Underground bowling

This was our fourth full week and a busy one. We had our first friend visiting from the states (unexpectedly) and we simultaneously got a cell phone, internet service, wireless and a Brita filter all in the same day. I do not think that we will be leaving the apartment much for the next week, but if you have been waiting to video chat now's the time.

Last week we met AW a new friend of a friend. He is part of a collective that publishes a magazine out of Vienna and Berlin. The magazine has been circulating since 2002 and changes names each issue. It has a printing of around 500 and new issues are released when they have collected enough content. This happened to be one of those months and they were holding a release party for the current issue, 'Gringo, at a bar in Wedding district called Kaffee Schmidt. The occassion turned out to be a dual release party with another magazine, live music and films of 1920's Berlin projected onto one of the walls. Wedding is just NE of the Mitte and I have heard it referred to as the last hold out of old E Berlin culture. It was rather quite on the streets, clean and there was no graffitti. It evoked more of a suburban feel than the rest of Berlin that I have seen. This bar was also a bit of a hidden treasure, as I'm finding our most bars in Berlin are. Down in the basement were two small disco rooms and a 2 lane bowling alley from the 1920's. It would have been like a time warp if I had any prior idea of what a 100 year old bowling alley looked like. Here is a bad photo I took with my cell phone but it was basically a 1" wide board that ran the length of the entire basement. There was also a panel of buttons from the 1970's for keeping score from behind a plexi glass window, very Star Trek 'original series'. We also discovered to our misfortune that the trains do not run all night and ended up walking most of the way home.



Our friend PE, a Spanish artist, was in town for two days this week and we managed to briefly meet up with her. She has been included in the upcoming Berlin Biennial and was here to look at a few possible sites for her work to be displayed. She had meetings most of the day but we managed to catch up with her at a bar nearby that we have been meaning to visit, Erdbeer. They are knows for their amazing fresh fruit drinks (I had a fresh mint daquiri) and possibly as being the only non-smoking bar in the whole city. They also had an eclectic array of furniture inside including these pod-like East German lawn chairs (Google image). It was good to see PE but it was late when we walked her back to her apt and forgot to take a picture.



The brake cable broke on my bike this week. Luckily I had almost come to a stop so I did not end up entirely in the middle of traffic. I was repaired in 10 minutes at a local bike shop where he also advised me about how to fix the wiring on my bike so the lights will work. Bikes in berlin are more like cars. Bike riding has been really great and is going to save a lot of time and train fare.