Berlin 2025

Status of this post: early draft, photos and refinements forthcoming.

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I recently visited Berlin to run a workshop with a client. I took the opportunity to go a few days early and enjoy one of my favourite cities.

On previous visits I’ve:

• Danced until dawn at Berghain
• Seen a wonderful avant garde dance performance by Yumiko Yoshioka at Dock 11
• Floated at the Liquidrom while listening to Yngwie Malmsteen-inspired trance music
• Listened to Moby perform at Stattbad
• Danced at the KitKat Klub despite my lack of fetish gear

This time, I took a more relaxed approach but still had a blast.

Friday

I arrived Friday afternoon and took the S-Bahn into the city.

I sat across from a woman wearing a magenta hat saying “make it possible”. This became the motto of my trip.

I checked into my hotel in northeast Mitte: The Hampton by Hilton because it fit my client’s budget…and mine.

Based on a recommendation from Olivia Jack via a live coding community I belong to, I walked to Panke Gallery. They were having a live coding event on Tuesday which I couldn’t attend since it was after my return flight.

But while I was there, I enjoyed their show Hostile Platforms / Beloved Margins with work by Everest Pipkin about Roblox and place-making, etc.

After Panke Gallery, I walked around and ended up at Savvy Contemporary where they had an interesting show about remittance, migration, and cultural flows called Close to Home.

My two favourite pieces were the “Artist Wallidency” by Van Bo Le-Mentzel where the arist created an entire living space inside a moveable gallery wall with space to read and study, sleep, and prepare meals. It was designed as an homage to the artist’s aunt, Co Hanh Ngo, a Buddhist nun who lived in a tiny space in the who lived in a tiny room in the Vien Giac Pagoda in Hanover until her death with just a kettle to make all her own meals.

My other favourite piece was “imaginaries-digital.info” by Turkish-German artist, Canan Öztekin. The piece is a “digital essay”, a panopoloy of images, videos, audio files, and texts exploring various aspects of landscape: absence, myth, innocence, ghost, ideology, and artefact.

I took the U-Bahn back towards the centre of town stopping at the new Am Tacheles, Yiddish for “Straight talking”. Sadly the thrumming, punk-rock-blasting, multi-level, graffiti-covered sculpture park and artist squat that I visited in 2004 has been emptied, bulldozed, and replaced with a gleaming yet rather anodyne shopping centre/office/apartment complex designed by Herzog and de Meuron.

The basement has a REWE supermarket. I availed myself of the salad bar and sat in the courtyard to eat.

Nearby, a couple was drinking, snacking, necking, & listening to schlager music including hits like
Maite Kelly and Roland Kaiser’s “Warum hast Du nicht nein gesagt?” (“Why did you not tell me no?”) and the classic 99 Luftballons by Nena.

On the walk back to the hotel I popped into a little cafe where a jazz quartet was playing. Drums, bass, sax, guitar. It was great hearing some live music in a tiny venue. I had enough respect for them to not take a video. But not enough to prevent me taking a photo.

I passed by TROMMEL, a tiny bar where I sat 20 years ago and talked with a chemist named Virginia.

I walked on and passed Dock 11 (see above).

I passed a bookshop, Uslar & Rai, where the author Gaël Faye was doing a signing.

I jumped on a train and went over to Friedrichshain and wandered around watching the night owls in the sundry late-night cafes including one called “Zeitgeist”.

I also passed a sort of goth shop called “Darkstore” which, at first glance, I read as “Dorkstore”. That might be even better.

I paused to appreciate the square cube lamps with sans-serif house numbers that are on so many buildings in Germany and Scandinavia.

I saw a set of Stolperstein and paused for a moment.

I took the U5 back to Mitte and made a quick pilgrimage to Salon Babet where, on my trip 20 years ago, I spent a long time talking to the bartender about music and he later invited me to a great party the following evening.

I’m glad this place is still there, built as a salon during the DDR then a flower shop and finally a bar/event space dripping with icy post-war glam.

The mirror ball enhances the vibe.

Next door is the the imposing, resolutely stylish (and resolutely closed) Cafe Moskou.

I paused to appreciate a couple of other hulking DDR-era apartment blocks then walked back to the hotel along the colossal Karl-Marx-Allee. I didn’t sleep well as the room was too hot. This seems to happen a lot on my first night in places. I should learn to open the window when I first arrive.

Saturday

In the morning I braved the medieval gauntlet of the hotel breakfast buffet. Claiming a table was tougher than getting a beach chair in Capri but I managed.

I tucked into scrambled eggs, bircher muesli, a waffle, fruit, cheese, rolls and yoghurt, eating about 120% of my capacity to ensure I wouldn’t need food again until dinner.

Later I wandered northward towards Prenzlauer Berg, past a lovely old cemetery where they provide watering cans for visitors to water flowers/plants. What a nice gesture.

I passed more cute cafes with al fresco diners, a “saunabad” (spa) with monumentally creepy sculptures out front, and arrived at the same wonderful outdoor market that I visited about 15 years ago, still going strong and filled with delectable cheeses, beautiful produce, whimsical wire sculptures that look like my dad could’ve made them (with a guy sitting behind them who is probably related to my dad).

I walked up to the old brewery which is now a vibrant “kultur brauerei”. I revisited the excellent free museum about life in the DDR which I enjoyed much more, actually, than the paid DDR museum by the river.

Later, I took the U-bahn to the Reichstag building to see the recently installed monument to the murdered and persecuted members of the Reichstag of the Weimar Republic. These were Hitler’s political adversaries who were sent to concentration camps and kept alive during the war but then killed when it was clear that Germany would be defeated.

I walked around the Brandenburg Gate, through the Tiergarten and past the memorial to all the homosexuals who were killed under Hitler. It’s an interesting monolithic metal block with an opening in one side which reveals a video screen inside of gay couples kissing.

Later I revisited the amazing Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe designed by Peter Eisenman fashioned after the old jewish cemetery in Prague which I’ve now also visited.

I took the train over to PACE gallery which has a lovely cafe and outside space complete with a koi pond.

I saw some nice street art along the way and also stopped into the street art museum, “Urban Nation”.

I continued up to Charlottenberg to see the state opera house. The Magic Flute was being performed. I considered getting a ticket but opted to keep exploring rather than sit for 3 hours. I’ve seen many Magic Flute productions (and even played a wild boar in on at Opera Theatre of St. Louis in the 80s).

I had a delicious falafel for dinner.

I walked past some interesting shops including the bookshop at C/O Berlin, the photography museum.

I hopped on the S-Bahn which was quite rowdy.

Met a Brazilian film maker named Walter and a woman from Madison named Anna.

I rode with them to Ostkreuz and started walking back towards Friedrichshain.

Along the way, I met an interesting Russian guy. Not quite homeless, didn’t ask for money, only directions so he could buy more marijuana. He told me with sadness, how his mother had died because every penny is being sent to the war in Ukraine and she couldn’t get the medical care she needed. How many millions of people are in this situation, I wondered.

I strolled past Berghain at about 9:45 where people were already lining up. I remembered a fun night there about 14 years ago and then went home to bed.

Sunday

Once again, I braved the weekend breakfast buffet gauntlet, this time with greater gumption and efficiency.

After trying my luck at Berghain (and getting rejected) I took the tram over to Flussbad where I was hoping to see an event but I hadn’t grabbed tickets in time. In London, I wouldn’t’ve had a chance. In Berlin, under the banner of “Make it possible” I had an idea.

I arrived a couple of hours before the event was scheduled to start. I noticed an open gate and boldly walked in and slightly surprised a staff member who was preparing for the event. I told him about my plight and he invited me to come back later saying it wouldn’t be a problem to get in.

I had two hours to kill and was still craving a bit of techno after not getting into Berghain. I realised I was close to Sisyphos, a sprawling multi-room, indoor/outdoor, club complex known for it’s all-weekend parties. I heard the bass from down the street.

After some deliberation, I decided to go in. The young woman at the door told me they usually only admitted re-entrants on Sunday afternoons but she took pity on me. She asked if I had been to a techno club before. I cited Fabric and Berghain and this was adequate for her. I didn’t go into my history of raving in warehouses and dog tracks around St. Louis and Denver in the 1990’s.

I used the on-premise cash machine to pull out some money, paid my 15 Euros had my pockets squeezed by the bouncer, and I was in.

Photography was strictly forbidden (like Berghain they gave you stickers to put on your camera, which I appreciated). It’s nice, after all, just to dance and be in the moment.

But I wish you could see it.

It had a kind of magical techno fairyland vibe with at least 4 areas to dance limitless hang-out possibilities. There were outdoor garden spaces enhanced with cor-ten steel sculptures, seating, a funky big-top circus fair area, a kind of “treehouse” with stained glass windows, a traditional big black box space and my favourite area, a kind of Blade-runner esque street-scene with balconies, Chinese lanterns, and little shuttered rooms just big enough for two or three people to hang out in a more private space.

After a couple of hours and a slice of pizza, I went back to Flussbad.

Flussbad is a beautiful new office campus by the river built in a very fashionable sort of “neo-brutalist” style. The center piece is the “Reethaus” which is kind of thatched concrete bunker designed for listening to music. It has curved walls, tatami mats on the floor and cushions around the perimeter, low lighting and an oblique pyramidal vaulted ceiling with 15 slightly misaligned rectangular skylights in the roof.

They were playing an excerpt from Canto V: Meditation on Wage Labor and the Death of the Album by Terre Thaemlitz performed by Soundwalk collective.

I remember hearing Thaemlitz’s work on an ambient compilation CD I bought circa 1994 called “Ambient Intermix”. Canto V is 30 hours long, for solo piano — one suspended chord after another, each made up of clusters of white notes and held for 5-7 seconds until the next one plays.

The chords and velocity varied to create tension and resolution even with what appeared to be pretty random note choices. They gently panned each chord around the 16 channel sound system in the room and you could hear some springy acoustic elements of the keys being struck and the wood resonating.

I was dismissive at first and then fell in love with its calm, meditative, yet pensive sparseness. I resolved to find out more about the piece and maybe construct my own version somehow.

After listening for a while on the floor in the Reethaus I went outside and sat by the river feeling like I was part of an Instagram photo shoot. It’s clear that the event was part of a campaign to establish the artsy pedigree of the space and help them rent offices but it was nicely done and I had a wonderful time so I’m not complaining.

Feeling thoroughly relaxed, I realised I still had enough time to visit the nearby Stasimuseum. This was a trip. TODO: explain more about this and what was inside…

Monday

Got to lead a full-day workshop with a new OKR client. They were good sports who played all my weird games and also set some excellent OKRs for 2026.

Tuesday

Visited the Neue Nationalgalerie in its beautiful new modernist home. There I saw a fantastic Lygia Clark retrospective. TODO: add more detail and photos.

I finished up with a quick trip to the official DDR museum, grabbed my suitcase from the hotel, took one last stroll through Alexanderplatz and caught the S-Bahn to the airport and home.