Today is the summer solstice, ostensibly the day with the most sunlight of the year, plus we're up here in the Arctic Circle, so all week we've been looking forward to this super-long, super-sunny, all-day, open-air music festival.
But it's raining. A lot. So, after a delightful breakfast (thanks Dirk!) we thought we might as well do laundry.
Don't adjust your internet, that really is a garbage bag carrying a garbage bag.
Laundry took all day, as it will sometimes, and we found ourselves at dinnertime. We went to this crazy health food place called RNBS* (don't bother looking for the footnote, I spent hours. It's just part of their name) for energy-meatballs with guarana in them and rice-paper springrolls and mango milk. It was a lot better than it sounds.
On Thursdays in Berlin from 18.00 bis 22.00 all the museums on Museum Island (I know, it sounds like a magical wonderland no kid would ever want to go to) are free to the public. So we went to check out the Pergamon, which is famous because of all the gigantic antiquities they have there. Among these is the Ishtar Gate, which was the entry to the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. That's right. They must have taken it apart brick by brick, shipped it all here, and reconstructed it inside this museum. There's also the 2nd Century Pergamon Altar, and a bunch of other stuff from before JC came along and screwed up the world.
As you can tell, Ian and I take our antiquities very seriously.
As I mentioned, this was our last night in Berlin, so we were going out come hell or high water. When the latter came, it didn´t dissuade us from planning a club agenda including some of the hottest nightspots in town. Watergate, 103, Cassiopeia, Matrix. We were all set to freak the night away. First we just had to meet up with Tom at his local bar up in Pankow.
Garväty is a beer hall and music venue in a building still standing since the 18th Century. Evidently the city wants to tear it down unless the owner can prove it has some sort of cultural significance. I´ll let you be the judge. When we came in out of the cold and wet, we were awash in the warm glow of drunken Germans enjoying the sounds of "Strings mit Wings", a rock band fronted by, well, I´m pretty sure it was Captain Lou Albano.
We struggled through the crowd to get our first beers, found Tom, and sat down to relax and enjoy the covers of Johnny B. Goode, Come Together, and the like. But these guys actually rocked. It's pretty ballsy to do a Beatles cover anytime, but to reinterpret it and make it your own is just downright impressive. All of a sudden the barmaid (I later found out she was known as Inga the Machine) plopped an unordered beer down in front of me. At least I thought it was beer. It turned out to be alsterwasser, which is a mixture of beer and Sprite. I reiterate, I hadn´t ordered it, I wouldn´t have ordered it, but it was exactly what I wanted, and when they just kept coming I kept on enjoying them. Give it a shot, you might be surprised.
A hearty slap on my back and an abrupt invasion of my personal space introduced me to a very intoxicated young man with a frightening facial scar. "Yeah, baby!" he said, "I'm Norman. Shtormin' Norman! We have tequilas, yes?" Now, my close friends and drinking buddies know that I never touch the devil-cactus-juice (anymore), it's the only liquor I'm just downright afraid of. But how do you turn down Stormin' Norman? "Four tequilas, yeah baby! Brown or white? Brown ist ok? Four Brown Tequilas! YEAH, baby! PROST!"
By now the band had gone on break, and Tom disappeared for a couple minutes to talk to some of the locals. See, he's a drummer, and most thursdays the house rocks to a blues jam.
It took some convincing, as most of the talent was already tipsy, but eventually they found a guitarist, a bass player and a singer. The ragtag band of musicians started right in with some good ol' fashioned Delta Blues, the kind that makes you stomp your feet, clap your hands, and hoot and holler. By the time they busted out Hoochie-Koochie Man, I was convinced I'd never experienced anything like this in my life. Tom later blew my mind further when he told me he'd never met any of the guys before tonight.
Aside from the just amazing musical proficiency of the artists, and the general awesome vibe coming from everyone in the place, I guess what struck me so hard was the unpretentiousness of the whole scene. Tom tells me that same bar will host chamber musicians one night, then the next night a DJ will spin techno, then the next night an Andrews Sisters tribute band will put on a mock, 1940's USO-type show and the same crowd will be there every night loving every minute of it. If it's good, they support it. This is just miles away from my experience of live music in L.A. Everything has to be labeled and categorized and ultra-hip and perfect and people will still disdain. Can you imagine a singer in a rock band in the States busting out the kazoo without any irony, but just because it sounded good?
After three or four songs of the best live blues I've ever heard (it ain't hyperbole, it was really that good) Strings mit Wings got back up there and when they started doing Born to be Wild (complete with their own smoke machine) and Norman jumped up on the mike for the chorus, we were absolutely convinced that this was way better than sweating our euros away in some hip nightclub. I had finally found the truly German experience I'd been looking for all week. And, when we did finally stumble out of there, around 2ish, Inga had memorized how many of what drinks we had, and the whole night cost me under 10€, which is probably what the cover would have been at just one of those clubs.
Too late for the U-bahn, we grabbed a taxi and some currywurst, and then off to bed with visions of bluesmen grooving in our heads.
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