18:22, 26/01/2005

Duck threading, part 2

Matrix Sign
Matrix Sign on the S-Bahn

Day 1 had been a day of pizza. Despite some early sausage ingestion, the lure of tomato and cheese-topped bread produce was insurmountable. Turkish pizza in Kreuzberg had been followed by a suspiciously pizza-like cheese-and-salami-on-toast snack in the brown bar. The rider at the gig consisted of - you guessed it - pizza. Day 2 therefore became "the mission to avoid pizza".

Meeting in the lobby of the gloriously surreal Hotel Estrel, we solemnly pact-ed a pizza avoidance strategy (while looking at a worryingly pizza heavy snack menu). We'd checked into the hotel, a fabulously tacky and enormous cruise liner-esque monument, that seemed to have berthed in the middle of Neuköln, a notoriously dodgy area, because the promoter couldn't book us two nights in the very busy and much more central hotel we'd started out in. The Estrel was brilliant - less a hotel, more a German version of Las Vegas in miniature, complete with a galaxy of star impersonators in the evening floor show. Ooh, we were tempted to go and see the Blues Brothers' German cousins that evening. Ooh we were... No, we weren't. But it was nice to know it was there.

WindowsHaving worked out the difference between the U-Bahn and the S-Bahn, it was out for a spot of sightseeing. With childish foot stamping, I refused to go anywhere except the TV Tower. Luckily it was really busy. Hurrah. I took one look at the queue and suggested we go elsewhere. None of the others were particularly bothered. We then walked up the absolutely incredible Unter den Linden, a wide, mostly former East German boulevard lined with architecturally and historically significant buildings. Gawped. We did. One of us bought another sausage from a street vendor. But I'm contractually bound not to say who.

Some fleamarkets, amusing graffitti and a coffee or two later, we fetched up at Potsdamerplatz, which used to be a bombed out no-mans land around the Wall. Now modern buildings have sprung up around the otherwise sparsely built area. The feeling was eerie, like a mothership had come down and overnight deposited several hi-tech, angular landing craft in the middle of a recently-sterilised warzone. A forlorn, graffitti covered fragment of Wall survives there. Graffitti is a big thing in Berlin. Like sausage. And pizza.

Just off the 'platz was a huge complex of cinemas and movie museums. Architecturally, it was like London's shitty Millennium Dome, but, y'know, central and actually useful. Drawn like tired bipedal moths to a hi-tech flame, we drifted in, trying to find a place to sit and rest our barking dogs. I'm afraid to say that more sausages were consumed at this juncture. But no pizza.

On the way back to the Estrel, changing trains at a bleak Neukoln S-Bahn station, I'm sure someone shot at us. But the Berliners were clearly made of some unflappable material and ignored the alarming, skin-jumping noise.

Back at the hotel, we ate dinner (herrings! ha! weren't expecting that, were you?) in the cavernous piano-bar restaurant, surrounded by middle-aged revellers in too much make-up and perfume. They'd come to see the show. We were on the way out to a party. Some of us anyway. We conjectured that the black-clad pianoman singing 80s EasyHits was actually playing a CD and wanking behind the cover of the piano. He looked happy enough anyway, despite the lack of applause.

11.30pm and we were in a cab back to the centre. Club Rio on Chausseestrasse and more bands awaited us. The night before, I'd had an amazingly drunkenaddled backstage conversation with a kind lady from VICE magazine, who'd put us on the list. It was one of those guest lists whose resultant queue was longer than the paying one, but eventually we got in after some haggling with the dapper, tweedy and very weary man on the door. I was feeling totally dead by this point. The free champers and beer perked us all up for a couple of hours or three. The schoolyard punch-up between Derek, the lead singer of the Towers of London and the DJ was even fun. But not fun enough for us to endure the band's whole set. If I'd wanted to see a sham "Sham 69", I'd need my head examining.

On the way back to the hotel, the flight home scant hours away, the cab driver played classical music, which was absolutely what was required as we drove through the stilling streets of a city in flux. Berlin has still not stabilised from the reunion of its two halves. It seems a city in a constant state of creative change. It's exciting, tumultuous, exhausting and beautiful. It's a place that, unlike here in London, the property developers haven't completely neutered. But it's happening; wearily, the cab driver told us how one of his favourite areas, Kreuzberg, is slowly being hammered into a pale, submissive hollow of its exciting, vibrant old self. It's a trend he sees happening all over the city.

It's possible that 15 years after the wall fell, Berlin's undergoing an even more permanent change. I'll be going back, hopefully this year. Last chance to see...

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