s all the bouncers said. We all knew the deal with the door policies here, but we left sheepishly, nursing bruised egos on the way. 

‘We should’ve gone later.’ ‘We should’ve worn different clothes.’ ‘Was anyone smiling?’ ‘I wish i spoke german.’ 

Fast forward 24 hours. Round 2. 

Same routine, just a few hours later, and we were off to Suicide Circus with more apprehension about whether we would actually make it into a club. Again, the mass of dealers en route were negotiated with a few stern ‘neins’ and the occasional ‘fuck off i don’t want your drugs’ (which is understood universally apparently), and we reached the door. Again, no queue. I still half expected to be told to do one when the bouncer nodded and said ‘put stickers on your camera, then go in.’ 

With pleasure. 

With cameras covered up, we went in. Welcome to Berlin proper. Beers in hand (we were still in Germany after all), we made our way to the dance floor and were immediately caught up in a whirlwind of two-stepping, bassface-ing and fist punching. What a feeling. Immediately you could appreciate the door policies. Everyone in the room looked like they wanted to be there. No photo shoots for instagram, no snapchats of the club to prove that you were in a club and that you were really cool, promise, because you go out and listen to techno. In fact, the only screen i saw while in the club belonged to another member of the crowd, desperately trying to cross the linguistic barriers of the worlds underbelly by typing ‘ketamine’ into google translate. From the look of some of the people in there, there was hardly a shortage. From the venue, to the music, to the crowd of tech-loving Berliners, I found myself standing on the dance floor with just one thought in my head: ‘Reputation deserved.’

5 or 6 hours later, we spilled out onto the pavement in the not-so-early hours of the morning, and shared the underground back to our hostel with commuters making their way to work. The most remarkable part of this is that the venue we had just left wasn’t going to be closing until midday. Even London, a city that doesn’t have a quiet second, pales in comparison with a club scene whose very existence is threatened by the authorities, demonstrated by the recent issues with Fabric. Berlin is on a different level. 

After that, I wasn’t so upset about the first night. I’d even go as far as saying I liked being rejected so coldly and seemingly without reason. Feel free to turn me away, even kick me to the curb if you want. Teach me and every other techno-tourist out there that money isn’t the issue here. It’s not about quantity or numbers, the people aren’t considered customers, it’s about preserving something unique about a city with a remarkable history, it’s about protecting the culture at all costs. That culture and spirit just happens to be embodied by music and clubs. So, Berlin, you can do whatever you want to me, I’ll still come crawling back. Just don’t change.

Luke Sawney

(Reposted from 3 May, 2018)