Berlin Nov2006 14th November 2006

I've added some colour photographs from this weekend taken with my fuck-awful digital camera below.

Basically, it went down like this. Arrived Friday to be met by gay self-employed cake maker who is a friend of this guy Triston who's let us his 'guest apartment' in Frankfurter Allee for four nights. Our expectations were kinda low as we'd already seen photos of the place, but were looking forward to a thin slice of authentic Berlin living. It was kinda manky, electrics somewhat scary, but we could live with it.
Walked the length of Frankfurter Allee and Karl Marx Allee back to Alexanderplatz, checked out the Palast der Republik which is now completely lacking it's seventies copper veneer. In the evening we bit the bullet and entered Maria am Ostbahnhof to watch Bohren und der Club of Gore who are a deeply silly bass-heavy post rock band in the worst and most boring sense of the term. Essentially BONNNNG! on the bass... pause ... then a shit saxophone solo straight off the Taxi Driver soundtrack. Don Cabalero came on about an hour after these guys finished and proceeded to alienate the audience by being arrogant and unengaging (mainly the drummer). We left.

Saturday was pretty much a wash-out, due to the weather. Hopped on the train to Ku'damm in the rain, hoping to go to the zoo. Shelved that plan and instead tried to find the Brucke museum, which turned out to be out by Grunewald. Called it a day and consoled ourselves with good dinner in Prenzlauer Berg.
On Saturday the neighbours directly below had complained about our shower leaking water, but it happened again the next day when we were more careful. Rather than open the door and face the music we did the sensible thing and fucked-off to a hotel for the remaining two nights.

Sunday was great- cycled from Alexanderplatz all the way to the Olympic Stadium through the Brandenburg gate and Tiergarten, only stopping for excellent coffee and cake on the western side of the city. On Monday we finally managed to see the zoo, which I always enjoy despite half the poor animals being pissed about the weather.