Berliner Raucher Kneipe

The kneipe is a special place in Berlin where you can find a few locals crammed together in corners watching sports on the telly and drinking cheap beer in small glasses.  The wiki translation of 'kneipe' is 'pub,' but this isn't exactly accurate.  To me, a pub is a place where large groups of English or Irish people gather together and drink ales and stouts from LARGE mugs and watch sports on the telly.

Most of the Berliner Kneipe are raucher, or smoking pubs.  Most European pubs have followed the popular trend of banning smoking; England, Ireland and Germany all share the same laws concerning smoking in bars. To whit:  it is not allowed.  In Berlin, however, people just plain don't give a fuck.  They smoke in bars anyway.  Technically, this is illegal, but if a kneipe owner scrawls the word 'raucher' in crayon on a bar napkin and duct tapes it to the door of his establishment, alles in ordnung.

"So, db, why in the hell do you go to the raucher kneipe if you don't like smoke, you California beeotch?"

Glad you asked.  Two words:  CHEAP BEER.  Sure, the beer is crappy, mostly warm off-brands that nobody has ever heard of outside of Berlin.  But I'll be god damned if I'll ever be caught DEAD in the typical over-lit, over-priced, bistro-slash-faggy-slash-dancy cafe-slash-bar-slash-fuckers-I-don't-like-SLASH-em-ALL!!!

Ahem, excuse me.  I prefer dark corners and dark people.  I don't mean the local African watering holes per se, but those would be welcome as well.  I mean, normal people who have no problem with the dual stigmas of being butt suckers and alcoholics.  The lungs and the livers are shot, but these people are REAL.

FALLING DOWN is my local raucher kneipe.  It is practically right across the street from me, which makes it an easy stagger home.  I suppose the name of the place, in the immortal words of Bukowski, 'sort of fondled my scrotum.'  It's not normal to have an English name on a German bar.  And this bar is all German, mostly Prenzlauer Bergers of the old sort: unemployed, hard drinking, DDR-raised people who like cigarettes and beer more than life itself.  The bar is owned by a man of Mediterranean origin.  His name is 'Shefki,' which he told me means 'happy man' in Arabic.  It's true:  the man is happy.  Even when his bar is dead empty, he just smiles and asks me 'where are the people do you suppose?'  Then he rips open a bag of chips and brings the darts out for a game or two.

He opened the pub on Christmas Day "for the lonely people who don't have Christmas today."  I thanked him profusely by eating his chips, drinking his beer and throwing his darts.  I had to ask him about the decision to name the bar 'Falling Down.'  Was it about the gambling machines tucked in the corner?  Does 'Falling Down' mean the falling of coins?  Or is it about the more unfortunate patrons who can't handle the new uber-Captialist economy and the heavy amount of alcohol one must consume to deal with the aforementioned regime change?

To which Shefki replied:  "I think it is the last place people go in the neighborhood.  After they have gone to all the other kneipe in the neighborhood, they come here last and fall down."

Don't be scared.  Please visit Falling Down on Paul-Robeson-str. today.  Sure, your lungs may fall out of your ass from the smoke, but Shefki is a happy man who plays a mean game of darts and peddles a cheap bottle of beer.  Tell him the big American sent you.

Not Ready For Prime Time

The beauty of a blog is that nobody edits the damn thing but my damn self.  Whatever sticks in my craw—be it donut, schnitzel or sauer krauts—gets processed through my donut-and-beer-addled brain and onto my blog so that all 12 of you can enjoy it.

Enter:  editor.  Recently an editor of an expat website solicited me (for free) to write a story about getting around in Berlin.  She said she had read my blog and thought I could contribute a few words (for free) to her expat website, because after all, being an expat in Berlin, we are all whores of the most humanitarian kind:  the kind who work for free.

Below is the rejected article.  “Why was it rejected, db?” you ask?  I don’t know, you tell me.  In the commissioned (for free) piece, I took out all the usual F bombs, donut references and deutschbag rants which would normally appear in any Dunkin’ Berliner blog post.  I put in some actual info that can be of actual use.  The next time I get contacted by a publication to write for free, I’m going to INSIST that they read my ENTIRE blog, not just the Cliff Notes, and cite at least 3 references to donuts, deutschbags and defecation.  Read the fucking ingredients, editors.  It’s JFKFC for The Masses, containing 25% comedic rant, 25% parody/satire, 50% bullshit, 0% faggy poetry.

It does exactly what it says on the tin.  Word.

  

Getting Around in Berlin

 By Craig Robinson

 

You’ve just moved to Berlin. Nothing is happening where you have just moved.  You need to cross town to get to The Cool Kiez (neighborhood).  Do not panic:  this is normal.  Go to the BVG website and plug in your destination.  Don’t worry if you don’t know the address.  BVG is your Personal Hey Zeus! in the Land of Pagan Hedonism known as Berlin.  You can type in a station stop, an address or even the name of a landmark—Beevee got yer back.  In nanoseconds you will have your course in front of you and you can Kiez hop all night long.

Sometimes it even works out just the way you saw it on the interwebs.  But this is Berlin, the city that never sleeps, never stops reconstructing itself, and never, EVER tells you when your ordinarily-ueber-efficient transportation experience will suddenly come off the rails like that proverbial crazy train:  constant station reconstruction, detours, random service interruptions and poorly-marked station signs are your new friends.  Learn them.  Know them.  Love them.  In the two years I’ve lived in Berlin, I have never used the same route in my neighborhood for more than a few weeks.

It’s a wonder that anyone can get to work.  But since Berlin is probably the unemployment Capital of Europe, who needs to?  Most Berliners only use public transport to get to parties.  That’s why it is open all night long.  They’ve even got a monthly ticket called ‘Wide Awake in Berlin” for those who only use public transport from 10am until 3am.  You even get a discount.  I am not making this up.

Things you will NOT see much of on Berlin’s public transport:

1)      Suits

2)      Cops

3)      Sobriety

Things you will see in ABUNDANCE on Berlin’s public transport:

1)      Punk rockers

2)      Drunks

3)      Students with beer and wine bottles

4)      Touts, beggars and buskers

5)      Tourists just trying to have fun

In my first week in Berlin I must have been lost at least a dozen times in the maze of U-bahn, S-bahn, M trams and M buses.  I finally got the urge to accost a couple of beer-swilling Berliner youth at a Friedrichshain tram stop:  “Hey, guys, I was wondering about the rules for alcohol on public transport—I mean, this is Europe, everyone walks down the street swinging a bottle (Praise Zeus), but is it legal to drink on the tram in Berlin?”

Drinking Jugend #1:  “Technically it is illegal to drink on the trams in Berlin.  But nobody will stop you if you do.”

Drinking Jugend #2:  “NO!!! He is WRONG!!!  If you are in Berlin, you MUST DRINK ON THE TRAM!!!”

Perhaps the locals know something I do not.  I cannot count the times I have been lost on public transport in Berlin.  I still get lost regularly, usually when I hastily jump onto a train whose number I didn’t see as it pulled in (they’ll have 5 or 6 trains in a row going to OPPOSITE parts of the city).  Eventually I just started carrying a bottle of beer with me at all times and BAM! the magic connections began:  the brain train’s synapses fired, failed to fire, stuttered and started, lurched and finally took me away.  Not really.  Some of this is satire.  It HAS TO BE.  This is Berlin.

PRACTICAL INFO:

BVG website:  www.bvg.de

TICKET INFO:

Buy your tickets from U-bahn or S-bahn station machines or certain news agents and validate the ticket with the punch-stamp machines located almost everywhere but where you will actually be able to see them.

Plain-clothes ticket inspectors (who really wanted to be STASI or KGB agents under communism but couldn’t quite cut the mustard) will occasionally and suddenly flash a ridiculous Cracker Jack box toy badge I.D. at you and ask for your ticket.  At this point it is a good idea to have a valid ticket.  Or a Mohawk.

TICKET PRICES:

Day ticket (Berlin A/B central zones):  6.10 EUR

Single ride (up to 2 hours in one slightly-weaving direction):  2.10 EUR

Short trip ticket (up to 3 U-bahn or S-bahn stations or 5 bus/tram stops):  1.30 EUR

Fine if you get caught with none of the above:  40 EUR

Major train service interruptions due to reconstruction (subject to change upon a BVG whim):

-         U2 line from Senefelderplatz to Pankow:  indefinite.  Hell, they’ve been working on that thing since the very DAY I moved to Prenzlauer Berg Over a year ago.  It’s a conspiracy.  Use the ersatzverkehr (replacement bus service) instead.

-         Ostbahnhof S-Bahn station:  constant construction that makes you walk down many, MANY muddy, fenced in construction tunnels like a rat in a labyrinth.

Great Asian Food: No Yuppies

I don't usually review food which doesn't consist of deep fried bread dough and lard stuffed with jelly filling, but bear with me:  I've found two great Asian restaurants to get your Chow Fu on in P'berg.  The first is a Real Thai Restaurant called 'Tofu,' and the other is a Chinese restaurant called 'Wok Show.'  I will tell you more about these two places if you promise me up front that you have read the terms and conditions and check the box which says  'I have read the terms and conditions so lay it on me, fool' below this blog.  Those terms:

1) Forgive their silly names.  These are deliberately designed to keep the Yuppie Scum out.  Coupled with their hole-in-the-wall appearances, both of these restaurants strive to do only good food and no neon buddhas and shit.

2) If you go there, don't get drunk beforehand like some Limey hooligans out for a post piss up curry.  If you are a 'Merican redneck, under no circumstances should you push the soup away and bellow "FUCK THIS SWAMP WATER!!! BRING ME SOME FRIED YAK DICK!!!"

3)  If you are any way, shape or form a Yuppie, meaning 'materialistic individuals with no souls and high paying jobs out to ride on the coat tails of other people's experiences and raise their neighborhood rents for good measure,' Stay. The fuck. Away.  

If you agree to these reasonable terms, please get ready to have some fantastic food.

I discovered Wok Show by reading some expat comment forum listing cheap eats in Berlin.  An individual by the name of Sum Dum Fuk said you can get a massive plate of pot stickers (Chinese dumplings) for 5 EUR.  I believe the individual was Asian and I trust him implicitly. I have always hated Chinese fast food because it consists of watery, salty sauce on crunchy, barely cooked vegetables.  This is why I tend to order pot stickers or those wacky Chinese pancakes with the mixed filling and plum sauce (called 'Mu Shi,' and oh how the Germans chuckle when I order that one).  Anything out of the ordinary, other than the usual sheise you normally get in Euro/Asian dumps.  I will cut to the chase now:  bring friends and get yourselves 3 plates of 20 dumplings with various fillings.  The nice lady who is always there will automatically bring you chop sticks, even if you look as white and dorky and clueless as myself.  I recommend putting some dumplings in the small bowl in front of you, soaking it in soy sauce and trying to pick those bad dogs out with those sticks.  After you've dropped a few on the table, feel free to bow and apologize and order knives and forks.  The kind staff will stop laughing at you, turn off the Chinese Candid Camera and bring you the cutlery of your choice. Guten apetit!

'Tofu' Thai restaurant was recommended to me by a Czech friend who has been living in Germany for 20 years.  Normally I wouldn't trust the culinary advice of anyone whose culture cooks with ketchup as a rule.  But since Milan spent many years traveling to and from Asia and he said the place has the proper portrait of the Thai king on the wall and the staff answers you if and when you speak Thai to them.....it's the shizzle.

I know nothing of Thai food because what I've had so far hasn't impressed me.  Cutting to the chase once again, get any of the red or green curry dishes.  Or anything.  I chose the dish with the highest number of chili pepper icons, which was only two. I had a dish last night called something like 'Gak Tung Burn' which was so spicy that I'm still tasting it when I cough. BRILLIANT.  I LOVE spice and find it all but impossible to find spicy food  in Central Europe because Central Europeans are a bunch of fuckin' pussies.  No flavor other the die sauer kraut.

'Tofu' is not a hippy joint in spite of its unfortunate name.  It is a hole in the wall--as is 'Wok Show,' but I have found that the very best food is ALWAYS found in the tiniest, most run down holes you can imagine.  You see, without all the neon buddhas, silk dresses and gold tea cups, they can concentrate on making delicious food while keeping the yuppie hordes out.

Tofu - Erich-Weinert-Straße 1, Prenzlauer Berg

Wok Show - Greifenhagener Str. 3, Prenzlauer Berg

Habituation

"I have become comfortably numb."  - Pink Floyd

No, I am not loaded as I write this (for a change); but I DID have a donut this morning (go figure).  It's coming up on my 2nd anniversary in Berlin (January) and the process of habituation is nearly complete:  I no longer see Berlin as 'Ooh! Wow! Neato! Lookit!' and have become just another expat specimen consuming and excreting with Berlin as a fuzzy backdrop.

This affects my blogging; I was just talking with Lady Snooker about how I used to blog once a week--which slowly faded down to once a month.  Has my creative mojo gone?  Has my donut filling finally dried up?  No, I suspect that Old Rascal Habituation has done its thang on my eyes and ears.  It's happened to me before in other exotic locales:  London, Dublin and Prague.  Right about the time the traveler settled in to the routine; the study program (London), the jobs (Dublin and Prague) and the rent payments, the Buzz decreases, the new becomes familiar, then routine, then Old Hat.

I have noticed my best photographs of a location are generally taken within the first few months of living in a new place.  After that, things that were extraordinary become, well, ordinary.  This is a psychological process which allows us to protect our senses from the onslaught of new experience, disregard the mundane, and keep a lookout for new stimuli.   The wiki article on habituation mentions that soon after a human wears clothing, the sensations wear off.  Can you imagine if you could constantly FEEL the cloth chaffing you as you moved around?  I believe we would be batshit in about 72 hours.  Or city traffic and street sounds would make a New Yorker insane (scratch that; New Yorkers are NUTS) in weeks.

But what is basically psychological protection is damned inconvenient if you are a writer or photographer.  The details we pick out as unique and noteworthy start fading into the background.  So this is when we need to focus more.  Berlin is pegged as an ever-changing city; a city evolving before our eyes. Fortunately, if you look hard enough, you can see the paint drying:  the constantly shifting street art, the ever-changing rotation of festivals, events and goings on.  I now have more time on my hands than usual (my slow season for work), so my lack of money coupled with my excess of time gives me the perfect opportunity to slow down and observe.

I would like to also point out that many of the things I mention on this blog are cheap or free: Karaoke in Mauerpark (see: Return of Melvis) only requires a bit of nerve and/or liquid courage (and in Berlin, liquid courage is 60 cents per bottle).  Taking snaps of local street art is free if you shoot digital.  I have been following certain Berliner street artists and noticing their styles.  So when the background just starts to get a bit fuzzy, sometimes a new stencil, poster, or art piece will appear in the cacophony of color that is Berlin.

So let me throw out some ideas and we can all be comfortably numb in Berlin--with or without the chemicals.

If you have any ideas for free/cheap things to do in Berlin that Google doesn't know about, please comment.

Festival of Lights photo by Craig Robinson Photography

db

The Return of Melvis

Ich bin eine Karaoke addict and a piss-poor Elvis impersonator.  Nevertheless, I HAD to throw myself into the Berlin Bearpit and dance with the rest of the bears.  AGAIN. You may know me as Dunkin’ Berliner, but in a previous life (Prague) I was known as Melvis O’Presky, the hardest working pelvis in Prague; or His Royal Melvic Region, if you’re not into the whole brevity thing.

I paid my dues.  I croaked and crooned in some of the smokiest, darkest, least-crowded karaoke bars with the warmest, flattest beer a man can swallow without puking.  At first it was the usual ‘drunk man finds liquid courage, a microphone and primal scream therapy’ at the expense of the other drunks.  The mic hung at the edge of my soused mouth and I mumbled my Elvis in the dark. Three drunken friends clapped.  One of them yelled ‘Go Melvis.’  I think I scrawled ‘Elvis’ on the beer-soaked paper and handed it to the KJ (karaoke jockey).  Many muffled mumbles later, Melvis was born.

Then came The Suit:  All six-feet-five-white-polyester-sequined-hell of it.  I had it made by a local Czech seamstress. Then came The Gig.  Melvis entered, grabbed the mic and hosted many-a-Prague karaoke as MC Melvis, then, sadly (if only for me), Melvis left the building.

They say Berlin is where creative people go to die.  No, I just made that up.  We’re supposed to be reborn here, like some god damned Phoenixes rising from the fucking ashes of Capitalism or something; perhaps this is purgatory.  But considering that I’ve been surrounded by the same wannabe, parent-supported-mediocre-slacker-artist-pretentious-hipsters for nearly 2 years now, I’m beginning to suspect that I may have to work my way back UP to purgatory.  Again.

Re-enter Melvis.  Last summer I got drunk in Mauerpark, as a dude does on a sunny Sunday in Berlin.  I somehow wound up on stage with a bottle of warm Sterni in one hand and a microphone in the other--in front of a LARGE CROWD of people.  I croaked, I crooned and I really SUCKED ASS.  Evidence of my ass-suckitude can be found on the Bearpit Karaoke You Tube channel.  You really don’t wanna Google that.  TRUST me.  When I found The Pit it was just getting popular.  And as with anything that is just getting popular, you wanna be the one who says ‘you were there when it was just starting.’  And so I am. Er, was.  As a veteran karaoke lounge lizard from hell I noticed that the KJ (His Royal Highness, Sir Joe Hatchiban-San, ESQ, hereafter referred to as ‘K to the J’ or just ‘Joe’) had a completely different setup:  no monitor speakers (those tiny square ones facing the stage) to properly hear your own voice; no echo to hide the obvious flaws in every drunk’s voice; no safety net for the obvious karaoke fool who thinks he’s all dat and a bag of chips.  Joe likes to rumble in with his bicycle of doom, dump the heavy load onto the stage, and drop the hapless singers into the pit with the hungry bears.

And the crowd goes wild.

So I had to do it again and again, like coffee or beer or sex.  Yeah, like those things, with a MUCH bigger crowd.  But the crowds are out of control.  Not in the Bear-Eat-Drunken-Singer meaning of the phrase; you just couldn’t get a song in edgewise.  Fight through the horde, submit your song, wait for 2 hours—and if you’re LUCKY—sing your bad-ass song.  Badly.  I tried it a few times in the last months.  Once I was turned down flat: ‘We’re not taking any more songs,’ the nice girl said.  Hell, in Ye Olden Days of Yokee, Joe didn’t have the luxury of a nice girl to take songs.  Times they are a’changin’ I guess.  The next time The Girl put me on the bottom of a list of about 20 people.  Two hours later, no glory.  I left.

This is the part in the story where any sane man would have given up, got a job, paid his taxes and died unfulfilled, or any insane man would have returned with an Uzi and lit up the muthafuckas.  But I am neither sane nor insane.  I walk the line.  I went back.  Early.  I sat in the front of the muthafucka.  After Joe did his intro song he asked who would be the first singer.  I jumped up and flailed my arms.  It worked; third time’s the charm. I climbed up on that stony stage and I huffed, I puffed and I blew the house down.

And the crowd went wild.