Techno on the other side of the wall: Berghain

Last weekend I paid a visit to Dave, a friend who is leaving in Berlin. I hadn’t had the chance to visit this city before, and I was really willing to do it as everybody talked very good stuff about it. My opinion about the city:

1. Very cold :)
2. Very different to some other big European capitals as Madrid, London or Paris. It doesn’t seem at any point to be a huge metropolis, and the reason for it is it is very quiet. Not too many people in the streets, not too many cars in the roads, and absolutely not too many noise anywhere. For this sometimes you really need to have a deep look in a map to realize that, yes, indeed it is a very big city.
3. The monuments over there were cool, but not as cool as London or Paris might be in this sense.
4. Former Soviet buildings are really very ugly. I liked the only remaining III Reich building, though.
5. Everything is really very cheap, even cheaper than Madrid and, obviously, shamefully cheaper than London.
6. People don’t drink beer in huge pitchers all the time. That is Bavarian stuff.

Of course, I did some tourism, pictures in the Wall and in Brandeburg Gate, and so on. So far and so good this blog is about pubs and bar, and actually the best of the weekend were, on the top of meeting back Dave after a fairly long time, pubs and clubs in the city.

a) Stäv, Schiffbauerdamm 8, 10117 Berlin

A quite illustrious and historic place, this is a german bar where you can drink Cologne brewed beer. This type of beer is quite light and easy to drink, and they serve it in small 20cl glasses… at some point you feel like you are having ca;as, but without food. The guys in the bar were quite friendly and they wrote down in a beermat a stripped mark per every drink you had, quite like I saw in Seville several years ago. Nice music and a nice place to enjoy a good conversation and a nicely furbished bar.

b) Die Tagung, Wühlischstraße 29, 10245 Berlin

Ostalgie is the term Germans use to refer to East-German nostalgia or, in other worlds, nostalgia about the Soviet times, and that is what this place is about. The pub is a nicely decorated pub with this sort of themes: communist staff, posters, paraphernalia, etc. We had Red Oktober beer, at the incredible price of €2.30 half a litre (at 2 o’clock at night, in a pub!), and music was really very good and very British. Indeed, apart of all the memorabilia the place really looked like a pub in Camden, but even better. I really liked it.




c) Berghain, Ruderhorfer St., Berlin, Germany

The name "Berghain" is a composite of the names of the two quarters, which flank the building south and north: KreuzBERG (former West Berlin) and FriedrichsHAIN (former East Berlin). It should mean TECHNO in capitals, though, as it is what it really means.

This is one of those massive clubs you cannot find anymore in Madrid. The huge building is a former power plant that currently hosts two different clubs, Berghain (main floor) is about techno and Panorama (top floor) is about House and Electro.

And it had to be good, dear, as we waited for almost 40 minutes to get through, at 2.30 am on a below zero degrees night. The bouncers seemed to be quite selective, and indeed we were quite lucky as a nice blondie jumped the queue just in front of us. As they asked to two Spaniards to leave the queue just as they were going in (and after their good share of the 40 minutes), we were really scared, as they didn’t look like particularly different or dodgy to us. No matter how, we passed the bouncer scrutiny and we were inside.

First thing: a bottle of becks was just 3.10 €. I cannot imagine any other city in Western Europe where it might be possible – maybe just in Lisbon. And the music was aloud, and good, and tequila was good as well, gold or silver.


The mood of the club is gay – friendly, this is, plenty of gay people on it but straight is also welcome. That didn’t really mind, mainly for two options: 1. I have a girlfriend. 2. The music was so good everybody was just thinking about dancing, and chatting up wasn’t really an option.
Really a very good techno club, one of the best I’ve ever been in. The only flaw… well, it was so good we arrived to Dave’s place about 9.30, and obviously there was no real chance to make any more tourism on Sunday. A good reason for go back to Berlin sooner than later, then!