Kevin Blake's Blog

The Little Giant on Day 2

Cut to this morning, and I’m in the search of giants.  Walking along Unter Den Linden (which roughly translates as “Tourists will buy anything”) is a lot like walking along tourist districts anywhere else in the world.  Huge imposing buildings filled with art and stolen treasures from all over the planet, and statues to fallen heroes scattered around wherever possible.  Alongside tourist (“I Love Berlin”) shops, and Starbucks are the expensive showrooms of Ferrari, and other “small c*ck” car manufacturers I can’t remember.  Some even have exclusive bars inside with bouncers on the door.  Walking boldly in, I was quite obviously turned away.

At either end of Unter Den Linden are the first sites for Die Riesen Kommen.  They’re really just teasers for the events that will follow tomorrow, and through the rest of the weekend much like the wooden spaceship that landed in London.  I finally found Schlossplatz to be the giant building site, opposite the giant cathedral I’d been using to shelter from the rain.  Schlossplatz, it appeared – was mostly a giant building site which would soon be home to the brand new Schlossplatz U-Bahn station.  Walking around it a couple of times I thought that maybe those crazy Royal De Luxe guys had caused this themselves.  Digging a giant cavern in the middle of Berlin seemed like just their sort of thing, but I was questioning whether they would have found city approval.

Then I heard screams of excitement off in the distance where I’d seen a small tent being built earlier – so rushed that way to find … another fenced off hole in the ground.  Taking their cue from the shows in Iceland, Royal De Luxe had engineered a geyser in the middle of Berlin spraying water 50-60 ft into the air every 5-10 minutes.  “Come stand over here for pictures” a helpful German student advised me.  “Hah”, I laughed, knowing it was right where the water had fallen minutes before.  “How about you stand here, I’ll just wait right here”.  As the water erupted high into the sky, I let loose on the camera, continuing to stay my ground as said water came crashing right down on top of me”.  Apparently the German student, found it particularly amusing.  “Never seen it go that way before”, he chuckled.  “Fuck off and die”, I thought.

The D90 rose to the challenge however, and after having a (cold) geyser thrown over it, I’m now sure it can perform well in almost all wet weather conditions.  The same can’t be said for my coat.

Gorilla outside the gallery shop

I’m in love with Berlin already. There’s graffiti all over the place, art galleries of the bizarre and obscure, fantastic displays of architecture, restaurants to cater for anyones taste the world over, and enough to keep you busy for a very long time.

Just as the tube map looks remarkably similar, Berlin looks and feels like it could be London’s long lost brother. Hopefully I feel this way after 5 days here. I found one free art gallery hidden away down a side street off of Friedrich Strasse which left me wanting to buy everything. I’ll most likely compromise and buy a postcard instead. Iron exhibits both huge and small fill the central courtyard and various huts off to the side as bunch of those artists responsible sat around making more.

It felt like I’d walked into some sort of rennaisance fraternity in gotham city – they had their own bar, which nobody seemed to be interested in using, a group huddled around an open fire, and a small burger van tucked away in the corner.  If the rest of Berlin stays like this (and first impressions indicate it will), I might not even mind staying in a city for longer than days.