First Night in Berlin: A Memoir
There is no story or description that could sufficiently prepare unsuspecting individuals from the tyrannous crusade of getting let inside a decent nightclub as a foreign single girl within the deepest darkest hours of Monday morning in Berlin. Accompanied by some rush-made hostel friends (and later a strange toy-jewellery-adorned red flannelette with a Swiss accent claiming to know the way) the empty streets came into our possession as we hunted for a night out that would be worth every one of the 1000 steps taken to get there.
As a young teen I briefly became part of a circus, but tonight, as a Newborn 20 Year Old Adult, I found myself in The Circus - incidentally, an activity vastly beyond any previous experience.
The Circus: the place where Berlinians go to beat up Americans for feeding off the fake tourism industry, the cave where German holidaymakers go to bop awkwardly to thundering, repetitive, basal growling, and the hole where the bar maid hand out free condoms to every girl she crosses.
The decent down the stainless steel industrial buffering led through a curiously wrapped garbage bag tunnel, with the light at the other end almost biblically revealing two bearded grandfather bouncers – one bald, one tattooed. If my entire body hadn’t been screaming from walking around the city for 3 hours, I could have kissed Tattoos when he blinked and nodded approval of my entrance.
The place itself is much like a maze of oddities, as you pass through the front door onto a porch setting, with fold up chairs, a mattress, and a neon fish tank housing peculiar floaty substances, glugging soundlessly under the boom of the bass further inside.
Enter next to Bar 1 of 3 in which you may be obliged to order 4 vodka shots for 8 euro and not regret a thing. Continue through the main dancefloor, where foreigners and Germans alike seem to have found peace with each other though the execution of half-motivated, short, stilted fist pumps and knee bops; while to the left in the darkness is a generous sized private room. Its seats are lined with black leather, and a set of Victorian lamps are dulled do a low setting, gently highlighting the gold in the embellished rouge wallpaper. Much to my dissatisfaction, this mystical, magical, private room - that would be perfect for a joint or a smoke - is regarded ‘The Makeout Room’. I suppose however that gives a more than logical reason for the black couches and dim lighting.. You know…with stains and stuff.
The favourite area of the night can be found crumpled through a door of plastic flaps (think: butchery), where decor setting vaguely resembles the back of a half-built warehouse redecorated for festival girls idolising Lana Del Rey. Although outdoors, the ‘ceiling’ was filled by a transparent tarpaulin, pulsating and cloud-like, resemblant of a colossal lily flower in the sky. Everything else you could see was lined with vine-wrapped wooden slats near the garden area. The DJ must have fallen asleep because the same repetitive beat has been revolving for an hour now, and the last cigarette in my packet has just been lit by a friend with a pill sitting idly on his tongue, intended for the next (un-?)suspecting makeout victim.
It’s 5am and no one has stopped to remember the sleep concept. Some advice? Keep in mind those you meet here will be able to tell you the exact difference between 3 kinds of music production software and how it affects the ambience emitted by their sound system of choice and it’s best to nod and act enthralled by the physics. Have an interested-in-you type of friend closeby at all times in the event that you nimbly venture solo to the toilet and get whisked away by the many self-proclaimed suitors stalking the garbage-bag- & poster-lined walls. You will absolutely lose half of the people you arrived with, thanks to the entrancement of dealers possessing all you could ever want, without mentioning the rather enticingly tough members of the opposite sex.
As for me, I ended up buying a beer for my over-interested friend before sidling through the scaffolding to my escape at 6am; but not before teaching a group of Germans how to dance like a Splendour In The Grass gypsy, weaving hair accessories from vines hanging from the ceiling, and sharing perilous tales from our retrospective hometowns.
All in all, the night was exhaustively wholesome. Perhaps my only wish is for lonely strangers to leave young girls alone while wandering the streets toward sunrise. She is either running to, or from something that she is very likely too tired to try fixing.
